by Ed Ruggero
“They put in something called unit training time,” Bradley says, “on those days when you’re not playing intramurals and you don’t have drill. Some companies do road marches. We did classes on the M9 [the Army-issue pistol], PT. Those are times I get to do what an XO does in the Army, oversee what the staff is doing to make things easier for the companies. The company training officers write plans for the training. It’s an exercise in leadership for the upper class, and it’s a good review for the plebes. It’s all the stuff they’re going to use [in summer training].”
The cadets don’t have a problem switching from calculus to field-stripping a weapon and back to American history. But they hardly welcome the additional work.
“Everyone was cynical when they introduced unit training. That used to be free time you could use to work out, visit friends, play a sport for fun, read a book, sleep. I know they’re trying to walk a line between providing training opportunities for cadets and overloading them.”
This is one of the things that differentiates Bradley from younger cadets or classmates who haven’t had his responsibilities. Having been in charge, he knows there is another side to the story, and he tries to understand both.
“Trying to make things work is a lot harder than just standing in ranks bitching about everything,” he says.
Despite the uniforms, formations, and afternoon training, there is a letdown in military posture that accompanies the academic year. “The third class team leaders are supposed to pick up [training the plebes] where the Beast squad leaders left off. But it takes a lot of creativity to keep it challenging.”
In years past, the upperclass cadets’ job was simply to make plebes suffer. Now they have to set and achieve goals; they have to plot ways to develop—West Point’s favorite word—their subordinates. Leaders are given limited time and resources, and must design training that will instruct and motivate. This is exactly what NCOs and junior officers do every day in the Army. West Point cadets are saddled with the task at the beginning of sophomore year—one plebe at a time. Kevin Bradley didn’t start out in this system, but he’s bought into it.
“At the end of plebe year you’re sick of getting yelled at. With our class the big thing was ‘Do you have your socks pulled up?’ All the plebes had to wear our athletic socks pulled all the way up, but the upper class didn’t. It was a stupid rule, besides being unfair. You look on the surface of it, you just don’t see any lesson there.”
Now, when he watches a leader, when he looks at his own leadership abilities, he asks what the leader is doing to move people along, to make them better soldiers.
“If you just look at the surface of things, if you don’t look for the ‘why’ behind stuff, it’s easy to be cynical. It’s also easy to be cynical if you’re the kind of person who tends to blame the system for all your problems.
“And then people just get tired of all the rules. When you’re a plebe you’re just scared you’re going to do something wrong. You don’t expect to go out at night and you’re too busy to worry about it much. By the time you’re a yearling you’ve figured out how to live here and you get bored. You know what goes on at other schools, all your friends tell you constantly what you’re missing. Then you start asking yourself ‘Why can’t I walk out into Highland Falls [outside the gate] at night if I want to?’”
Like a lot of cadets, Bradley worries that the sheltered cadet existence does some harm.
“Most of us are social idiots,” he says. “We don’t know how to interact. Everything is taken care of in our world. Like your money, that’s a perfect example. You don’t have to learn how to budget because it’s all done automatically.”
As with meals, barracks, laundry, medical and dental care.
“We go to parties at other schools and the West Pointer tries to make up for a few months of being locked away by drinking everything in sight. So the cadet passes out and misses the party and manages to look stupid in the bargain. The kids from civilian schools know how to handle themselves.”
After lunch, Bradley walks the circuit around Trophy Point. The river is gunmetal blue where it splits the mountains to the north; on its surface, boats large and small cut white wakes. On Clinton Field cadets have piled brush and wooden pallets for a pep-rally bonfire. Topping the mound is the hulk of a wooden sailboat painted battleship gray.
The Navy game is another milestone in Bradley’s last year as a cadet. His parents live only fifteen miles from Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium, the site of the game, so they’ve been hosting parties since Kevin’s plebe year. This year’s will be the biggest celebration.
“We’re going to have nine people staying at my house over Army-Navy weekend. There’ll be guys sleeping on the floor of every room. My mom’s been cooking all week. She loves it when all my buddies come over.”
Bradley can practically smell graduation week, though it is a long winter away. He has a perspective on his experience that the younger cadets don’t have yet. “In the beginning all your friends at civilian schools are telling you how much fun they’re having, and you’re just sitting around here. Going to the gym is considered a good time. But now, four years later, they’re still doing the same things, and I’ve had opportunities that they haven’t had. Like the chance to be a company commander this summer, and the chance to go to Japan for five weeks. And I know I’ll have a job when I graduate.”
The firsties have already chosen their branches. On his uniform Bradley wears the crossed cavalry sabers and superimposed tank of the Armor branch. He will be a tanker, and he intends to go to Europe. Cadets choose their first assignments based on class rank. Bradley, who ranks high in his class, is confident he’ll get the assignment he wants. He is looking for adventure, for a challenge.
“When I said I was going to Germany, my folks were like …”
He makes a face; this couldn’t have been the best news for his parents. “But then my mom said, ‘Hey I’ve always wanted to visit Europe.’”
