by Pat Conroy
Mike Devito, my roommate, suggested we do something. Bob Patterson and Bob George had come to our room for one of those interminable bull sessions which in retrospect often seem like the most valuable experiences of college life. We discussed every facet of the Owl case, determined that justice was miscarried, and pledged to bring the festering boil to a head. We discussed my harrowing escape of the year before and agreed whatever was done would be done in absolute secrecy, that we four and no one else would know the plans. Before the night had ended, we resolved to write an underground letter.
Bob Patterson dated the Chaplain’s secretary, so we had access to a mimeograph machine and an unlimited supply of paper. I wrote a terse, unemotional letter which was intended to arouse the ire of the Corps. I did not intend to turn fourth battalion into a vigilante committee—which almost happened. I entitled the letter: The Owl Call. In the purge which took place after distribution, no one managed to save a single copy of the letter. Here is the gist of the letter.
OWL CALL
On May 6, 1967, Cadet Owl, a Company Commander, stabbed Cadet Williams, a Private in Company “K.” If this offense had been committed in the civilian world, Mr. Owl would be charged with “assault with a deadly weapon with intent to maim.” He could serve up to ten years in a state penitentiary. But he was fortunate enough to have stabbed a private and justice is meted out with greater severity to privates, than to officers. Ask yourself this question: if Private Williams had stabbed Captain Owl with a sword, how many hours would he have lasted on The Citadel campus. Private Engard pushed Sergeant Smith and received 120 tours for his efforts. Private Bowditch ripped the pants off Colonel Probsdorfer and received 60 tours for his troubles. Private Them put mustard on Major Bayne’s chair and received 60 tours for this indiscretion. Is mustard on pants a more serious offense at The Citadel than blood on pants? The sword is the cadet officer’s symbol of leadership, the finite object which sets him above the average cadet. When this symbol is abused so flagrantly and with such vicious results the officer at fault should be required to pay the consequences. The cadet private should be equal to the cadet officer when punished by the Commandant’s Department.”
A CADET OFFICER
Signing the letter “a cadet officer” was Bob Patterson’s idea, to throw the scent off me. On the following Thursday, Mike, Bob Patterson and I left the barracks ten minutes before evening formation. Each of us carried massive stacks of letters. We walked nonchalantly, hoping not to attract any attention. We hit the mess hall on the run and spread our propaganda tract as quickly as possible. Within five minutes every table in the mess hall was amply supplied with the first underground letter of the decade. In another minute we stood retreat with our company. We chuckled and grinned to ourselves, as the other companies moved out to mess.
All hell had broken loose in the mess hall when we got there. Some member of battalion staff had read the letter, analyzed the situation and sent out envoys to collect and destroy every copy. But the surge of cadets aborted the effort. Fourth Battalion Staff scrambled like berserk retrievers over the entire north mess hall. But no matter how many letters they collected, almost every table managed to save a bootleg copy for perusal and study. The Cadet Adjutant blessed the food and it was during the meal that the gist of the letter spread like an enveloping flame over a dry forest. At the beginning of the meal, a kind of reflective hush presided, a time for reading and reflection, but the mood became restless and a little dangerous as the meal continued. Fourth Battalion broke out into an explosive chant, “Hoot, Hoot, Hoot.” Several tables lifted their knives into the air and let them remain as a symbolic gesture for Cadet Owl to ponder. The Battalion Commander walked among the tables and quelled what appeared to be a certain mutiny of his charges. Owl himself sat throughout the whole meal, head bent over the letter—a study of man in a tight, strangling predicament for which there was no escape. This moment, when I saw Owl bent over the white sheet of paper which offered his name as a sacrifice to propitiate my own sense of the way things should be, convinced me that what I had done was extraordinarily cruel, that I had placed a tremendous burden on the shoulders of one whose existence was traumatic enough. As the cries of “Hoot, Hoot” became more pronounced, the more my sense of revulsion toward my own act deepened. No matter what my feelings were, the letter circulated to more and more hands, and I stood helpless, watching the drama I created inflame the emotions of more and more people.
