"From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea — written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo — There is no substitute for victory!"
― General Douglas MacArthur
We marched back from Lake Frederick after a relatively relaxed week in tents. Our class motto, “With Honor We Strive,” led the way, emblazoned in gold letters across a black background. To my amazement, the entire West Point community came out to give our class a legitimate hero’s welcome. I didn’t know what to think. After six weeks of Beast Barracks, the mass cheering of all those folks lining the streets evoked within me some rather serious cognitive dissonance. Similarly, my classmates and I were eager for the end of Beast Barracks but also nervous for what lay ahead.
 |
| My folks came up Labor Day Weekend, and in a fit of defiance, I wore my dad's old Lambda Chi Alpha t-shirt all day in his hotel room while we all shined our shoes. Several of my friends came to hang out, including Mark, Matt, and Rose. |
We hit the Plain and saw the waiting mass of the Corps of Cadets.
Hazing began immediately.
“Yim! I’m gonna find you, Yim! I’m gonna find you!!!” This was yelled at one of my squadmates as our formation marched past. It was so unexpectedly specific that our whole squad recoiled. We laughed later, but in the moment, it was terrifyingly weird to hear our buddy singled out from the marching mass of our classmates in formation.
Beast Barracks became Reorganization Week, perhaps the hardest week of West Point, for me personally at least. Colloquially called “Reorgy Week,” the week itself marked the transition from summer training to the Academic Year, making it a time of pure, unadulterated chaos. The yearlings came back first from their summer training at Camp Buckner, along with the cows and firsties25 who’d made up their summer training cadre. Beast’s new cadets marched back next, having not yet formally earned the title “cadet”. The balance of the Corps, upperclass cadets doing various military, physical, or academic training and enrichment programs then straggled in over the course of the week, each with his or her own unique priorities heading into the academic year. Among myriad other things, all those cadets needed to get moved into their new barracks rooms, go through book issue, settle into academic year military assignments, and get set up for the start of classes.
This was relatively straightforward for us new cadets. We didn’t own very much. For the upperclasses, though, moving years’ worth of accumulated belongings up from the basement storage rooms was a major pain in the ass. The upperclasses were therefore cranky at exactly the same time that an entire class of know-nothing new cadets found itself suddenly under foot. Worse, there was no way for us to simply stay out of the way. Practically everyone had to be outside and working to get moved in and ready, including my classmates and me, who’d also just picked up a bunch of new duties and responsibilities—delivering newspapers, laundry, and mail, calling minutes26 before formations, and performing other routine but necessary tasks. These things not only kept us busy, they also kept us continually out in the public eye.
Upperclass cadre had seemed to be everywhere during Beast, but with the entire Corps back at West Point, now they really were. Suddenly everybody and their brother wanted to hear The Days27 or The Corps28 on a continuous loop, and with the chaos of Reorgy Week, my classmates and I made easy targets. We were busy, but we were also entertainment for the upperclasses, who’d send us on pointless errands just to keep us running around in circles for their amusement. I got so busy doing plebe stuff that I didn’t have time to shower for five full days, until at last my new team leader—a yearling in charge of exactly one plebe, me—finally stopped me at formation that Friday.
“Head!” he yelled. “Go shower right now! That’s an order!”
Following that order took me two hours. I just kept running into so many damned upperclassmen! Luckily, the next day was Saturday. Though the day itself started with our Acceptance Day parade—after which we became “cadets” in our own right—we had the following weekend mostly to ourselves. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself, but I resolved to figure it out and to get some sleep.
* * *
 |
| A rare picture of me shining my shoes plebe year. |
My first history class was World History 101 (Advanced), taught in a small auditorium at one end of Thayer Hall, West Point’s former indoor equestrian facility turned main academic building. Most of my classes were taught by Army captains or majors in high school-sized classrooms with student desks the like of which I’d seen in every school I’d ever attended. World History, though, had long wooden tables with actual chairs, rows of which went up bleacher-style maybe four or five levels above a lectern. The room could have seated two hundred, but there were just twenty plebes in that class, all looking nervously at our new surroundings, mostly from the upper rows.
A green-shirted Army officer walked into the room shortly, and in a blink, my classmates and I leapt to attention. At the end of the first row, one of classmates saluted and called the section to order. “Sir! The section is formed. All cadets present.”
The officer returned the salute. “Take your seats.”
I looked at the instructor and was shocked to see a full Army colonel. This was a man who could have commanded an infantry brigade or the entire garrison of soldiers at West Point itself. Instead, he was about to teach us World History. He was tall and thin with a full head of actual hair, which was black, though it ran to silver at his temples. His brass insignia showed crossed sabers with a tank in front. This made him an Armor officer.
He looked at the lot of us and smiled with legitimate good humor. “Well,” he said, gesturing to the lot of us who’d sat at the back of the room, “come down to the front. We’re not Methodists here.”
I laughed, having grown up sitting in the backs of Methodist churches all over the country. I got up and moved to the front of the class, followed by the rest of the would-be stragglers.
“My name is Colonel Wheeler, and I’ll be your instructor. On the board you can see my email address and my home telephone number. Feel free to call me at home if you need help,” he said, repeating the offer that every professor at West Point always made at the start of every class. “But,” he added slyly, “try to keep it to a reasonable hour, if you please.”
Again, we laughed.
“Now,” Colonel Wheeler said, “get out your notebooks. You’re going to need to write some of this down.” He then launched into by far the most fascinating discussion of comparative Christian religious philosophies I’d ever heard, ending with comparisons between feudal governmental forms and the basic design of the Catholic Church. I sat enthralled, taking notes as fast as I could. When I looked around, I saw my classmates doing the same.
Class was over before I knew it. I blinked and was a little startled to realize that I was looking forward to my next history class. In fact, I couldn’t wait!
25. West Point doesn’t have freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. It has plebes (short for plebeians), yearlings (sometimes called “yuks”), cows, and firsties (first class cadets).
26. Plebes were responsible for calling “minutes” before formations, in effect counting down the time remaining until muster, so that no one would be late. This meant standing out in the hallway where upperclassmen could haze with impunity. Being asked for “plebe knowledge” was common between minutes, especially early in the year, but upperclass cadets might just as easily want to know more useful information, such as the menu for the day’s meals or the box scores or headlines from the New York Times. Plebes were required to memorize all of this every day.
27. A recitation of the number of days until various academic year events. For example, “Sir, there are sixty-seven and a butt days until Army BEATS THE HELL OUT OF NAVY at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in football!”
28. An iconic bit of plebe knowledge that links the Corps’ past with its present and future. West Pointers “grip hands” when we get news of our fallen because of this song. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corps_(song).
No comments:
Post a Comment