“I’ll probably go to Bosnia, and that will be good experience for a lieutenant.”
At the beginning of December, Alisha Bryan is only days away from her twentieth birthday; yet she carries herself with the confidence of a woman ten years older. Her background also sets her apart. Most cadets come from white, middle-class suburbia. Bryan is the daughter of a mixed marriage, a black father and white mother, who spent her high school years in a mostly black high school in inner-city Atlanta.
Bryan, who was Alpha Company’s counselor (the milk and cookies lady) during Beast, is five foot seven, with dark curly hair and caramel skin. On the bookshelf of her room in Scott Barracks, which is bright with morning sunlight, is a large frame with a photo collage of Bryan and her friends. One high school photo shows her as a teen, with long hair falling in ringlets beside her face. In another photo she and her mother are clasped in a tight embrace.
“My Mom comes to West Point and meets all my guy friends,” Bryan says. “She just loves hugging them all, then she’ll say to me, Alisha, you should have about ten boyfriends here.’”
Joking aside, the respect she has for her mother is clear in every sentence. Bryan’s mother set an example of bravery for her. Until she was fourteen, the two lived in Alaska with Alisha’s father.
“Life with Dad in Anchorage wasn’t great,” Bryan says as she checks her uniform in the mirror before heading out to formation. “He was a pool player; basically, a high class bum. He never let me do anything. My freshman year of high school, I wasn’t allowed any phone calls, no dances, no school activities.”
Alisha rankled under the strict controls, but they decided to leave when he became abusive. “We took off in the middle of the night, the day after my fourteenth birthday. We went to Atlanta because the city is more tolerant of multiracial families, and because my godmother lives in the South. My mom’s mission was to set me up, give me whatever advantage she could. She made sure I could fend for myself.”
Outside the open door to her room, pleb
es thunder down the steps to formation. Their combat boots rattle the metal stairs.
“Beat Navy, ma’am!” they say as they pass Bryan.
Although there were some financial struggles, Bryan relished the freedom of her new life. The deal her mother made with her was simple: Alisha could participate in as many activities as she wanted, as long as she kept her grades up. In what turned out to be excellent preparation for the pace of cadet life, Bryan held down several jobs and ran on the cross-country team.
Because she is articulate and attractive, and because she is a success story, West Point gave her an extra couple of days’ leave before Thanksgiving and sent her home to inner-city Atlanta to talk to high school kids about West Point.
“It was kind of weird going back. The last time I was there I was mostly worried about how to get out of class and hang out at the Taco Bell.”
If she cut classes, it didn’t hurt her performance: she had a 4.0 average and good SAT scores. As a black woman with good grades, she had a wide choice of schools to choose from. But West Point’s concept of all-around development appealed to her, and the Academy was the only school she applied to.
“My mom got [me] into the University of Georgia,” she says with a smile. “She filled out the forms and everything. She was worried that I needed a backup.
“If I’d have gone to a regular school it would have been work and study and that’s about it. I wanted something a little different. I wanted to see if there was something out there to push me.”
Bryan sounds a theme common among cadets: I came here because I wanted something different; I wanted a challenge.
As she steps out into the sunshine, North Area is already filled with camouflage uniforms.
“I came up here for a visit and thought it was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. It was a nice spring day, warm like this. I had friends here who showed me around. And there were old grads in the Atlanta area who contacted me; I was impressed by that. They cared about their school that much to go out and try to get good people. Not all schools did that.”
The pool of qualified minority candidates is small. West Point admissions has several officers who concentrate on nothing but recruiting those men and women. But they are competing with every other top institution in the nation that wants a diverse student body.
At the beginning of her Beast, there were only fourteen black females in Bryan’s class; this was quite a change from her high school, which was mostly black students. Still, being part of a double minority didn’t present any problems for her. There was some extra attention she didn’t need, but that was all flirting.
“When I was a plebe the women had to live near the first sergeant and CO [cadet company commander]. They acted a little like big brothers,” she says, smiling. “They were always checking out who was coming to visit, making sure that no one was bothering us.”
Bryan’s independent streak did not serve her well as a plebe.
“The upper class had this idea of what the ideal West Point plebe should be; I didn’t gibe with that ideal. When I was a plebe I was the one with an attitude because I didn’t act the way others did. I was used to standing up for myself, which meant I was the one who would speak up if I thought things were wrong. I knew the limits of what the upper class were allowed to do, and if they pushed it or crossed the line, I’d say so. It definitely made life harder for me.”
Bryan stands behind her platoon, her eyes gliding over the ranks, checking haircuts and uniforms. She is still checking out the troops when she says, “Race issues are resolved more easily here than gender issues.”
“Some people think women don’t belong here. That’s hard to change. My Sosh P [Social Sciences professor] talked about how it used to be in his company, which he called ‘Boys One.’ They had segregated hallways; no women in some places. They told the women to ‘get rid of the wiggle.’”
She laughs at the story. She’s talking about boys’ school pranks, nothing to be taken too seriously. Finally, it all comes down to one measure. A woman who can cut it physically is accepted. Bryan, a runner in high school, was better prepared than some. She fits in well enough that she sometimes doesn’t even notice right away that she is the only woman in a class.