No mutinies occurred, nor did any massive demonstrations rock the tranquility of the campus. The letter generated much debate and perhaps acted as a catalyst to the administration who appointed a board to review the case and offer a solution to General Harris. The Board also proved to be a white wash job: Owl was reduced to the rank of private, but no other punishment resulted from the trial. In my mind, I still contended the private would not have lasted a single day at The Citadel had he driven a sword into Owl’s leg. But the sense of moral justification hardly mattered any longer. Word came through the grapevine that The Boo was breathing down a hot trail and was very close to apprehending the villains.
The group responsible for the letter met in a shadowy conclave to decide what course of action we should take. If The Boo knew anything it did not seem in character that he hadn’t confronted us yet. The Corps was notorious for rumors anyhow. Cadets would believe anything as long as a credible story line went along with it. So Bob Patterson suggested we start a series of rumors to obstruct any progress The Boo might make in our directions. We concocted wild, impossible stories:
The Regimental Commander wrote the letter to protest an injustice which troubled him greatly; Owl himself, nursing a guilty conscience, wrote the letter to expiate his sins; Owl’s roommate wrote the letter for the simple reason he hated Owl’s guts and wanted to see him hung on a towering scaffold; General Harris wrote the letter to stimulate debate in the Corps. As ludicrous as most of these rumors seem, all of them got back to us in one form or another and all of them, so we thought, diverted the bloodhound determination of Boo from homing in on us. When enough rumors had filtered through the barracks and when total confusion seemed to prevail as to the authorship of the letter, and when no solid clues turned up to stare into our eyes, we felt satisfied The Boo or no other power on earth could deduce our guilt or implicate us in any way, shape, or form. Then I got a call from The Boo. “Come see me, Bubba.” “O.K., Colonel. What about, if I may ask?” “Just come see me.” The receiver clicked at the other end. Why he wanted to see me I had no idea, but neither was I prepared for his opening remark when I entered his office, fired a presentable salute, and flashed what I hoped was a calm and winning smile. He looked at me appraisingly and then stunned me by saying, “Hoot, Hoot.” “Pardon me, Colonel,” I answered, visibly shaken. “Hoot, Hoot you bum.” “Colonel, what are you talking about?” “The letter. I’ve been tracking down clues all over this campus, Conroy. None of them have led anywhere. This leads me to believe that you wrote and delivered the letter.” “But you have no proof, Colonel. You can’t go around accusing people of things without proof.”
“Let me tell you something,” he said putting on the sinister face he reserved for particularly somber occasions. “I’ve had this job long enough where I can smell a rat in an outhouse. The first time I saw this thing, I knew you wrote it. How long it’s gonna take me to gather enough evidence to crucify you, I don’t know. But I know this, I’m going to get you this time. If they had let me nail you for that poem last year, this never would have happened. Somewhere in the Corps a leak is going to spring and when it does, your jockstrap is going to swing on a nail above my door.” “But Colonel, you are accusing an innocent man.” “Your soul is black, Bubba.” “Colonel, it hurts me to think you have so little faith in my integrity.” I was engaged in a give and take battle of words I could little afford to lose. “No one on this campus is stupid enough to write anything like that, Bubba. No body cares that much either. It’s going to be funny to watch you packing your
bags two weeks before graduation, your friends gathered around you, and a taxi waiting outside the barracks to take you to Clemson.” “You’ve got a great sense of humor, Colonel.” “No Bubba, I ain’t laughing now. But when I catch you, and believe me I am going to catch you, if I have to walk to hell and back to do it, I’m never going to stop laughing.” “Is that all, Colonel?” “That’s all, Bum. Except for one thing.” “What’s that, Colonel?” “Hoot, Hoot.” “Good afternoon, Sir.”
