by Ed Ruggero
Madge checks to make sure Kevin isn’t around, then tells a story. When Kevin was six years old, the family visited Washington and went to the top of the Washington Monument. The elevator operator looked down at Kevin and asked him if he wanted to operate the lift. Kevin, wide-eyed and excited, said he did, and the man told him which button to push.
“Kevin pushed the button and that man announced to the whole elevator, ‘Look at this man, only six years old and already serving his country.’”
Dave Bradley says that Kevin grew up wanting to be a pilot. At a college fair, Kevin approached the table for the Air Force Academy.
“The guy noticed Kevin’s glasses and asked him about his vision. ‘You have to have 20/20 vision to fly for us,’ the Air Force guy said. And there was this guy from West Point sitting at the table right next to that, and he jumped up and said, ‘You can fly for us!’”
The Bradleys let their son find his own way into West Point. Kevin visited twice; after one of the trips he told his teacher-parents that he liked the way the classrooms were run. The sense of orderliness appealed to him, but the parents disagree as to whether Kevin ever had a particularly hard time.
“He didn’t like getting yelled at,” Madge says.
“He wasn’t much of a yeller himself,” his father agrees. “Kevin was captain of a couple of teams in high school, football and baseball. And he was always a quiet kind of leader. One of the coaches told me that Kevin would listen to the other kids, then he’d talk. And people would listen to him.”
“Cori told me I should have yelled at him more to get him ready,” Madge jokes.
He did, they agree, have a rough start to Beast in 1995: Kevin wound up in the hospital on R-Day with a stomach virus. He called home in a panic that he was already falling behind.
“I told him to just take it one day at a time,” Madge says. Then, after a pause, she adds, “I follow that advice in my life, too. When Kevin was a plebe I spent a lot of time worrying about stuff that never came to pass. So now I try not to worry. It’s a waste of energy. I’ll still worry some—I’m a mother—but I’ve learned that most of what we fear doesn’t happen.”
Kevin and some of the other cadets from the company team show up, wearing loose-fitting PT shorts and shirts and walking gingerly. Kevin has a long scratch on the inside of one thigh where brambles tore through his trousers. He reports that he has a welt, almost perfectly square, where his rifle gouged him between the shoulder blades as he was getting off the one-rope bridge.
The team digs into the meal laid out on the folding table, piling their plates high with sandwiches and brownies and chips. The underclass cadets are quiet; talk among the firsties soon turns to graduation week.
Kevin says that some parents are hosting a picnic on graduation day. The firsties have been invited to be “pinned” there. The new lieutenants will take the oath of office at Michie Stadium, then receive their diplomas. Later in the day, dressed in army greens, they will have their new gold bars pinned on. They can choose the time, the place, and even who will pin them.
Kevin winces as he sits on a cooler and flexes his legs, then lets himself smile as he talks about the ceremony. His parents, who are about to lose him again—first to training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and then to the U.S. Army in Europe—busy themselves with the details. How can we help? Can we chip in for food and drink? What time?
Kevin is a little short on details because there are just too many other things to worry about between now and graduation day. He finishes his sandwich, puts his paper plate on the ground, and stretches his tired legs in front of him. Then he checks his watch.
“Gotta go,” he says, pushing himself into an upright position.
He is, incredibly, off to practice diving with the Scuba Club.
“Thanks for lunch and everything, and for coming up,” he says, kissing his mother’s cheek.
The cadets say their thank you’s and hobble away to the next requirement. In a few minutes, the Bradleys are left alone. Dave watches his son as Kevin walks away across the grass.
“He takes advantage of every opportunity to learn that they offer him,” Dave says. Then he folds the picnic table and packs up what little food is left.
If West Point excels at anything, it is at taking advantage of learning opportunities. Early on a spring morning, Pete Haglin is experiencing one of these “developmental opportunities.”