“I guess I felt it more plebe year. Like, in class, if we were talking about rap music, the P would say, ‘Cadet Bryan, what do you think?” Like, ‘Let’s get the black woman’s perspective.’”
She laughs, then gets serious.
“I haven’t felt any discrimination here at West Point.”
Two drummers beat a cadence, which echoes off the stone walls as the companies of fourth regiment march to the big Mess Hall doors. The plebes walk like robots, head and eyes rigidly to the front. During lunch Bryan talks about her involvement with the Contemporary Affairs Seminar, a black cadets’ group. The group does community outreach programs and hosts a conference in the spring to which they invite inner-city high school students for discussions about college and other opportunities. The conference serves a purpose for the cadets, too, Bryan says, “So we don’t forget where we came from.”
“We’re ground-breakers. It’s good to remember how far we’ve come. I mean, I talk about having only fourteen black women in my class—well—Henry O. Flipper was the only black cadet at West Point.”
Henry O. Flipper, born in slavery, endured racism and a lonely existence to become West Point’s first black graduate in 1877. Bryan and her friends know that they are carrying on in the tradition of Flipper, of the drive for civil rights. She is stirred by this being part of something forward-looking. In her world view, the future is better than the past.
On the way out of the Mess Hall after lunch she passes a firstie, and Bryan says hello. When he is out of hearing she points out that this black cadet is the deputy brigade commander.
“I heard there was even a black first captain once,” she says.
Vince Brooks, ‘80, was the first black cadet to wear the six stripes and gold star of the first captain. Brooks, who became the youngest colonel in his class, later had lunch with the Contemporary Affairs Seminar. He told them, bluntly, that they had to be able to handle the visibility that comes with being a minority.
“It’s an extra responsibility,” he told them. “So what? Ruck up [strap on your rucksack, i.e., shoulder the burden], or find something else to do.”
Outside, Bryan joins the fast-moving throng headed for the academic buildings. She talks about race as unself-consciously as she might discuss the weather. But not everyone at West Point is so relaxed. Bryan heard one white cadet comment, “You see a bunch of white guys sitting at a table after dinner, you think: lacrosse team. See a bunch of black guys sitting around a table after dinner, you think: coup.”
“That’s probably true,” she says. “But it’s really pretty simple. You want to talk to people with similar backgrounds, similar interests. It’s like New York City with its Italian neighborhoods, or like when an American overseas wants to talk to other Americans, just for something familiar.”
Bryan is consistently cheerful, and, like Kevin Bradley, is able to put her cadet experience in a larger context. Rather than complain about her lack of freedom, she chooses to focus on the advantages of living in this tight community.
“My friends at regular colleges have a hard time with money. They have to work at a job or two, go to school and study. They have it harder than I do. At West Point, if you just follow what they set out for you, you don’t have to worry too much. I don’t have to worry about eating Cup-O-Soup for days at a time.”
Her friendships are a big part of what she values about West Point. She knows she has more men friends than she would someplace else, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to date cadets. Many of those couples wind up at the altar immediately after graduation, something that Bryan pronounces “stupid.”
“I’ll only be twenty-one. What if I want to go to Germany or take advantage of other opportunities? A lot of people are in a rush to ge
t married. It’s convenient, because you’re both here, you have so much in common already. But then you head off to different assignments and you say, ‘What was I thinking?’”
“Once I have a family that’ll be my main priority. The army is what I chose for this part of my life; I’ll only be twenty-six when my commitment is up. There’s lots of time—if I decide to get out—to do whatever I want.”
“I think it’s important to have a positive attitude, to be pleasant. It’s still going to be stupid stuff whether you’re bitching about it or not. Why punish everyone around you who has to listen to you?”
Bryan tends to look at things from this human relations point of view; she is glad she spent her summer counseling new cadets. For her, West Point is about the lives she touches and the lives that touch hers.
“This place is about service. I wanted something more than a regular college experience. I wanted to learn about myself and be challenged. I’ve come to like the leadership aspect of this place; it suits me,” she says. “Like being platoon sergeant. I get to decide how I want to do things, how to run inspections. The platoon leader gives me autonomy. And when he asks a question and I can say, ‘Already thought of that; got it covered.’ That’s really cool.”
THE FRONT RANK
Cadets call the period between Christmas leave and spring leave “the gloom period.” Everything at West Point is gray: the uniforms, the buildings, the sky, the somber mood. Unlike the fall, there are no home football games, with their invasions of visitors. There is just the relentless cold: cold floors in the barracks, cold wind blowing through the big doors of the Mess Hall so that the cadets nearest the entrance huddle in their coats until long after the meal has started. There is a long stretch of work before Spring Break.
On this bitter morning in January the temperature hovers at about twenty degrees, though the wind rocketing down the river valley makes it feel worse. It snowed most of the night, three or four inches on top of a layer of ice left over from a previous storm. A few lonely cars sit in the parking lots, and most of the civilian workers have been told to stay home.
