Book Review - Serving and writing with loyalty, honor and honesty

The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education. By Craig M. Mullaney. Penguin Press. 386 pages. $28.95.

At the beginning of his insightful memoir's second section, Craig Mullaney includes this apt quotation from Sir William Francis Butler: "The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards."

Mullaney, West Point graduate, Rhodes scholar and a former Army captain who is a veteran of combat in Afghanistan, is neither a fool nor a coward. This book should be read, certainly, by everyone who has a loved one who is serving in the military, has served or might one day serve. But it also should be required reading for all Americans.

It's only by the grace of e-mail and parental loyalty that I had the pleasure of reading The Unforgiving Minute. I rarely buy a book. As the editor of this book-review page since 1985, I've received a steady flow of review copies of new books. If I don't get it free, I can usually do without.

And I don't read nonfiction books for pleasure. Having dealt with reality all too much over decades in the newspaper business, I choose fiction when I want to settle down with a good book and enjoy myself. The few times I've tried to read a nonfiction book, I failed to finish.

Craig Mullaney's book is different. I bought a copy because of a request from a fellow member of an e-mail list for parents of Naval Academy midshipmen. Mullaney's book has made it to No. 10 on The New York Times best-seller nonfiction list this week in part because of such grass-roots efforts and word of mouth (The Daily Show appearance didn't hurt, either). In this case, the parent of a Naval Academy graduate urged others to support this book written by a young man who had taught at the academy a few years ago. I placed my order, figuring that I wouldn't read it, but I could give it to my midshipman.

When the book arrived, I flipped through it casually. Then I started to read. Now I have bought this book not once, but twice. The second one went to my midshipman; by the time this review is in print, I hope that he will have met Mullaney at a book-signing in Annapolis. My son can't have my copy; I've read the whole thing, every word, and I might just read it again.

Starting with the shock of an 18-year-old being screamed at on "R-Day" at the U.S. Military Academy, Mullaney thoughtfully recounts his education as a soldier and as a man. His is a remarkable journey, recounted with unflinching honesty, thoughtful reflection, occasional humor and hard-won wisdom.

Moving from his years at West Point through Army Ranger training, his idyllic two years studying at Oxford and traveling the world as a tourist, and then more Army training, Mullaney shares with readers his development as a warrior and a scholar, and also as a son, brother and future husband. With only the deftest touches of foreshadowing, he shows rather than tells us how every step of the way prepared him for that "unforgiving minute" when his unit was trapped in a fierce firefight with al-Qaida on a remote ridge in Afghanistan. In a very real sense, every step of that journey also prepared him to write an unusual book that combines grittily realistic accounts of war with highly educated reflection and introspection. "It is possible for war to change nothing except its participants," he writes in one wise passage. "We had no scoreboard to measure our success on the battlefield. We were never really sure whether we were winning. But we had been transformed."

The title takes on a dual meaning as the book progresses: A crucial moment in combat is unforgiving in its urgency; and an officer who leads men into chaotic danger can be terribly unforgiving when it comes to judging himself.

Mullaney writes also about his return from Afghanistan and how difficult it was to deal with the realization that most of his fellow citizens had no clue about what the troops were facing in Afghanistan. He is frank about the problems he had readjusting and reshaping relationships with his family and his fiancee. It was the assignment to teach history at the Naval Academy that helped him finally to work through his own "unforgiving minute"; he felt that he owed that much to his students, future Navy or Marine officers themselves.

I'm glad that I read this book and happy that word about it is spreading. If enough people read it, then perhaps we as a country would not have such a profound lack of understanding of the volunteer troops we send to fight our wars, and of the sacrifices that they and their families make.

(One quibble: It's a shame that such a fine book is marred by editing lapses. I hope that they will be corrected in the many printings that are yet to come.)