The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education

by Craig M. Mullaney

  At the monument Gary and nine of his friends, all newly minted second lieutenants, stood at attention in front of us wearing dress uniforms devoid of all decorations except their name tags and branch insignia. The switch from gray to green added five years to their faces. Gary’s height placed him in the back row, and he looked straight ahead, conscious for perhaps the first time in his life that a dimpled smile wouldn’t be appropriate. As his company officer read the oath of commissioning, I stepped up with my mother and my sister Bridget to pin gold bars on his epaulettes and beret. A round of applause erupted from the gathered friends and family. I stood in front of Gary and saluted him.

  There was so much I wanted to say to him that I wasn’t sure where to start. I wanted him to know that the greatest privilege I had ever had was leading men in combat. He was going to be tested over and over again in ways he could never predict or simulate in training. There were going to be times when he would be afraid, but I wanted him to know that courage had more to do with facing that fear than forgetting it. His men would expect him to share their risks and to stand with them in the storm. But they would also expect him to set a course, decide, act, and lead. He couldn’t afford to doubt himself. The only way to never make a decision he would regret would be to never make any decisions at all.

  Finally, I wanted to tell him that doing everything right might still entail heart-wrenching consequences. Gary would have his own unforgiving minutes, I feared, but what mattered was that he fill those minutes with “sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.” And just as important were all the hours of demanding preparation before the unforgiving minute: the education and training, the running and marching, the deliberate planning married to decisive action. His men expected no more than everything he had; they deserved no less. Yet the only way Gary would be able to measure success would be to look in the mirror.

  But even as these thoughts ran through my head, I realized how little I could convey in a few phrases. The rest Gary would have to learn for himself. As we hugged, I whispered in his ear: “Take care of your men.”

  It was all I could think to say.

  A READING LIST

  Reading has been an essential component of this soldier’s education. With that in mind, I offer the following partial list of works organized loosely by subject.

  Afghanistan

  Afghanistan by Stephen Tanner

  The Bear Went Over the Mountain by Les

  Grau

  Ghost Wars by Steve Coll

  The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk

  The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

  Not a Good Day to Die by Sean Naylor

  The Places in Between by Rory Stewart

  The Punishment of Virtue by Sarah

  Chayes

  Soldiers of God by Robert Kaplan

  Taliban by Ahmed Rashid

  Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

  History

  American Diplomacy by George Kennan

  An Autobiography by Mahatma Gandhi

  The Best and the Brightest by David

  Halberstam

  Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt

  History of the Peloponnesian War by

  Thucydides

  In Retrospect by Robert McNamara

  “A Problem from Hell” by Samantha

  Power

  Thinking in Time by Richard E. Neustadt

  and Ernst R. May

  The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

  War of the World by Niall Ferguson

  What Is History? by E. H. Carr

  Literature

  All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

  A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

  Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

  Beowulf, translation by Seamus Heaney

  Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

  Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

  The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor

  Dostoevsky

  Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

  A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

  Crime and Punishment by Fyodor

  Dostoevsky

  Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

  The Divine Comedy by Dante

  A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

  Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

  The Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye

  An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis

  Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

  Henry V by William Shakespeare

  The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar

  Wilde

  Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

  Journey’s End by R. C. Sherriff

  Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

  A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

  The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest

  Hemingway

  Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

  On the Road by Jack Kerouac

  A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

  The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

  Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

  The Quiet American by Graham Greene

  A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

  A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

  A Time for Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  The Trial by Franz Kafka

