The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education Read online

  Twenty hours later we stumbled back into Camp Rudder. It was 2 a.m. on September 11, 2000—ninety-nine days after I had begun Ranger School and exactly one year before our guerrilla training gained newfound relevance.

  FOUR DAYS LATER WE graduated. Only 150 remained from the over 300 who had started at Camp Rogers on Day 1. Our wrinkled uniforms hung on us like rags on scarecrows. Bill Parsons stood in the stands with a couple of our West Point classmates. They had gotten permission to break away from their basic course training down the road to attend the graduation. Bill’s letters throughout the course had been among the few reminders that the world continued to turn outside Ranger School. I caught his eye and winked.

  In the graduation speaker’s remarks, he emphasized the responsibility that came with wearing a Ranger tab. “When the nation calls, you must deliver. You will spend the rest of your lives living up to the reputation of being a U.S. Army Ranger. Remember the Creed and strive always to meet that standard.”

  Six Ranger students posted to the front of the formation. One by one they bellowed their assigned verse of the Ranger Creed. Finally, the honor graduate of the course sucked in a gulp of oxygen and belted out the last line, pausing for emphasis after each clause.

  “Readily will I display.”

  “The intestinal fortitude required.”

  “To fight on to the Ranger objective.”

  “And complete the mission.”

  “Though I be the lone survivor.”

  The commander addressed the crowd: “Friends and family who would like to pin their Ranger’s tab should step forward at this time.”

  Out of the mass of proud commanders, sergeants, and veterans, my parents found me in my now oversized camouflage. I was thirty pounds lighter than when they had last seen me. I reached into my pocket and handed a crumpled black and gold Ranger tab to my father; for nearly four months I had carried that tab in my shirt pocket as motivation. I resolved to add a carving of the Ranger tab to the wooden staff I had given my father three years before.

  My hands, nicked and bruised from months in the field, now had the calluses to match his. My father squeezed my hand as if he were trying to break it and wiped away his tears before the other Rangers could see him. He took the tab, unlatched the safety pin with his knobby fingers, and pinned it through my sleeve, careful not to stab my shoulder. Two inches of black and gold thread—a bit of colored ribbon.

  11

  Lost in Translation

  Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

  E. M. FORSTER, A Room with a View

  SUNKEN CHEEKS, A SUNBURN, AND A SHAVED HEAD. Just a week after finishing Ranger School, I arrived in Washington, D.C., to meet my Rhodes classmates. The letter my mother had opened for me while I trudged through Florida’s swamps called it “Sailing Weekend.” When the first American Rhodes scholars had traveled to England a hundred years earlier, they sailed there, hence the name. In late September, thirty-four of us showed up in Washington wearing the same wide-eyed expressions and mismatched suits.

  By the time I met my classmates in Washington, I was sure my selection committee had made a mistake. I should never have read the pamphlet of biographies that the Rhodes secretary had sent in advance. My classmates carried academic distinctions I didn’t even think possible for twenty-two-year-olds. Two weren’t even that old; they had graduated from college at eighteen with mathematics specialties that sounded complicated—combinatorial topology and epidemiological urns—but perhaps also vaguely related to gardening. We included in our ranks an Orthodox Syrian who spoke Aramaic and an African American who spoke Swahili. There were two neuroscientists, several self-proclaimed foreign policy experts, and a half-dozen AIDS researchers. Cecil Rhodes, a colorful nineteenth-century British tycoon who never claimed to be an intellectual himself, had been eager to avoid insular bookworms. Our class certainly fit his bill. Among our number were a figure skater statistician, a licensed pilot and physicist, and an economist film producer. Rhodes had placed a particular premium on those who demonstrated a passion for “fighting the world’s fight.” I must have been selected on that criterion: to provide security for the rest of the group while they opened orphanages, cured diseases, and spun poems for prison inmates.

  I had begun to wonder what my classmates did when they weren’t saving the world or deciphering it. One, said the pamphlet, organized ultimate Frisbee tournaments. A second golfed at Saint Andrews. Another math whiz could compute his own minuscule body fat after he finished triathlons. Others professed more strenuous hobbies such as juggling and sand sculpture. And lest our ballroom dancer be without music, our class could form half an orchestra with cellists, horn players, and vocalists. All we were missing was a guy to hit the little triangle. That would be my contribution.

  The week in Washington was designed to bond our class before we arrived in England and to impress upon us the lofty expectations of our selectors. Former scholars lunched with us at the Senate and lectured us in the Supreme Court. The British ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer, invited us to the embassy for a black tie dinner. Wearing my uniform, I was nearly mistaken for one of the guards by Sir Christopher. Our last event before boarding the bus to Dulles Airport was lunch at the Cosmos Club. I sat at a table with generals who had a dozen stars between them. An announcer read each of our biographies as we stood one at a time to receive the applause of our predecessors. The unspoken message was transmitted loud and clear. There would be no more applause until we had really done something worthwhile. By comparison with their records, we had only just begun to “fight the world’s fight.”