Haglin is the “section marcher” for his boxing class, responsible for getting the class ready: everyone in uniform, attendance taken, mouthpieces in, headgear on, lined up in two ranks before the instructor. Every general who went to West Point started out in charge of such a group. Haglin moves quickly to one of a half dozen lockers in the big boxing room and pulls out the equipment for class. Then he consults a pocket-sized notebook, calls names, and checks that everyone is properly outfitted. It is 7:30 in the morning, in the second semester of his freshman year in college.
The cadets pop to attention when the instructors enter the boxing room, which looks like a movie set for a period film. Built in the thirties, it is seventy feet long by thirty wide, with arched windows high in the front wall, exposed steel beams, and lots of worn brick. The lower parts of the walls are covered with thick yellow pads. A dozen heavy bags hang from chains at the front of the room, near the door. Tall mirrors stretch for twenty feet along the wall opposite the windows. The cadets move in a round robin of warm-ups, from the exercises to the heavy bags to the mirrors for shadowboxing. Then they gather at the end of the room where the ring waits.
Major White, the lead instructor, climbs into the ring. He is a big man, a former Army football player, handsome and muscled like a bodybuilder. White wears polished black coach’s shoes, prim white socks pulled up above his ankles. His black shorts are, in the style of DPE, tight, like cut-off spandex. His shirtsleeves grip his biceps. The baggy look hasn’t caught on here. His clothes look tailored, or deliberately shrunk.
The cadets have been moving continuously since the beginning of the class, going on fifteen minutes by the time they gather at the ring.
“I want you to get a little taste of what it’s like to be a boxer,” White thunders. “You’re going to have a couple of puny little one-minute rounds in a fifty-minute class. Think about these pros, training five, six, seven hours a day, going round after three-minute round. Boxers are some of the best-conditioned athletes in sports.”
Boxing is a required sport for all plebe men. The whole course lasts only nineteen lessons, but it has an effect all out of proportion to its duration. Plebe boxing is the source of a wealth of stories these men will tell for years to come because, for most of them, it is the first time they have had to confront real physical fear. The boxing ring, with its stained mat and unforgiving ropes, is where these future warriors learn about courage.
Haglin climbs into the ring. He wears a head guard with a bridge because he’s broken his nose three times as a kid: once paying soccer, once playing basketball, once in a fistfight. But the bridge is in his way, and to see to the front he has to cock his head like a bird. He takes his corner, bangs his fists together as he shuffles from one foot to the other.
Haglin, who stands about five ten, has a good reach on his opponent, who is an inch or two shorter. But the other boxer is much thicker, maybe twenty pounds heavier. And apparently fearless. When White calls out, “Box,” Haglin’s opponent strides across the ring and delivers a series of jabs like jackhammer blows. None of them connects hard enough to stagger Haglin, but he gives up the initiative. His feet move too fast, his punches are a bit off the mark. Still, unlike some of the other boxers this morning, he is more concerned with landing solid punches than with simply avoiding getting hit.
“Good-looking jab,” White calls out as the shorter cadet snaps Haglin’s head back. “Use a combination now.”
White expects them to think on their feet, to make quick decisions. The cadets know, intellectually, that they aren’t going to be hurt badly (altho
ugh boxing does cause a few concussions every round). Acting on that is another matter.
At the beginning of the second round, Haglin enters the ring with more determination. His opponent wades in gamely, though without finesse, and fires a couple of powerful jabs. Tired now, he also drops his arms obligingly every time he punches. Haglin sees it, takes advantage of the mistake and lands a few jabs of his own, more sure of himself than in the first round.
Few of the cadets here show natural ability (Haglin’s opponent is an exception); but the worst appellation to earn in boxing isn’t that of being a poor boxer—there are poor boxers by the double handful—but of being a coward. For that reason most of the plebes are willing to take a few punches just to get inside and land a solid blow.
Size is no indication of who will fight. A short cadet pulls his arms in tight, his fists beside his forehead, and glides in close to his opponent, coming in so low that his knee bangs the floor. All during this approach he is getting punched in the head; because he doesn’t have much reach, the shorter fighter has to get in close to connect.
