Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The three vessels that served as the Academy’s practice cruise ships—the Utah, the Arkansas, and the Florida—anchored at the mouth of the Severn, and on June 4, 1926, the Plebes trickled, then flooded toward Utah for embarkation. There were 389 left in the class. Eighty-nine had washed out before going to sea—but Heinlein had not.

  6

  YOUNGSTER YEAR

  The formal class history speaks lightly of the 1926 practice cruise on board Utah, but it must have been something of a shock, and then shock piled upon shock. All three of the Practice Squadron vessels were considered “antiquated,” coal-burners surviving into the age of oil, eking out their dotage training midshipmen.

  Utah (BB-31) was a battleship of about twenty-two thousand tons, commissioned in 1909. This year, in addition to its normal complement of one thousand it carried nearly four hundred midshipmen as supercargo (passengers, essentially). The ship was unbelievably overcrowded. Heinlein was billeted in a huge compartment below the waterline, scheduled to sleep 120. He was one of the lucky ones: he got a hammock, so close to the next that he concluded, “If I fell out I would probably fall into the next hammock—but if I did manage to fall through, I still would not hit the steel deck, but human bodies spread solidly on that deck.”1

  As soon as they stowed their kit, the Youngsters were formed up on the deck. They worked to exhaustion for the next sixty days, shoveling coal to feed Utah’s insatiable boilers. They were the last class to have a coal-burning Youngster cruise: Utah was scheduled to be converted to oil burning immediately after that year’s practice cruise.

  Typically the first practice cruise would go to northern Europe,2 and the second went to the Caribbean, but for reasons not recorded, this cruise wandered up and down the Atlantic seaboard, making only fifteen to twenty knots (twenty knots being its top speed), dawdling until August, when they would take part in battle exercises at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. In the meantime, they hit Newport, then Marblehead, Portland, Charleston, and New York by the beginning of July.

  In addition to the “neophitic ordeals of coaling and other forms of seadrudgery,” 3 these supercargo were taken in hand by the regular crew and taught about actual operations at sea. The mids were broken into groups, and the groups would rotate from department to department of the ship, learning the basics from the people who performed the actual work. As many as could crowd into the compartment would gather around the Chief and hear the Word.

  There was a lot to learn all over the ship. Navigation was on the deck, and that was less crowded. The navigator, for example, would patiently show them how to use a sextant to figure the ship’s position, an essential skill for anyone on the bridge. Each rotation lasted about a week, then the groups would move on to something else—boilers or gunnery or engineers and machinery spaces—doing the same work the sailors did. The practice cruise was a series of quick courses on ship operations, interlarded with backbreaking physical labor. Every Friday on a practice cruise crew and mids would Holystone the deck on hands and knees, for Captain’s inspection on Saturday. The Holystone is a large, heavy block of pumice muscled around the deck to reduce splinters and remove stains and detritus, creating a smooth surface.

  But they did have fresh air, refrigeration, and plenty of fresh water for laundry and bathing, and that was a welcomed change from the strict rations and locked water butts at the Academy. Utah had evaporators and could produce as much fresh water as they wanted.

  The main variation in the ship’s routine was their ports of call. Their time in port was often taken up by parades and receptions, though the regular crewmen got shore leave. After a week in New York over the Fourth of July—at which, for a change, they did not take part in a parade—they made for Newport again, on Heinlein’s nineteenth birthday, July 7, 1926. When they had put in there in June, they found the place deserted. Now the summer season—the exact time and place of Thornton Wilder’s Theophilus North—was in full swing. For a week, the midshipmen were invited to dances and teas with Newport luminaries, including one memorable tea with Cornelius Vanderbilt. 4

  Then they went to Philadelphia during the sesquicentennial celebration of the city’s founding. The whole sky was aglow, reflecting the city’s commemorative lighting. The midshipmen were fêted, and the whole complement of midshipmen toured the Naval Aircraft Factory and the Westinghouse Works.5

  Utah then steamed north, standing off the coast of Maine, where Heinlein got thoroughly chilled one fog watch—“the coldest I recall being in my life”6—then south to Guantánamo Bay. As they headed into tropical waters, the temperature climbed to one hundred degrees and stayed there.