  Vision Quest by Terry Davis

  Military Affairs

  “28 Articles” by David Kilcullen

  All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich

  Maria Remarque

  The Army and Vietnam by Andrew

  Krepinevich

  Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose

  Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden

  The Campaigns of Napoleon by David

  Chandler

  Counterinsurgency Warfare by David

  Galula

  Destroyer Captain by James Stavridis

  FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency Field Manual

  The Face of Battle by John Keegan

  Fiasco by Tom Ricks

  The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer

  Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield

  Going to the Wars by Max Hastings

  Goodbye, Darkness by William Manchester

  Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves

  The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul

  Fussell

  The Last Ridge by McKay Jenkins

  Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife by John

  Nagl

  The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery

  Men Against Fire by S.L.A. Marshall

  One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick

  On Killing by David Grossman

  On the Origins of War by Donald Kagan

  On War by Carl von Clausewitz

  Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning

  Platoon Leader by James McDonough

  The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

  A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo

  Scribbling the Cat by Alexandra Fuller

  Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence

  “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell

  The Sling and the Stone by T. X. Hammes

  The Soldier and the State by Samuel

  Huntington

  Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger

  The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

  This Man’s Army by Andrew Exum

  Under Fire by Henri Barbusse

  The Village by Bing West

  We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young by

  Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway

  With the Old Breed by E. B. Sledge

  Wooden Crosses by Raymond Dorgelès

  Oxford

  Looking for Class by Bruce Feiler

  Oxford by Jan Morris

  Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

  Philosophy

 
; The Book of Job

  Candide by Voltaire

  Émile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  The Enchiridion by Epictetus

  Essays by Michel de Montaigne

  Just and Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer

  Madness and Civilization by Michel

  Foucault

  Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

  The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

  Night Flight by Antoine de

  Saint-Exupéry

  The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

  The Stranger by Albert Camus

  “The Wall” by Jean-Paul Sartre

  Poetry

  Caligrammes by Guillaume Apollinaire

  T. S. Eliot

  Robert Frost

  “If” by Rudyard Kipling

  Opened Ground by Seamus Heaney

  Wilfred Owen

  Jelaluddin Rumi

  “Ulysses” by Alfred Lord Tennyson

  West Point

  Absolutely American by David Lipsky

  Duty First by Ed Ruggero

  “Duty, Honor, Country” by Douglas

  MacArthur

  The Long Gray Line by Rick Atkinson

  Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet

  “A Soldier’s Obituary” by John Alexander

  Hottell III

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

  And found and lost again and again: and now under conditions

  That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

  For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

  T. S. ELIOT, “Four Quartets”

  This is a true story. Considering the scope of time it covers, by necessity I had to rely on more than my memory in writing this book. To that end I was fortunate in having journal entries, letters, emails, and photographs to supplement my recollections. For the Afghanistan portion of the book I also had the benefit of patrol reports, maps, and radio logs. Additionally, I interviewed many of my soldiers and colleagues and asked them to read early drafts and to correct any inaccuracies. Finally, my research brought me back to many of the settings in the book, helping to bring focus to more hazy recollections. Where my memory conflicted with another, more objective source, I based my account on the latter. By necessity, the dialogue is an approximation of conversations that I can’t recall verbatim. This book contains no composite characters or scenes, and the sequence of events is chronological except where indicated otherwise in the text. I apologize in advance for inaccuracies; none are intentional.

  I am often asked why I wrote this book. At first it began as an attempt to hold on to memories I felt were slipping away from me. I hoped that by putting those experiences on paper, particularly the more painful memories from Afghanistan, I could finish the war I had brought back home with me. In early 2006 a friend approached me with the idea of publishing what I had written. I was ambivalent about whether my story would be of any interest to someone else, but I changed my mind when I recognized that the book might be helpful to readers. If I could tell the story well, it might help America better understand its military, might inspire some to serve, and most to appreciate, and might shed some light on operations in Afghanistan that seem to have been largely forgotten by the American public. I could either continue complaining that people lacked understanding about military service or I could do something to bridge that gap. Finally, as I watched my brother and my students inch closer to graduation and inevitable combat deployments, I felt compelled to pass on what I had learned. It is said that a fool learns from his own mistakes and a wise man from others’. I hope my mistakes make future leaders, in the military and elsewhere, a little bit wiser.

  I owe the Army far more than it has extracted from me—for teaching and training me at West Point, for the opportunity to study and travel abroad, for the chance to lead and learn from incredible soldiers and officers, for the privilege of teaching, and for making me a better man and husband. I hope this book settles some of that debt, but I know my duty will never be complete. Ultimately, I wasn’t strong enough to continue serving in uniform and to meet the duties I had to my family. My battles will no longer be fought in boots and camouflage, but I hope still to serve this country I love that has given me so much.

  TO THE DEGREE THAT this book approaches the goals I set for it, I owe gratitude to countless mentors, colleagues, and family members. Although many are named in the book, brevity kept me from including others whose stories are intertwined with mine. Among those to whom I am most indebted are all the members of Spearhead Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry, and the nameless pilots and logisticians who helped bring most of us home. This book is written in memory of those in our ranks who made the ultimate sacrifice.

