Entertainment, Books - Air Force Times

A soldier is educated in ‘The Unforgiving Minute’

Former Army Capt. Craig Mullaney admits up front that, emotionally, he takes after his expressive Irish mother, who is “incapable of stemming a tear.”

Mullaney is less candid and perhaps unaware of his talent for evoking emotion in others.

Tears come at the heartwarming moment in “The Unforgiving Minute” when Mullaney’s mother and father spot him among look-alike cadets after the graduation ceremony at the U.S. Military Academy.

There is a touch of melancholy. A dying 19-year-old soldier’s selfless last sentence is a monument to brevity and brotherhood: “Is everybody else okay?”

But “Minute” is far from heavy and never maudlin. Mullaney’s sense of humor is obvious. He also admits that he is “the first to laugh at the slightest trigger.”

“Trigger” is a loaded word in a story that takes you from the Hudson Valley to the Shah-e-Kot Valley, with stops at the Ranger School and Oxford University.

It is Mullaney’s clear-eyed, warm-hearted candor that elicits empathy. His West Point trousers were so abrasive “that hair didn’t grow on my thighs” for four years, and his father’s handshake is like “vice grips.” At Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, he admits not knowing what “indigenous” means. His Fort Benning, Ga., high-and-tight haircut, one of his tonsorial milestones, is a “high and stupid.”

This self-effacing frankness makes his coming-of-age-in-uniform memoir a charmer. At West Point he refuses to “name my rifle” in silent protest of tradition. After target practice, he says if “green plastic dummies ever attacked my rifle platoon, I would be ready.”

Preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, “it didn’t occur to me that it was unusual for a 24-year-old to have a notarized will and a life insurance policy. I checked the box for maximum coverage.”

Arriving in the war zone, he knows his soldiers are trained to be warriors but wonders whether they can win hearts and minds if they don’t know the native language. He asks, plaintively:

“How do we know who’s a bad guy?”

“They speak Arabic.”

“How do we know whether they’re speaking Arabic or Pashti?”

His follow-up question receives no reply.

This dialogue is stunning for its understatement and is as pertinent in 2009 as it was for Mullaney in 2003. Six years later, he writes: “It is possible for war to change nothing except the participants.”