  Storage space was at such a premium (because of the overcrowding) that the potatoes had been stored in canvas bags in the ship’s open cage mast. They rotted in the heat and the damp, with a smell so powerful and so penetrating that they had to be dumped overboard—which left the crew short of mess supplies. Toward the middle of August, the entire ship’s complement broke out in boils simultaneously, the first symptoms of scurvy. The potatoes had been their only source of vitamin C.

  Scurvy is a very unpleasant—as well as sometimes fatal—disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. As soon as they came into harbor at Haiti, Heinlein bought limes from a bumboat, and his boils disappeared immediately.

  They worked through the scurvy. Mornings were filled up with gunnery drills. The midshipmen were placed all over the ship—station and phone, voice tube and telescope—but the most important drill was for loading ammunition in a smooth, uninterrupted flow.

  Sometimes in the afternoons they were allowed free time at Hicaal Beach, where they organized baseball teams or broke out the crew gear and practiced rowing for the Battenberg Cup race. Some simply went swimming.

  One morning they steamed over to Gonaïves, and to the target range. While standing off Haiti, they had their eagerly anticipated SRBP (Short Range Battle Practice). The midshipmen gathered on the deck and were instructed to stuff cotton into their ears to protect their hearing. This was Heinlein’s first exposure to the firepower of an oceangoing vessel. The pounding of the big guns comes shaking up through the legs and is a sensation as much as a sound: proximity to that much raw power was awe-inspiring, sublime—“the voice of the War God to whom we had pledged our future,” the class history says of the experience.7

  After the exercise, Utah headed back to the Academy, making landfall on August 26. The midshipmen gathered up their scattered belongings and spent a sleepless night. Early the next morning, they were released all at the same time, to stream up the beach and over Farragut Field to Bancroft Hall. The building shook as the returning midshipmen ran for their cruise boxes, which had been delivered to their assigned rooms. The Plebes were comically startled and peered pillow-haired out their doors—just as Heinlein and his classmates had done a year ago. Now the Youngsters were inside the establishment: they put aside the Plebe whites they had lived in for a year. Their new kit included a mackintosh raincoat and a blouse with a gold diagonal stripe on the left sleeve. Now they would spend most of their time in blues instead of whites—and now they would assume the role of tormenters-of-Plebes.

  Robert and Perreault—“Bob” and “Perry”—had gotten on well together, and neither sought a change in bunkmate assignments. They had compatible personal habits and inclinations—or, more exactly, disinclinations to involve themselves in the social doings of the Academy. They also appear to have admired each other’s athletics: Perry changed his sports specialization each year. As a Youngster he went out for fencing—though he was on to lacrosse, gym, and soccer the next year.

  Robert and Ivar were going back to Kansas City for their September leave, and this trip would be an adventure. Very quietly, Ivar and his friend Buddy Scoles had organized a car trip—strictly against regulations, since midshipmen were not permitted either to own or to drive automobiles in 1926 (though they might ride in one during leaves). Scoles had been on Utah for the practice cruise this summer. Now he clubbed together
with Ivar and Robert and two other Kansas City boys to buy an old car in Annapolis for $75 and drive it out directly to Kansas City.8 The roads were primitive, and service stations few and far between in 1926. The car broke down continuously, so these budding engineers mended it with whatever was at hand—toilet paper in one instance,9 to wrap around burned insulation—and kept going.10 When they got to Kansas City, they sold the car for $50, so the entire trip cost them only $5 apiece, plus the cost of gasoline.11

  Things were probably not very comfortable around the Heinlein house in September of 1926: his father was psychologically shattered by his part in Rose Betty’s death only four months earlier. But it would have been uncomfortable for Robert even without that additional stress. In his later, fictional retelling of the Academy experience, Space Cadet, the reaction he gives his protagonist must surely be an echo of his own experience: the house would seem to have shrunk; the ceilings lower and the furniture more frayed and more frowsty than he remembered it. In Robert’s case, the madhouse of a large family would have been much the same—frazzled mother and a mob of bright, growing children going every which way, and mostly somewhere else that didn’t really include him anymore. His pallet and books would have been moved into storage (except for the ones Louise took). The new arrangements were sensible, reasonable—and firmly conveyed the message: Robert didn’t live here anymore.