  THE NEXT DAY, AS our bus drove into Oxford on the “wrong” side of the road, it occurred to me that I had traded one old, gray campus for another. When I said as much to my West Point classmate Liz Young, our English escort overheard us and chuckled, less at my comparison than at my conception of “old.”

  The bus deposited me on Turl Street, a cobblestone lane barely fifteen feet wide. The Turl dated to the original tenth-century Anglo-Saxon settlement. Old, indeed. A gateway arching above my head supported an enormous wooden door. A smaller door set into the same oak was ajar beside a bicycle laden with books in its front basket. I stepped through and caught my first glimpse of Lincoln College: a square of perfect emerald nestled in the center of four ivy-clad walls turned a bright red by their autumn leaves. I ran my hand along the stone, warm in the sunlight and smooth from age.

  With the exception of a break in studies for the English Civil War, Oxford University had been graduating scholars for more than seven hundred years. Currently, Oxford’s eighteen thousand students, a mix of British undergraduates and international graduate students, were split among forty plus colleges. The colleges served as the hubs of academic tutorials and social life under the degree-granting umbrella of Oxford University. Colleges varied in age, size, and traditions. At older colleges like Merton, one could imagine Latin and Greek reverberating across cobblestone quads. Some newer colleges eschewed tradition altogether and attracted students who placed a higher premium on functional plumbing than crenellated battlements. There were tiny colleges smaller than my elementary school and behemoths whose wine cellars supposedly rivaled the Queen’s. Unlike most British menus, there was a college for every taste and persuasion. My choice, encouraged by Major Nagl, was Lincoln College.

  When Lincoln was founded in 1427 (more than sixty years before Columbus sailed across the Atlantic), seven colleges had already taken the largest chunks of prime real estate in Oxford. Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincolnshire, had intended for Lincoln College to teach young priests how to combat heresies against the Catholic Church. And although Lincoln retained the clerical title of Rector for its senior administrator, Fleming hadn’t had much success against the heretical. The postcard-perfect “church” at Lincoln’s southern boundary, for instance, had been converted by the college into a sanctuary for books rather than souls. At least its fate was better than another outmoded church in Oxford.
One witty entrepreneur had turned the latter into a nightclub called Freud’s.

  For a small college of fewer than three hundred undergraduates and two hundred graduate students, Lincoln could boast a proud roster of “heretical” alumni. The most senior, John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, had held his first religious services at Lincoln while he was a Fellow there in the eighteenth century. Another Fellow, Lord Howard Florey, had earned the gratitude of sailors worldwide after his Nobel-worthy discovery of penicillin. Last but not least were the two authors who had found their inspiration at Lincoln: John le Carré, the spy novelist, and Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. His description of green eggs and ham perhaps owed more to Lincoln’s breakfasts than Geisel’s imagination.

  Another American scholar named Katie Larson stood with me inside Lincoln’s gates. Like Dr. Seuss, Katie intended to study literature at Oxford. Not only was she fluent in French, but she was also a professionally trained opera singer. The musical training infected her Minnesota accent with an additional lilting cadence that was immediately endearing. With dark hair and eyes that matched my sister Bridget’s, Katie was similarly inclined to wide smiles and easy laughter. We became fast friends.

  At the moment, however, as we stood bags in hand on Lincoln College’s threshold, our eyes followed the windows’ stone tracery and the rush of spectacled undergrads darting by. The cockney welcome of Sue, the college porter, broke our trance. She greeted us from a perch inside the gate positioned to waylay curious tourists and drunken students.

  “Can I ’elp you, luv?”

  “We’re the two new American grad students,” said Katie.

  “That much is obvious.”

  “We’re trying to find our rooms,” I added.

  “Just a minute, luv, while I fetch your keys.”

  As she searched, I whispered to Katie, “I thought the British were supposed to be reserved. Why does she keep calling us ‘love’?”

  Katie shrugged.

  After Sue gave us our keys, we headed across Oxford’s main thorough-fare, High Street, and down another narrow path to Bear Lane, our suitcases clickety-clacking down the cobblestone streets. The portcullis that opened to our quad was only twenty steps away from the “fine traditional ales and wines” offered at the Bear Pub. I suspected the proximity might prove to be a distraction. It would.

  At Oxford my room was considered luxury digs. In the United States my room would have been classified as a closet. I shared the apartment with a Norwegian named Marius. He was diligent and blond. He ate whole-grain crackers and Jarlsberg cheese. Given his intense work habits, that was nearly all I learned about him in the nine months we shared our closet condominium. After briefly exploring the kitchen, I stopped to use the bathroom. It took me several minutes to figure out how to operate the toilet. There was no flushing lever. Luckily, my Nordic roommate came to my rescue.

  “Pull the chain.”

  “Right.”

  He disappeared, and I yanked the chain hanging from the ceiling. Eureka. I went to wash my hands in a sink with two faucets. The choice was binary: cold or hot. I turned both faucets on and waved my hands like an epileptic magician, first scalding them and then freezing them. I had even worse luck with the “shower,” which consisted of a bathtub, a shower wand, and no curtain. I filled up the bathtub and took my first bath since grade school, with barely enough water pressure to wand the shampoo from my head. Had the Industrial Revolution skipped Oxford? I dried off and reminded myself that the “challenges” of Oxford had nothing on the amenities of Ranger School.