Forty-five minutes into the class Major White calls the plebes together; they stand, big gloves on their hips, breathing heavily. Their gray T-shirts are black with sweat at the collars and armpits.
“How do you feel?” White asks the class. They nod, grunt in some way that sounds vaguely positive.
“This is a game of chess in here. Only instead of losing your queen, you get punched in the head. You’ve got to think.”
White moves about the ring, looking every cadet in the eye. Some of the plebes are a little disoriented. The next class, they know, they’ll go up against the cadets in the other section, the ones in the next room who are learning with other instructors. They know the other men; they might be in the same classes, in the same company. They might even be roommates. But in the ring, the other boxer is just a big red target, a pair of gloves looking to connect with your nose.
“I’m going to tell you straight up,” White says. “I don’t want to go over there and lose.”
He is low-key, his voice strong.
“Now, some of the other instructors are going to tell their people what to do for the first three or four punches. They’re going to say, ‘Go in there, throw two jabs, then a combination,’ or ‘Two jabs, then a straight right.’ The plan is that if the boxer doesn’t have to think, they’ll get over that initial nervousness.”
A couple of cadets nod when he mentions nerves.
“I’m going to make it even easier on you guys. I want you to walk across that ring, walk right up to your opponent and throw a big right cross. That’s going to break the ice.”
There are a few laughs in the crowd as they imagine how it might feel to take charge of the fight from the beginning.
“You’re both going to be nervous; hit him first and you’re going to pass all your nervousness over to your opponent. Now, a third of the guys I teach knock their opponents down when they do this.”
The cadets in the audience chance a look around. One-third sounds like a big piece; but no one is about to dispute the towering figure in the ring. They’re thinking about how to get through the next class, how to win a bout with a fighter they haven’t yet laid eyes on. As always, the clock moves toward the next requirement.
At the end of the class Haglin removes his equipment; his face is red with perspiration and has deep lines from the tight-fitting headgear. He watches his classmates stow their gloves and gear, makes sure the lockers are neat. Then the cadets form two files facing the door. Haglin calls the class to attention, salutes the instructor, turns, and dismisses the class. The sixteen men shout, “Beat the snot out of the other section, sir!” Then they hustle out of the room.
Haglin lives in Lee Barracks, the farthest from the Mess Hall, gym, and academic buildings. While many of the oldest barracks have been renovated and updated, Lee, built in 1962, is a bit shabby in comparison. Across the small courtyard, there is evidence of construction: a long plastic trash chute hangs from an open window into a dumpster. Because the rooms being renovated are empty, the cadets in Lee live three to a two-person room.
Haglin just lost his roommate, who left abruptly because of bad grades. On Saturday night Haglin was given twenty-four hours to move into a room with two other plebes. He moved everything, but the room is still in disarray and he isn’t sure where some of his uniforms are. A sign on the door announces “PMI,” (afternoon inspection) which is a more relaxed state of room repair than AMI (morning inspection) and SAMI (Saturday morning inspection—which requires the greatest preparation). The chain of command has allowed Haglin and his roommates some slack; they are allowed to have what is, by West Point standards, a messy room.
The L shaped desks, with space for computers, overwhelm the room. A set of bunk beds is pressed up against one wall; a tall dresser at the foot crowds the front of the wardrobe. The opposite wall holds a sink with two clothes hampers and medicine cabinets, a rifle rack, and coat closet. The closet, made for two sets of uniforms, is stuffed with three. On the floor beneath the beds are ranks of polished shoes and boots. The room has the rank smell peculiar to teenage boys: gym socks and athletic shoes and body odor.
On the top bunk, a blanket thrown like a coverlet seems startlingly out of place here. Haglin folds it, then goes into a desk drawer and pulls out a powdered sports drink, which he pours into a plastic bottle. He fills the bottle at the sink as he talks. He turns on the stereo, keeps the volume low. Study conditions. A Counting Crows song comes on, but just barely. Haglin talks about his Saturday night, which he spent moving his uniforms, books, computer, and issued gear from another floor. Still, the work didn’t cut in on his social schedule.
