A Soldier’s Education: Interview with Craig Mullaney

[ProgressiveBookClub]

Q: When did you start to write The Unforgiving Minute?

A: When I returned from Afghanistan I was assigned to the Old Guard, a unit right outside Arlington National Cemetery. It kept triggering a lot of memories—some of them painful—from Afghanistan and of the folks we had left behind. I wanted to write those things down as a way of taking command of the painful experience, rather than letting it intrude on me when I didn’t want it to.

Q: Has it helped you deal with the things you saw?

A: It helped me come to a degree of closure, and helped me to communicate with the other guys from my platoon. In many ways our memories and recollections conflicted. I was the one person who could sit down with all the maps and radio logs and lay out a chronology. And it gave me a vehicle for opening up correspondence with Evan O’Neill’s parents. He was a private in our platoon who was killed in that firefight just three days after arriving. I had a hard time mustering the courage to speak with his parents, until I finally had a manuscript I could share with them. I went up to visit them in Andover and had no idea how they were going to react. They told me a couple of things. First, they said, It’s not your fault. I can understand that intellectually and rationally, but emotionally it was something that took a lot longer. I sort of needed their forgiveness. Second, they said, Thank you for writing this book. No one is dead until they’re forgotten, and by capturing this Evan’s memory will persist.

Q: You quote Napoleon bragging that he could get men to risk their lives for a bit of colored ribbon. You said you could understand that. Why is that as true today as it was when Napoleon was leading his armies?

A: People seek the esteem of their peers. Whether it’s a medal or a Ranger tab or Airborne wings, they’re signifiers of some accomplishment, an achievement validated by the community. I guess that’s a timeless motive. There’s a fraternity of those who finish Ranger school, or have jumped out of a plane, or have gone to combat. The combat infantryman badge, I think, has that same appeal. When I see it on the lapel pin of someone walking around Washington, D.C., there is instantly a connection.

Q: That’s the endpoint of training, but there’s also the drudgery. I was surprised by how often you talked about feet and socks.

A: When your vehicle is your two boots, you try to take care of them. If you rode in a tank, you’d be doing maintenance on that tank, checking the treads every day. You can get some really nasty foot diseases. When you’re walking seven or ten miles a day with all that weight, blisters on your feet make it that much worse. It’s hard to concentrate on the perimeter and on your mission when all you’re thinking about is that wincing pain under your sock. As a leader you try to inspect your men’s feet because they’re almost as important as their weapons.

To read more, visit The Progressive Book Club: http://www.progressivebookclub.com/bl...