  TWO KNOCKS WOKE ME the next morning as I burrowed for warmth beneath paper-thin sheets. An elderly woman walked in.

  “Excuse me,” I said as politely as I could for 7 a.m.

  “Just ’ere to hoover yer room and empty the dustbin, luv. I’ll be by-the-by ev’ry morning except weekends.”

  The dull roar of a vacuum cleaner solved the first riddle. So this was hoovering. The dustbin, apparently, was my trash. And the woman who’d nearly seen me naked was my “scout,” a vestige from the “old” Oxford when aristocratic students had servants to make them tea and prepare their wardrobes. As late as 1962, Oxford’s official handbook noted, “The scout will make the bed, wash up, and if there is the sort of fire that needs laying, lay it.” They didn’t make fires anymore (fortunately, since I didn’t have a fireplace), but they still tidied up after students.

  In the kitchen my cupboards were empty. Given that I had no schedule and no food, I resolved to hunt and gather. I ordered a breakfast “bap” at a sandwich shop and chewed through soft bacon I had anticipated being crunchy. The next agenda item was finding a gown. Yes, a gown. Academic gowns were required for evening meals at the college and length mattered. Worn over jeans and a sweater, my gown reached my knees, not nearly as long or as sophisticated as those for professors. Oxford called its professors “dons,” lending the weathered scholars an aura of Latin authority. In full regalia they wore mink-lined hoods and hats one would expect to find on Elizabethan apothecaries. I hadn’t expected to wear a uniform at Oxford, but as I diligently made my way through Oxford’s eleven-hundred-page Examination Regulations, I read that on special occasions, such as an exam or graduation, I would need to wear subfusc: a white-tie tuxedo worn with a black gown and a carnation boutonniere. Failure to comply could get me booted by the Invigilator, a title appropriate for an academic superhero. It occurred to me that I might be the only person to have ever read Oxford’s regulations.

  Buying a mobile phone and opening a bank account later that day were exercises in bureaucratic jujitsu. The one required the other. I couldn’t open a bank account without seventeen pieces of evidence to support my residence claim, including a verifiable phone number. And no matter how much I asserted my financial solvency, I couldn’t get any of the four mobile phone companies to recognize my American credit card. One of my friends laid the blame on a fictitious “Ministry of Revenue Prevention,” the same ministry she claimed caused the pubs to close at 11 p.m. and made “never complain” an exhortation for customers rather than store clerks.

  Walking around Oxford made me something of an anomaly. Bikes flew by with unnerving speed and a complete disregard for pedestrians. I hesitated to buy a bike until I had had more time to explore. After four years of rushing through life, I wanted nothing more than a quiet walk. I ambled back to Lincoln and got the same tingle as the day before when I stepped over the threshold, and into another encounter with Sue the porter.

  “There’s a note for you in the pidge.”

  “The what?”

  “The pidge. You know, the pigeon post.”

  I blinked.

  “Anything you want mailed around Oxford, just give to me, and it’ll get to another college just like a pigeon had dropped it off. Your pigeonhole is that cubbyhole over there with the rest.”

  “Cheers, Sue.”

  I was trying to use the lingo in my phrase book. Reading it was the only way I survived my first week in Oxford. Britishisms confounded even the simplest tasks. Directions were perilous before I learned that the British first floor was an American second floor, that pedestrians walked across “zebra” crossings, and that Magdalen College was pronounced “Mawd-lin.” I also found a pocket-size book that the War Department had issued to every American service member heading to England in 1942. Its first observation: “British reserved, not unfriendly.” Other illuminations of the obvious included these: “The British don’t know how to make a good cup of coffee,” and “At first, you will probably not like the almost continual rains and mists.” The weather forecast was, to use the British phrase, “spot on.” When making small talk about the weather (a British obsession), there were actually two schools of thought. Optimists chose to highlight “sunny spells.” Realists, more accurately, forecast “dull and damp.” In either case, both schools agreed that one should not leave the “flat” (apartment) without a wooly “jumper” (sweater) and a “brolly” (umbrella). I vowed t
o try my optimist attack on the next awkward encounter.

  In my pigeonhole was a copy of the Middle Common Room access key. The MCR was the college’s graduate lounge. The key came with a note from the graduate treasurer, Meena Seshamani. I had never seen a name like that before. I guessed from the script that it was a woman but wasn’t sure. I wandered past the Front Quad and through a tunnel cut in the wall to Grove Quad, cool in the shade of a three-hundred-year-old London plane tree. A sign staked in the lawn read CROQUET ONLY.

  Ducking through a door to my left, I climbed a spiral staircase of worn stone. My shoulders barely fit in the narrow passageway. A few steps up, I bumped into another student.

  “I’m looking for the MCR,” I said.

  “New here?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I got a note and a key to the MCR from . . .” I paused. “Meena ‘Shay-sha-manny.’”