Duty First

by Ed Ruggero

  She promises them a pizza party one Friday evening when they have free time.

  “You’ll be hungry by then. I’ve been a candy-ass at the table, and you’re going to catch hell at your new tables. But the stuff I put you through mentally was tougher than all that other stuff.”

  The new cadets have been quiet up to this point. They watch her, and they look past her to the ridge they’ll climb in the morning to start their march back to West Point and Re-orgy Week.

  “I want feedback too,” she says. “This was my first time in a leadership position.”

  Clint Knox says, “On that first day, you were the only one who knew stuff; the platoon sergeant was lost.”

  “You guys are like my babies,” Stein says.

  Ben Steadman asks, “Were you as scared as we were, ma’am?”

  She tugs her hat even lower, posturing. “Whaddya think?”

  “It was easier when I knew what you wanted,” Pete Lisowski ventures. She is still an upperclass cadet, still their squad leader.

  Haglin, who has become the squad’s malcontent, says, “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

  Stein smiles nervously. She asked for this, but she isn’t enjoying it.

  Jacque Messel adds quickly, “You were tough when you needed to be, but you let us relax.”

  “You’d take us up and down,” Lamb says.

  “What’s the purpose of Beast?” Stein asks. Then, in another pronouncement that is a part of cadet lore but certainly isn’t part of the official Academy position, she adds, “It’s to break you down, then build you back up.”

  Daveltshin smiles and says, “I was proud to be in the most popular squad in the company. All our other classmates were afraid of you.”

  Stein does have a war face, in spite of the fact that it’s perched on a diminutive frame. Friesema, who has been watching quietly, speaks.

  “With all respect, ma’am,” he says, mustering his courage, “We’re usually clueless. You think the questions we ask are stupid, but we really don’t know the answer.”

  “Maybe I could have listened better,” Stein says quickly.

  “Yelling doesn’t work,” Haglin adds. “I’ve been yelled at so much it has almost no effect.”

  Stein glances at Haglin, stands her ground in the dusty road.

  “You remind me of my mother,” Tom Lamb says. The squad laughs, releasing some of the tension.

  “You’re the same height, have the same color hair. She even yells at me the same way. I’ve been dealing with it for nineteen years, so it wasn’t really effective.”

  Knox continues the levity.

  “Before we came here, we were all like, ‘I’m the man.’ Before I came here I thought I was God’s gift, you know?” He smiles broadly. “Now I think God made a mistake.”

  The new cadets fidget, shift their positions on the grass. Whatever other feedback they may have for their squad leader, they aren’t sharing it.

  “OK,” Stein says. “I love you all; I wish you the best. I’ll be checking on you. I’ll write to your parents and tell them how you did.”

  Nervous laughter, a few groans.

  “There’ll be more good points than bad points,” she says. Then, “Bring it in one last time.”

  They huddle for a cheer. “Always the hard way, ma’am.”

  Later that afternoon, Deborah Welle and Jacque Messel sit side by side in front of their shared tent. Welle, who has injured her ankle, wears a plastic brace she calls her “Robo-Cop boot.” She won’t make the final road march.

  Messel, who is fair-skinned to begin with, looks pale. In the last two weeks she has missed five days of training and has spent several days hospitalized. She also feels as if Stein has already written her off as a washout.

  One day shortly after returning from the hospital and a round of treatment for the virus that has been plaguing her, Messel felt as if she was going to be sick during lunch. The medication made her nauseous. When she asked Stein if she could be excused from the table, Stein asked her, in front of the squad, if she was bulimic. When Messel said no, Stein asked, “Are you lying to me?” The fact that her squad leader had questioned her integrity—a serious thing at West Point—upset Messel quite a bit.

  Now, Messel looks tired. There are circles under her eyes, and she moves and speaks slowly. Her rifle lays across her lap, open at the hinge for cleaning. “I have to make up a lot of training,” she says. “But I’m going to do the road march.”