  At West Point, thanks go to my classmates in the Class of 2000 and the many mentors who were role models of selfless service and professional dedication, particularly John Bender, Robert Doughty, James Gentile, Mike and Brenda George, Liz Halford, the Hooker family, Pat Hoy, Inga Kohn, Tom Kolditz, Chris Kolenda, Ken Lavin, Guy LoFaro, Mia Manzulli, Mike Meese, Rich Morales, Bill Ostlund, John Nagl, Andre Napoli, Jay Parker, Jeremy Quimby, Jack Reed, Elizabeth Samet, the Salomone and Silveira families, Don Snider, Colonel Wells, Father Wood, Scott Wheeler, and Paul Yingling.

  At Oxford, I am indebted most of all to the Rhodes Trust for the opportunity of a lifetime and the invigorating challenge to “fight the world’s fight.” Bob and Sheila made moving to England less difficult than it could have been without their help. Lincoln College provided a wonderful home for my studies and a fascinating assortment of colleagues from all over the world. Thanks to my rowing and lacrosse teammates for teaching me the Queen’s English and enduring my endless questions. I am grateful to Avner Offer for nudging my curiosity and honing my historical analysis and to my colleagues at Oxford for their friendship. To Ian, June, Victoria, and Elizabeth—thank you for the space to work, your company, and the endless cups of tea.

  In the Army I am forever grateful to the Ranger School instructors who lived the Ranger Creed, especially Master Gunnery Sergeant Keith Oakes. I was proud to serve briefly with the soldiers of 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. Adam Rocke, Todd Brown, and Mike Perry took me in and made me a better platoon leader. Thank you. At the Old Guard, Colonel Charles Taylor, Darren Wilson, Ara Megerdichian, Glen Helberg, Carrie Wibben, and Kevin Jefferson helped me meet the regiment’s high standards and were incredibly supportive in helping me transition from Afghanistan. At Annapolis I had the pleasure of joining an incredible faculty. In particular I am grateful to Dave Bonfili, Dave Peeler, and Mike Halbig for finding me a home in the History Department and to the faculty volunteers in the UKSP who worked selflessly to help midshipmen.

  My deepest gratitude lies with those who read early drafts and critiqued, encouraged, and arm-twisted me toward completion: Claude Berube, Barret Bradstreet, Todd Breyfogle, Leland Burns, Temple Cone, Brandon Dammerman, Mira and Alex Debs, Lauren Eisenberg, Chelsea Elander, Sean and Jen Fahey, Tim Feist, John Freymann, Jen Gaudiani, Chris and Ulcca Hansen, Joe Hess, Mike Howard, Marcus Jones, Katie Larson, Bryan Leach, Bill McBride, Trent Moore, Rich Morales, Chris Nelson, Marilyn Nelson, Jim Poisson, Jeff Robinson, Niels Rosenquist, Animesh Sabnis, Jason Sanders, Tim Strabbing, Luke Tillman, Brian VanDeMark, Dorothy Van Duyne, Susi Varga, Anna Wheeler, Ryan Worthan, Rob Yablon, and Paul Yingling. I am especially grateful to Nathaniel Fick for his support from beginning to end and to Tom Ricks for his advocacy and advice.

  I was lucky in finding an outstanding agent and friend in E. J. McCarthy. Without him this book never would have left my laptop. Jane Fleming and the rest of the crew at Penguin Press have been nothing short of incredible, from editing through production. They taught me that some questions are worth asking even if they can’t be answered.

  My family couldn’t have been more supportive of this endeavor, from reading drafts to finding pictures and letters, thereby
opening up their personal lives to public scrutiny. To Kelsey for always smiling, to Bridget for leadership, and to Gary for keeping me honest: I’m proud to be your brother. To my uncle and grandparents, thank you for believing in me. To my in-laws, I am grateful for your love and encouragement. Most important, to my mother, thank you for giving me the courage to write.

  And, finally, I thank Meena, my wife, editor in chief, and best friend, who gave me unwavering support and love. My words fall short, but Rumi’s poetry comes closer:

  In your light I learn how to love.

  In your beauty, how to make poems.

  You dance inside my chest,

  where no one sees you,

  but sometimes I do,

  and that sight becomes this art.

  AN APPEAL

  Many people want to “Support the Troops,” but are unsure what to do besides expressing symbolic support. There are a number of exceptional nonprofit organizations that help military families, veterans, and our wounded warriors. A portion of the proceeds from this book will be donated to the following organizations. If you can spare your time or make a tax-deductible contribution, please consider contacting these organizations to see how you can help.