  The boys were invited out for a round of family dinners, and all the assorted aunts and uncles asked him about the Academy—but they had heard most of it already. It was a subject that always left him in Ivar’s shadow. Robert was treated well by the Pendergast people while he was home from Annapolis, and, interestingly, Ivar is never mentioned in this context. He did not have to be in Ivar’s shadow with the boys downtown.12

  This was the machine’s period of greatest prestige in Kansas City, but all was not well for the Pendergast machine: over the summer, while Heinlein was away on his practice cruise, a newcomer, Johnny Lazia, forcibly took over Kansas City’s Little Italy, on the promise that he would be able to keep Al Capone out.13

  Many of Heinlein’s high school friends were still in Kansas City, and his gold-braided white uniform would have given him cachet he never had before. One old high school acquaintance he particularly enjoyed renewing was with Alice McBee. There had been something—some spark or the something that might become a spark—between them in high school. Now he was a little more experienced, and they must, by later evidence, have dated while he was on leave. She was a pretty girl, with soft brown hair and blue eyes, a perfect figure, and a cheerful disposition he found perfectly simpatico. She had a sunny quality that made him feel good.14 Perhaps now they had their first kiss—something to take back with him to the Academy and the start of the academic year in October.

  After September leave, Heinlein had to buckle down to work. In the second year, the class took up naval history and the study of important naval engagements—the Russo-Japanese War and the first Korean war. They were also required to write one rather lengthy paper (like a master’s thesis) during the four years and shorter papers on narrower subjects.

  One of the more interesting and thought-provoking courses given at the Academy was the class in writing orders—the most useful English Department course Heinlein ever got. Each midshipman was given a tactical situation for which he had to write an operations order. Then everyone in the class would pick it apart, trying to find a way to misunderstand the order. This process was called “Major-Browning,” after an officer in General Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War staff, whose sole duty was to misunderstand Grant’s orders. If the order got by Major Brown, Grant okayed it for release. At Annapolis, the Major-Brown test was pass-fail: if anyone could colorably misunderstand the order, the midshipman got a zero mark for the day. This process, with its panic-making incentive, “gave me a life-time respect for exact meaning of words and clarity of construction of sentences.”15

  Heinlein had no particular trouble with his academics, consistently placing in the “Distinction” range (grade point averages of 3.4 to 4.0) or occasionally dipping into the high end of the “With Credit” range (3.39 to 3.0). His class standing was particularly high in engineering and aeronautics, ranging from first in the class to twelfth or thirteenth (with one notable lapse in early 1927 to a scandalous fifty-eighth place—just barely in the “Distinction” range). In English and modern languages—French in his case—he consistently placed in the top 10 percent, circling over and under the division between “Distinction” and “With Credit”—that is, a B+/A- student. His “Executive” grades (“aptitude for the Service”) at the start of the 1927 academic year were consistently in the “With Credit” range. He was doing well on all fronts, though not in the absolute first rank in anything except engineering and aeronautics. Possibly this was a matter of policy on his part: the first-ranked scholars were viewed with suspicion because they so often washed out for one reason or another or did not necessarily make good naval officers.16

  The Youngsters had far more privileges than they had enjoyed as Plebes. They were, for example, no longer required to march in the center of corridors, and they no longer went everywhere in strict formation. There were still classes, drills, and the usual extra duty, but the Youngsters were considered as broken to the saddle by now. Heinlein received five demerits in October (perhaps he was not quite broken to the saddle yet), and his class standing in “conduct” fell to 184 out of 316, but he received no more for the remainder of the academic year, and his report cards consistently show him as number one in his class thereafter.