  The march is sixteen-plus miles, with a field pack and weapon, helmet, and boots. Although the lead companies will step off long before dawn in the morning, the new cadets will spend hours trudging along in the sun. It’s not much of a prescription for recovering from viral pneumonia.

  “It was right to stay for Beast,” she says, “but I’m still pretty convinced that this place isn’t for me.”

  Messel pulls the bolt from her rifle and wipes it with a rag, turning it over in her hand. Then she snaps it sharply so that it will seat when she puts it back in the weapon; she handles it as if she’s been cleaning M16s all her life. “I talked to my dad about wanting to leave. He’s coming out to see me this weekend so we can talk about it.”

  Although it will be her first visitor from home, she is not looking forward to it.

  “It was always his dream that I come here,” she says. And suddenly her eyes sparkle silver with tears. She slaps her weapon shut and, in a steady voice, says, “I’m just ready to get on with my life, start making other plans.”

  On the last evening of Beast Barracks, the new cadets put on a talent show. Lieutenant General Dan Christman, ‘65, the Superintendent, brings the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Dennis Reimer, ‘62, as his guest. Reimer has made the last three shows here, and has marched back to West Point with each class.

  “You may have heard that I always start with the last company,” Reimer says to the fifteen hundred cadets and guests gathered on the hillside. “And I try to catch up with the lead company by the time we reach West Point. Last year, I didn’t quite make it.”

  He pauses. “The fellow carrying me just couldn’t make those last few yards. This year, though, I’ve been assured that the cadre will do better.”

  Everyone laughs at the general’s joke and the show gets under way. The night is comfortably warm, the setting spectacular: The stage is downhill from the encampment, and the audience can look beyond it to wooded ridges in the blue distance. Above the hills, backlit clouds stand like God’s watchtowers. The cadets sit cross-legged on the ground, grouped around the little company flags called guidons. They are fed and relaxed and able, for a few minutes, to forget about what will unfold for them long before dawn the next day. This is one of those times when the West Point experience sits somewhere between Army basic training and freshman orientation at some mid-sized college.

  As the show begins, the first sounds don’t come from the stage at all, but from the field behind the crowd. Everyone turns to see a bagpiper, a new cadet in BDUs, his rifle slung diagonally across his back. He marches down the aisles formed by his classmates, and the weird skirl floats over the heads of the crowd and rolls around the valley. The cadets applaud wildly.

  The first act is a group of new cadets singing gospel. Any practice time they’ve had was stolen from a packed training schedule, but they choose simple arrangements and pull it off beautifully. Next, three men in BDU pants and green T-shirts do an elaborate dance of robotic hip-hop and foot-stomping. Then a young woman takes the microphone and dedicates her song to the “2 percent club,” that tiny group of cadets who keep the same boyfriend or girlfriend back home over four years. Her face is hidden by the BDU cap, but she has a pretty voice and people in the crowd sing along.

  Fourth squad’s Clint Knox, who graduated from a military high school, takes the stage with a drill team from Alpha Company. They spin rifles in an elaborate ballet onstage; in a solo performance, Knox spins a rifle in each hand. The final act is also from Alpha Company. A chor
us that includes Jacque Messel takes the stage and sings Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”

  West Point has something of a love affair with this treacly song. A former Superintendent, Dave Palmer, played it during assemblies with cadets, staff, and faculty. Its lyrics can be heard at meetings, sports events, and rallies.

  Yet here, amid all these young faces and earnest singing, it seems appropriate. They have plenty of time to become jaded and cynical. Tonight it is enough that they are with friends, that they are at the end of basic training, their first major test. The hillside is a great, green sprawl of possibility and youthful enthusiasm. And if any of them bother to look up, they can see that they have taken on a thousand allies, that they have become a part of something larger than just themselves. Some of them will revel in that new identity, while some will be consumed by it.

  Later, the new cadets gather near their tents as dusk drops around them. Flashlights bounce through the tent streets.

  “I get a sick feeling when I think about Re-orgy week,” Friesema admits.

