The Unforgiving Minute Craig Mullaney

Craig Mullaney definitely made many challenges for himself and accepted challenges from others with no questions asked. Being the thriving Valedictorian of his high school class and earning other prestigious accolades he stood out from the other entire student. But at West Point, Mullaney would be intertwined with hundreds of other classmates with the same, if not more achievements, making it seemingly impossible to be any kind of a predominant student. Mullaney learned from West Point not only strategies for battle, but also the reasons for someone to go into battle in the first place.

Craig came from a strong Catholic upbringing being in a catholic school system where he went to confession routinely, “confessing all of the shortcomings that he faced during the week whatever it was, from losing a wrestling match to missing homework”, that had been taunting his conscience and where he was taught to “sanctify others, seeing even our enemies in the image of god” Now he is being asked to do things that conflict those beliefs immensely, such as running a dummy attacker through with a bayonet, and he starts to question his situation, “ I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a warrior, a professional trained to kill”.

So in search of an answer to his question he goes to the Catholic chaplain for better insight. The priest talked to him about believing in a just war, and that “war, although always horrible, is sometimes necessary to stop a greater evil”. This lesson that Mullaney received from the priest, would better break him in for his future experiences at West Point. But being at West Point strengthened his academics by its uniquely high physical and mental demand. Its demand to be active in a sport in which Craig chose Wrestling gave a harder challenge because of its incredibly strenuous practices and tough competition.

Craig was an all state wrestler in high school but in West Point he was inferior to most and had to fight hard to win any matches. The strict rules of West Point were bountiful and diverse from the public display of affection, to making your bed good enough to bounce a quarter off of it, all to make a disciplined and reliable cadet. As far as being a student goes, Mullaney was always learning especially when he went to West Point but also when he went to Ranger School.

There he learned the fundamentals of leading a team trough the harshest of missions, whether it is cold, wet, the group is totally sleep deprived and exhausted he learned how to motivate and be the one who knows all the questions. Though sometimes he didn’t know the question such as when he got lost leading his platoon and had to perform the grueling exhausting task all over again which supported a lesson Ranger school taught him, “real roads never look as they did on a map”. What Ranger School taught Mullaney about being a soldier is, really, everything.

From the discipline needed to burn the midnight oil for days straight while still being mentally sharp, to learning how to read maps. His leading skills were really put to the test though, when he had to guide his platoon through miles and miles of rugged terrain, while being responsible for their lives and having to keep track of them when they wonder off because of lack of sleep, and follow a lightning bug. While attending Oxford Mullaney broadened his academic horizons when he was at Lincoln college.

He signed up for lectures of all sorts to see what the school had to offer. He said he learned more about drinking than anything and that it was a great transition from West Point, from everything being laid out and strict, to less demanding and stress. Well my experiences in high school didn’t have much of an impact on my leadership skills except in football. Being an upperclassman I was looked up to, and I took on that responsibility to make them into better football players.

I took a few AP classes in high school to better prepare me for college and I know It helped me a lot with the transition by getting me familiar with reading a lot more and relying on myself to get things done that are laid out on the syllabus.

References

1. The Unforgiving minute, A Soldier’s Education. Craig M. Mullaney (Penguin Books 2009). 30
2. The Unforgiving Minute. 30
3. The Unforgiving Minute. 30
4. The Unforgiving Minute. 106