  They had a visit that year from Japanese midshipmen on their own practice cruise and a state visit by Queen Marie of Romania and her family, Princess Ileana and Prince Carol. It rained that day, and they paraded and double-timed in full dress in Worden Field and stood at parade in the rain, holding their fingers over the muzzles of their rifles so that they would not fill with rainwater. There was also a Hollywood movie filmed on campus that year—though its name was not recorded in any of the yearbooks—probably Annapolis, released in 1928, starring Johnny Mack Brown.

  Heinlein was concentrating on his fencing and making a very good showing. His record for 1927 was 1-2 and 2-0 (up from 1-2 in 1926), and his published intercollegiate varsity records is only 5-6.17 Nevertheless, his skill was noticed.

  Apparently, the fencers were allowed considerable latitude in developing their own personal style, for Heinlein later remarked that he elected not to use the heavy protective clothing. This was something of a risk, because épée fencing, unlike foil, was as close to real sword work as one could get without courting serious damage. “Serious” was a relative term:

  “Serious”—I once laid open the back of a Cornell man for 18’ avec points d’árrete18 and I still carry some lesser scars myself, because I preferred freedom of movement to heavy canvas. But the blood a little point can raise is certainly not serious.19

  Sport and competition occupied more of their attention than usual that year, since the entire Academy was on a major winning streak coinciding with the unusually large Class of ’27 (574 students) and the unusually small Class of ’28 (173 students). When the entire First Class went to Philadelphia to see the Penn game, the Second Class could not fill out all the officer ratings for the Academy, so the Executive Department gave some of the Class of ’29 temporary rank as midshipmen officers—their first time in full charge. Heinlein’s name is not on the list of temporary midshipmen officers.

  About 250 were expected to graduate in the Class of ’29, so they were in the middle—but what they lacked in numbers they made up for in enthusiasm, proficiency, grit, and determination. They won the interclass competition and were given the Harvard Shield award for general athletic excellence.

  But it was football that excited the most attention. The new football coach, Bill Ingram, had taken over a failing team (Navy had won only seven games in the preceding two years). As the annual Army-Navy game approached, Navy was undefeated, 9–0.<
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  This Army-Navy game—held over the 1926 Thanksgiving weekend—was anticipated with special excitement because the game had been moved to Chicago and would take place in conjunction with the rededication of Soldier Field. The entire Brigade of Midshipmen was going.

  It was very unusual for the Army-Navy game to be held so far from both academies, but Chicago had lobbied very hard for the privilege. At the Academy, they treated the trip as a mobilization exercise or war game.20 As the day approached, yells of “Beat Army!” echoed nonstop in Bancroft Hall—otherwise a pap offense, but forgiven for the Cause. The upperclassmen would be required to carry swords, so they drilled constantly in the weeks before the trip.

  After lunch on Thanksgiving Day, the entire Brigade of Midshipmen marched out the Main Gate and boarded chartered trains for Chicago. That evening on board the train they had the first of many Thanksgiving dinners—turkey with all the trimmings. When they arrived in Chicago the next day, they marched up Michigan Avenue in formation, in a snowstorm, to the Palmer House and then to Marshall Field’s where they shared another turkey dinner—with all the trimmings—with the entire West Point Corps of Cadets. They marched back down Michigan Avenue (again in the snow) for a parade.

  That evening, Chicago threw them a series of parties called in the program the “Army-Navy Frolics.” There were dinners—more turkey with all the trimmings—theatrical parties, and dances that went on the entire night. Heinlein was a guest at the Drake Dinner Dance for cadets and midshipmen only. He had apparently been developing some moves: he talked one of the girls out of her dance card filled with autographs (his own not among them).21

  The next day, the midshipmen and cadets were treated to a buffet luncheon at the Field Museum adjoining Soldier Field. Heinlein had tried unsuccessfully to get seating for some of the family and wrote suggesting they drop Lawrence’s Army rank—“Lieutenant Heinlein”—to get into the reserved seating. “This is well worth trying. Rex is trying to get you tickets, but probably can’t.”22 Indeed, Soldier Field was filled beyond its newly expanded capacity—110,000 people in a stadium designed for 100,000.