  They worry about small things that will loom large tomorrow when they are faced with a company full of unfamiliar upperclass cadets. Is their hat brass shiny enough? Their shoes? Do they really know all the songs, cheers, West Point history, Army history and factoids well enough to make it through the next few days without gaining a reputation as a screwup? Even as they worry about what they don’t know, they’re amazed at how far they’ve come.

  “I think I should look like I did before, then I look in the mirror and see this stranger, with this haircut and these glasses,” Barry DeGrazio says as he runs his hands over his buzz cut. He wears the strap-on military-issue glasses that the upperclass cadets call “BCGs,” for “birth control glasses.” As in, “Those glasses are so ugly you could never get laid.”

  “When we got here we didn’t know anything. There was so much expected of us and it was all new. Some of the mistakes I made just made me feel stupid.”

  Friesema tells a story about trying to find a way to carry his retainer to meals. “When we wear white over gray, there aren’t any pockets,” he says. “And I’m supposed to wear this stupid retainer. So I put it in the side of my garrison cap.”

  The garrison cap, also called a fore-and-aft cap, fits on top of the head like a gray envelope.

  “By the time I got down to formation, it had worked itself out and was just hanging on my hat. Cadet Jett got a look at it and couldn’t believe it. I had about ten upperclassmen around me laughing at me and yelling at me at the same time.”

  Friesema smiles, and his classmates laugh with him. They are all amazed at the changes they’ve gone through.

  “I used to be pretty undisclipined,” Friesema says. “I liked to just sit and watch TV. In my whole senior year I bet I did one hour of homework. I never cleaned my room, either.” His surprise is not that he gave all that up, but that he used to live that way in the first place.

  “If someone told me to do something, I’d work hard to get out of it,” he continues. “Now I do what I’m told and do it as well as I can.”

  Pete Lisowski notices another change. “The other day I said ‘Hoo-ah’ on the phone with my mom,” he says in his slight North Carolina drawl. His squadmates laugh.

  “They said they were bringing up Bojangles chicken [on the upcoming weekend visit] and I said ‘Hoo-ah!’ They live near a Marine base and have heard this stuff. She asked if that’s like ‘U-rah,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I guess so.’ She said, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ But my biggest change is that I used to take charge of everything. It had to be my way … or everyone would know that I didn’t agree. Now I’m more of a team player.”

  “I appreciate the small things,” Friesema says. “I would kill to be able to walk up to a refrigerator and grab what I wanted.”

  “My first phone call, I was all choked up,” DeGrazio adds. Then, not wanting to explore that area too deeply, “The big change for me is that I used to be a musician. I play bass, tuba, any kind of guitar. Now I’m someone with no music, except cadence calls, I guess.”

  “I miss music, too,” Friesema says. The new cadets are not allowed radios or CD players. To the list of depravations, Friesema adds the great American icon of independence.

  “I miss driving. If you got bored you could just hop in a car and go to the mall, to a friend’s house, to the gym.” Except for leave periods, that privilege is far away. Cadets are not allowed to have cars until near the end of junior year.

  Daveltshin, who is four years older than his squadmates and twelve thousand miles from home, says simply, “I miss my girlfriend.”

  The sun is gone, though it is still light enough to see figures moving through the tightly packed rows of tents. The bagpiper plays somewhere nearby, and the air is wet with threatened rain. Many of the new cadets are expecting their first visitors over the coming weekend. Friesema’s father, two grandfathers, and two younger brothers are coming from Wisconsin. Lisowski’s family is driving up from North Carolina, with the promised bucket of Bojangles chicken.

  The new cadets consider what their parents will see different in them. They are quiet for a few moments, and in the darkness it’s hard to see if they’re considering their answers or just daydreaming about home.

  “I think we’re all a lot more mature,” Friesema says. “I’ve grown up more in the last six weeks than in the first eighteen years of my life. … I’m amazed at the total authority the upper class have. I mean, your parents had a lot of control, but at least you had an opinion. Not here.”

  “I didn’t have any problem with that,” Daveltshin says. “This is the only way to train soldiers. It develops immediate discipline so you can handle pressure. It doesn’t offend me that cadre is younger than me; they know more than I do.”