“There’s almost no social life here,” he says. “It’s a big deal if a couple of us get a pizza and hang out in someone’s room to watch a movie [on a computer monitor].”
The plebes of this class are the first to have computers that will play movies from compact discs. No one from the class of 2001 on up misses the chance to comment that the plebes are going soft. The reality is three or four plebes, sitting on the cold floor, or on the hard desks or footlockers, trying to watch a feature movie on a computer screen.
On his bookshelf Haglin has a frame with a collage of photos. One shows a sign in front of his high school; the movable letters read, “Pete Haglin: Good Luck at West Point.” There are several shots of his family: one of him, his parents, and two sisters; another, a studio shot, shows him and his sisters, posing with their dog.
“I had a girlfriend at home,” he says. “She sent me letters all through Beast, and packages of food. But then when I was at home [over Christmas leave] she started getting all serious and talking about our life together after college.”
He shakes his head, takes a sip of his drink. “I can’t imagine planning that far ahead right now.”
Haglin’s roommates come in. Cole is tall, with light brown hair, and a cool politeness. Berliner, the other roommate, has a boyish face and pleasant smile, curly hair, and small, round glasses. The three of them talk about an English paper due that day, then about the lunch menu (which they must memorize), then about Cole’s move to another table in the Mess Hall.
“I was on some laid-back tables for a couple of months,” Cole says. “I got used to it. Now I’m at a hard table. The other day I gave the table comm a glass that wasn’t new, the plastic was a little cloudy. He hollered at me and said, ‘That’s a plebe cup,’ and sent it back down.”
Like all the plebes, these three have a finely honed sense of justice. They complain that the upper class take their food first, while the plebes get theirs last. No one at the table eats until the plebes have completed their duties, but the plebes notice when upperclass cadets take larger portions.
Haglin gathers his towel and excuses himself to go shower.
Berliner is from Bethel, Alaska; a town, he proudly reports, that you “can’t drive to. You’ve got to fly or take a boat.”
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bsp; “I was surprised at how much people looked up to me because I was going to West Point,” Berliner says. “Our town only ever sent one kid here before this, and he didn’t make it through the first semester. When I was back home [at Christmas], they even asked me to be a guest speaker at this dinner in town,” he says.
“But it brings some pressure,” he admits. “Like you have to be on at all times.”
Berliner ties a piece of flat rubber to one of the posts of the bunk bed, unfolds a paper that shows drawings of rehabilitative exercises, and begins moving his arms.
“I did this on the Indoor Obstacle Course,” he reports, indicating his shoulder. “Wrenched it pulling myself up onto the shelf.”
He managed to go on for a few more yards, but nearly lost his grip when he sidled out onto the bars ten feet above the gym floor. That’s when he thought he should stop. Boxing didn’t go much better for him.
“I’m famous for getting knocked out,” he says unself-consciously.
Berliner got knocked down for an eight count, but got back up and resumed the fight.
“I found out later, after talking to the guy I boxed, that he was holding back. He was afraid he was going to hurt me.” He smiles. “And I thought I was getting better.”
Berliner landed a few punches, so whatever sympathy he had engendered disappeared. His opponent knocked him out. He tells this story while exercising his stick-thin arms.
Haglin returns from the locker room and begins to dress. He has a tattoo on his right shoulder, a squarish character. It is his Korean name: Yung, which means “Dragon.”
“I got it over Columbus Day Weekend,” he reports. “It’s OK, as long as it doesn’t show when you’re in uniform.”
The tattoo is one aspect of his “Preserve Pete Haglin” campaign. Body decorating provides a chance to express himself in a fashion that isn’t designed by West Point, that isn’t directed at some institutional goal. Haglin says the stocky boxer who pushed him around the ring this morning has a pierced tongue; incredibly, he wears the post all the time.