When I told Bob and Mike what had transpired in the office, panic was rift in the room. My experience with The Boo the previous year had left me gun-shy and basically unwilling to challenge the fates again. Bob and Mike had no wish to be expelled a couple of weeks away from graduation. So the knowledge that The Boo was sniffing downwind where we stood naked and exposed frightened all of us. We could only wait, however, for the guillotine to find our necks. The letter, its implications and innuendoes, remained in the forefront of campus conversation, and had it not been for a spectacular event, an event which dwarfed the importance of the letter and ultimately caused it to fade from memory, I am certain The Boo would have brought us to justice. But a week after the letter appeared, three freshmen cadets ventured out of the Charleston harbor on a fishing trip, ran out of gas and drifted out to sea on a three day odyssey which pre-empted every other campus thought or consideration. For three days Coast Guard airplanes scanned the waters of the Atlantic in search of the lost boys. Radio bulletins kept Charleston and the rest of South Carolina posted every hour about the failure to turn up any evidence that the cadets were either alive or dead. The campus buzzed with speculation. Civilians joined the search and literally hundreds of ships and boats put to sea to aid in the frantic effort to find the three boys. On the third day, Mrs. Billie Burn, Postmistress and school bus-driver on Daufuskie Island, came upon three boys walking slowly down on the dirt road that cut through the thick tangles and dense forest of the island. “You’re the boys from The Citadel, aren’t you?” she asked. They nodded and the search was ended.
In the uproar caused by the missing cadets, in the frantic effort to find them in thousands of miles of ocean, in the attempt to coordinate the rescue efforts and to satisfy a curious public, The Citadel had no time to think of anything else. The letter was forgotten. We were home free.
On Graduation Day I sought out The Boo and shook his hand. I thanked him for his help and hoped he would call if he ever needed me. “We graduate some bums from this school. But you’re at the top of the list, Conroy.” He was smiling. It gave me measureless satisfaction to look at his great brown cigar and familiar smile, then whisper quietly, “Hoot, Hoot.”
THE BANISHMENT
It took a long time to happen and it happened very slowly and painfully. But with the change of command, The Boo’s days in the Commandant’s Department were numbered. In the general housecleaning which takes place whenever a new and potent force sweeps onto a college campus, The Boo became a casualty of change. The Boo became expendable. The new advisors did not admire The Boo’s work, felt he was too personal with cadets, and felt he was not tough enough to be an Assistant Commandant. The new broom turned into a powerful vacuum cleaner in the Commandant’s Department.
In 1966 The Citadel received an influx of a new breed of Tac Officers. They were generally unsmiling, humorless men whose stolid faces and prognathous jaws implied their solemn dedication to the military. Two of these men were Citadel graduates. Two of these men were goddamn ambitious Citadel graduates. Their names are unimportant. Their importance lies in the discontent they bred at The Citadel. They returned to The Citadel, did not like the way Courvoisie was performing in the Commandant’s Department, and set out to undermine his position.
Captain Winken and Captain Blinken cited instances where The Boo gave weekend leaves to restricted cadets, where he allowed cadets to go to Charleston during the week for personal business, and where he cut confinements of senior cadets. He was too easy they said. The Tac Officers could not work with him. He was bad for The Citadel. He was anathema to the disciplinary system, and the Jenkins Hall juggernaut could not function smoothly until he resigned, retired, or was fired. They spoke with fervor and conviction when they said The Citadel was going to the dogs, that it just wasn’t as good as the old Corps; that unless something was done, The Citadel would sink like a surrogate Atlantis into the froth and swirl of the Ashley River. Winken and Blinken were humorless men and they meant what they said: Get rid of Courvoisie or The Citadel was doomed.
Word spread around campus that a minor revolt was stirring in the modern, antiseptic corridors of Jenkins Hall. Others joined the original conspirators, and suddenly, in a strange reversal, The Boo felt the hounds snapping at his heels. The hounds wore Captain’s bars and Major’s leaves and their numbers grew under the leadership of the two Citadel graduates. The criterion seemed to be: If the cadets like someone, then he is not performing his duty and must be removed. The main targets stood on the horizon like clay pigeons. Courvoisie and Petit must go became the rallying cry. The wolf pack had discovered the trail. The only thing left was for the quarry to be brought down and devoured.
