My Share of the Task(5)
For new cadets it felt more like being rats in a maze. Directed through the process by an upperclassman known as the Man in the Red Sash, who tracked our progress on cards safety-pinned to our shorts, we felt like fools. Outfitted in T-shirts, knee-high black socks, and black dress shoes, we looked like fools as well. But it was efficient. Before arriving, I expected the hazing and knew to address the older cadets in formulaic “Yes, sirs” and “No, sirs.” But I had always regarded West Point as an inconvenient but necessary hurdle I had to jump to be a soldier. By the middle of my first day, the obstacle appeared gigantic, four years like an eternity.
Of the nearly fourteen hundred who stood on the point of land overlooking the Hudson River that evening, more than a third would not graduate; 180 would leave before the summer was over. Some admitted cadets had quit that first day. But more than thirty of those newly shorn plebes, including Ray Odierno, Dave Rodriguez, Bill Caldwell, David Barno, Frank Kearney, Frank Helmick, Mike Barbero, and Guy Swan, would serve as general officers in turbulent times for our army and nation.
Earlier that day we had eaten our first meal in cavernous Washington Hall, the cadet dining facility, as we had every other meal before. That evening, we ate our second meal as we would eat every meal thereafter: by their rules. Seated “family style” at a table for ten, two upperclassmen ruled eight new cadets, controlling what and how we ate. Correctly reciting “plebe knowledge” we were all required to memorize might yield a rushed bite, or more, depending on how hard-ass our elders decided to be. Knowing Schofield’s definition of discipline—which ironically counsels that the “discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment”—might allow a cadet a quick forkful of potatoes before a minder ordered the utensil placed back on the table. Routinely, we left plates of untouched food at the ends of meals. Food became a fixation.
After dinner on the first night, we retired to our rooms, where our M14 rifles and other equipment had been placed on bunks before we arrived. I don’t remember exactly what I thought as our first day ended. Much of what I had seen that day seemed silly. But the ubiquitous tablets containing names of graduates who had fallen in battle did not. Many of the soldiers I admired for their battlefield leadership had begun where I was now, had navigated the same peculiar process, and had emerged with qualities I sought to emulate. Had this seemingly absurd process molded them? After a long, often disorienting day, it was too much to ponder. When we finally fell into our bunks to sleep, I think I took comfort in the fact that no matter how long I stayed in the Army, I’d never have to have another “first day” as a soldier.
* * *
After Beast Barracks, we settled into life as plebes. Like the peas on our plate during Beast, the minutes of the day throughout the academic year were not ours to consume freely. We necessarily became efficient. Reveille was at 0615 hours, and we arrived at formation ten minutes later in complete cadet uniform, clean and shaved. There were no wasted movements in those early minutes, especially in winter. Before entering the mess hall for breakfast, all four thousand cadets stood in formation outside the barracks, and the chain of command inspected our uniforms. The fife-and-drum corps accompanied every movement to, in, and from formation. The rest of the day was spent at class, with forty minutes for lunch. On autumn and spring afternoons, we either paraded for visitors or played sports, before rushing back to barracks to clean up, don our dress gray uniforms, and report to formation. Then the band fifed and drummed us back into the mess hall for dinner. After dinner was time for study before taps ended the day at 2300, when all rooms went dark. Some studious cadets covered their windows with blankets to hide the light or requested official permission to continue studying—known as “late lights.” I never much did that.
I had a slow start academically, and for the first two years poor grades were a lurking threat to my cadet career. “The subjects which were dearest to the examiners,” Winston Churchill once wrote, “were almost invariably those I fancied least.” The same was true for me during plebe and yearling years, when the curriculum was loaded with math and science requirements. The system of daily recitation and grading begun under the early-nineteenth-century superintendence of Sylvanus Thayer, known as the Father of the Academy, was bad news for a poorly prepared student like me. In math class each day, including Saturday, we stood at the blackboard in front of a new problem that tested the previous night’s lesson, and “briefed the solution” to the class and instructor. I got crushed in math and over the first two years fared poorly in chalkboard battles with chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, and engineering. When I could, I retreated from my math and science textbooks to histories and biographies. Compared with Grant’s account of Shiloh in his memoirs, attempting to prove mathematical theorems in calculus was unbearable.