  Shortly after dawn, Alpha Company pulls into a rest stop. Their morning started at 0330; they are already sweat-soaked, though the weather is mercifully cool for a Hudson Valley August. The march is orchestrated to the tiniest detail, with down-to-the-minute timetables for rest halts, road-crossings, checkpoints. The purpose is to keep the new cadet companies from piling up on one another, especially as they cross the busy roads that run along the valley floor.

  Most of the sixteen-plus miles are done on dirt roads that wind through the woods. It is humid under the trees, and the new cadets walk in silence, one file on each side of the trail. General Reimer, the Army Chief of Staff, moves up in the space between the files, greeting the new cadets he passes. He is tall, six four or so, and trim, and his long legs eat up the distance. He is working his way from the rear of the column, so most of the new cadets don’t see him coming, and although they are polite and respectful, the ones who do speak to him are hardly in awe.

  The trail winds down the eastern side of a ridge, the sun poking through the trees; it’s less than half a mile to Round Pond and a rest stop. Jacque Messel, rucksack square on her shoulders, weapon at sling-arms, moves along at a good clip, keeping pace with her squad. Suddenly her breathing becomes labored. She slows, stumbles a bit, then steps off to the side and bends over to put her hands on her knees. Her breath comes in short, loud gasps. Her squad calls some encouragement to her and a cadre member points to the top of the next hill—so close—but no one slows down. When the company medic catches up with her, he loads her on a vehicle to drive the few hundred yards to the rest stop. She is suddenly faced with the prospect that she won’t get credit for completing the whole march, and she’ll wind up with an “incomplete.” As the medic walks her to the vehicle, she wears a look somewhere between disgust and fear.

  Round Pond is one of the recreation areas that dot the reservation at West Point. A ring of campsites encircles the lake, and there is a stone- and wood-building that’s used for parties. Strong morning light comes in at a low angle. A half dozen new cadets who are injured and can’t make the march hand out apples, bagels, and Gatorade as the squads come in off the hillside trail. Alpha Company moves in as the company a
head prepares to move out. There is a great deal of shouting as the arriving new cadets are shuffled into the shade and the departing platoons are moved onto the road.

  “You got ten minutes to rest,” Alpha Company’s first sergeant shouts. “Make sure you fill up your canteens and use the latrine.”

  Shannon Stein’s squad sits in a tight clump. There is plenty of room, but no one has told them to spread out. Some of them pull their boots off; they wear black dress socks beneath their green GI socks to reduce the friction. The cadre shout instructions about filling canteens and checking for blisters, but none of the squad leaders circulate and check that their instructions are carried out.

  DeGrazio isn’t worried about his feet; he’s worried about his shirt, which has a small hole in the back, right between his shoulder blades. He does not want to go into his new company with a hole in his uniform. He has packed an extra shirt inside his rucksack and wonders if he’ll have time to change at the last rest stop.

  Daveltshin shuffles as he walks. He has a painful heat rash between his legs, and every step rubs his already raw skin. Someone points out that GI footpowder might help; a cadre member from another platoon finds some for him. Messel rejoins the squad before they finish their Gatorade. She has missed only three hundred meters of the march and wants to go at it again. Stein calls to her from where she’s sitting. “Are you marching?”

  Messel isn’t sure how to answer; no one has told her what to do either way. Maybe Stein is asking for her opinion. “I guess so, ma’am,” she says.

  “Get up at the front of the squad when we start out, then,” Stein says. “DeGrazio, push her if you have to.”

  Messel has pulled her weight all summer, so she is not ostracized; but she has been talking about resigning since the first detail, so she is not completely a part of the group. In these last hours of Beast, she is drifting away, like a relation who hasn’t called in a while.

  As they get closer to West Point, yesterday’s exuberant new cadets become quieter. The cadre members, who are about to be relieved of their responsibilities, are happier with each passing mile. Shannon Stein is a little apprehensive about the start of soccer practice. She faces two hours of running that very afternoon. But she is looking forward to the academic year because she gets to “sleep in until 5:45.”