Not only did Winken and Blinken find allies in Jenkins Hall, they went to the Corps for help. They invited cadets to their offices and flattered them by confiding their concern for The Citadel’s future to them. They said they were trying to save The Citadel and they needed everyone’s help. They needed the Regimental Commander. They got him. They needed the Regimental Exec. They got him too. They managed to enlist a large percentage of the high ranking cadet officers. With cocker spaniel eyes and thumping hearts, they told the story of what the school was like in the old days, before Courvoisie ruined it. Their grassroots movement started slowly, but gradually gained momentum and followers. One cadet finally organized a “Save The Citadel” committee which met in secret in the reception room at Mark Clark Hall. Many of the top ranked cadets in the school were there. All of them looked serious. All of them looked as if the weight of the entire school rested squarely on their shoulders. Everyone was serious as hell. They discussed the decline and fall of The Citadel, what could be done about it, and how a plan could be put into effect. Most cadets present at the meeting thought something was wrong with the school and most of them had remedies of one sort or another. The cadets in charge of the clandestine meeting had their own panacea to The Citadel’s problems. Captain Winken and Blinken had coached them well. The “Save The Citadel” meeting soon degenerated into a “Get The Boo” meeting, until John Warley, a hulking jock-scholar from “T” Company said, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to do anything to hurt The Boo. He has been good to me and has been good to every one of you guys. See you later.” The meeting broke up soon afterwards. But valuable seeds had been sown.
Something happened over the Christmas holidays of 1966 which presaged The Boo’s overthrow in 1968. It was The Boo’s custom during Christmas to check the barracks for illegal articles or any worn-out clothing the cadets collected during first semester. Old shoes, perforated socks, diseased shakos, moth-eaten bathrobes—these and other items filled The Boo’s annual Christmas package to the poor. Whatever he collected on these forays in the barracks went to organizations which distributed clothing to the poor of Charleston. It became a standard joke around school that if you wanted to salvage your favorite pair of worn-out loafers, then you better carry them home for furlough or hide the hell out of them. At Christmas time, The Boo was very methodical in his search of the rooms. Items the crafty cadet may have kept from the Tac’s eye during room inspection appeared in The Boo’s holiday grab-bag when he emerged from the barracks. The annual gathering of cadet refuse was a kind of tradition, that is, until the Christmas of 1966.
The Boo made a real haul this particular Christmas. Old shoes the Salvation Army rejected for the feet of indigents, The Boo threw in the trashcan. Hotplates, televisions, popcorn-makers, barbecues, and other illegal gadgets found their way to The Boo’s office. When the cadets return
ed from furlough they asked each other what The Boo had taken from their room. My roommate lost his pair of raggedy loafers, while I was missing the peppermint-striped, multi-ripped bathrobe that gave me such a rakish, barber-shop look on my jaunts to the shower room. Everything was the way it always was, except with Winken and Blinken. Word emanated from their offices and sifted down through the ranks of the Corps: The Boo is a thief. The regimental commander and the regimental exec, the two top ranked cadets, under the influence of the two Captains, went to General Harris to express their disapproval. The cadets then presented Courvoisie with a list of items he had stolen from the barracks. The thief was branded. Now it was his move.
The Boo got a list of all the items he had supposedly taken, this list included items that had been missing since the start of the college year. He called each cadet who claimed a loss of property to his office and paid him for his loss. Many cadets refused the money outright. Others took the money gladly. When the final tally was made, The Boo had paid out over three hundred dollars. No ultimatum emanated from the President’s Office for The Boo to reimburse the cadets. He did it to vindicate himself from the charge of thievery. It was the first time he had taken illicit articles from the barracks and walked out with a criminal record. The Boo also knew that the battle lines were drawn and that the enemy was not above playing dirty as hell.
Through the remainder of 1967 and 1968, The Boo was marked for elimination. His position as an Assistant Commandant was doomed. He had to be removed quietly. It had to be done with patience and subtlety. A power struggle ensued with The Boo carrying a hand of deuces. His formidable enemies held all the trump cards. Boo’s power rested with cadets, and in the world of Citadel politics, the cadets and their wishes counted for very little. The anti-Courvoisie contingent grew in power and influence. The powers who resided in Bond Hall whittled away at Courvoisie’s job until the position of Assistant Commandant meant little more than a glorified pencil-pusher. The Boo was not allowed to give weekends, check confinements, or go into the barracks. Finally, The Boo was not allowed to have any cadets come to him with problems. The end was in sight.
