Duty First

by Ed Ruggero

  “They [cadets] love to talk about other colleges, where their old high school classmates ‘party every night,’ ‘never go to class,’ ‘get all the girls,’ ‘slam heavy beers,’ and live disgustingly hedonistic lives. The fantastic nature of this description of civilian life meets with no disagreement.”

  Another plebe, in an essay for English class, wrote about attending a concert at Eisenhower Hall, the cadet recreation center. He found himself “inspecting” the college students in the audience and silently criticizing their shoes (“gross”), haircuts (“what haircuts?”), dress, and even posture. Then in a flash of self-awareness, he thought, “What am I doing? Just a few months ago, that’s what I looked like! What’s happened to me?”

  In Making the Corps, a dead-on study of the military and the society it serves, author Tom Ricks writes about young Marines going home on leave after basic training and being disgusted by the civilians around them, whom they suddenly see as unmotivated, slovenly, fat, lazy.

  Pride and camaraderie are part of what makes the military work, but this separateness can lead to problems. West Point cadets, in particular, may be too isolated from their civilian peers. Many of the regular Army officers and NCOs at West Point blame this isolation for the fact that some cadets are ill-suited to relate to the young soldiers they will lead.

  As strong sunlight comes through the big windows, warming the room, Jacque Messel sits at her desk, reviewing her daily schedule. She gets up at 5:30, wraps in a robe and shower shoes and makes her way to the female latrine, which is two floors down in this vertical barracks. She and her roommates clean their room: empty the wastebasket, dust every surface, polish the mirrors, clean the sink, put away all books and papers, ensure that all of the uniforms in the closet are in order (most formal to least formal) and hanging neatly. They sweep the floor, read the newspaper on-line for one or two articles they will have to command. They memorize the day’s menu for breakfast (fried eggs, pancakes, maple syrup, orange juice, milk, yogurt, Canadian bacon), then head out to breakfast formation at 6:30.

  They march to breakfast, do table duties (“There are four and a butt servings of Canadian bacon remaining on the table, sir!”), scarf down a meal that is notably short of fresh food, then hurry back to the barracks to pick up books. Classes and study in the mornings, with side trips to pick up uniforms at the tailors, shoes that have been resoled. There are appointments for shots and checkups, athletic equipment to draw or turn in. Lunch is a repeat of breakfast: the same accountability formation, the same menu of gray food. More classes in the afternoon, more studying, trying to get a start on group projects as she juggles daily assignments: physical education, math, chemistry, English, history. After class she hurries to dress for Team Handball. Then back to the barracks to clean the baseboards along the metal stairs, deliver laundry to upperclass rooms.

  Messel goes to the Mess Hall to grab some take-out food for dinner and is in her room for the evening study period by 7:30. She and her roommates sit at their desks, help one another with common assignments. Sometimes they take a break, and Messel will play her guitar.

  This schedule grinds on relentlessly for weeks at a time, which is why cadets—plebes especially—so look forward to the milestones that mark the changes in their status. For plebes, the biggest change comes with Recognition, when the most extreme strictures of plebe year end abruptly. Among the things that change with this ceremony: Upperclass men are able to talk to plebe women socially.

  “The yearling and cow guys are paying more attention to the plebe women,” Messel says. They are jockeying for position for when they are allowed to date, after graduation day and the end of the year. But for Messel, dating is too much of a distraction in the constant time crunch that is cadet life.

  “It’s not even close to my top priority,” she says. Her needs are simpler than that right now. “I miss just being able to sit and talk to people. There’s always something that needs to be done here.”

  During her first summer, Messel made comments like these as if she were justifying resigning. Now, she sounds like someone who has decided to cope.

  “Beast Barracks was a tough time,” she says. “But it’s good to know you can make it through tough times. It gives you something you can use to compare other things with.”

  Messel enters Thayer Hall with the throngs in gray and finds her seat next to Pete Haglin. The class is a history survey course (American History after 1865); the instructor is Major Rikard, a graduate of the University of Kentucky. Rikard is energetic, with a heavy accent and long vowels of his home state. Like most of the other instructors, Major Rikard’s class is organized to an astonishing degree.

  After taking the report, Rikard begins by going over an ID sheet the cadets completed in last class. Then he uses a slide to show a numerical analysis of how their section fared in comparison to other tests they’ve taken and to other sections’ performance.

  Every class meeting is organized around objectives and learning points; the study questions provide a framework, but they also demand that the instructor keep up a fairly rapid pace in order to cover the material. In a dozen other classrooms along this same hallway, other cadets are receiving the exact same instruction. The method ensures that all cadets in a particular course are graded on the same material according to the same standard. It does not provide much flexibility for either the students or the instructors.

  Click. An outline of the class flashes on the board, down to the specific learning objectives and the topics for that lesson: “New Manifest Destiny,” “A Splendid Little War,” and “The New American Empire.”

  “What does imperialism mean to you?” Rikard asks, his voice powerful. He is a stocky man, with a gleaming bald head and glasses, and the body of a football player gone soft. He has a friendly face, the kind a stranger might approach to ask directions.

  A cadet raises his hand. “It means that a nation expands its power through military force, economics, migration, and, uh, reverse assimilation.”

  Rikard raises his eyebrows, impressed.

  “Good job, good job,” he says encouragingly. “Glad to see you’ve been doing the readings.”

  The discussion moves on to Manifest Destiny. Along the back wall, Haglin looks sleepy. Messel jabs him with an elbow. Rikard puts up a slide that shows a nineteenth-century painting entitled Manifest Destiny. The painting shows an angelic Columbia, gilding over a landscape that looks like the Great Plains. Beneath and behind her, a railroad engine chugs west, as does a wagon train. She strings telegraph wire from one giant hand. Behind her is light, ahead of her is the darkness. In the lower left-hand corner, small dark figures—the first inhabitants of the Plains, scurry out of the way.

  “God is telling us to expand west,” a cadet explains.

  Rikard puts up more images. One, an ad for soap, shows Admiral Dewey, hero of the Battle of Manila in America’s war with Spain. Dewey, dressed in angelic white, is scrubbing his hands. The text talks about the white man’s burden to bring civilization to the unwashed masses of the world. The symbols are unsophisticated, immediately apparent.

  Given enough time, Rikard says, he might ask why Americans of a hundred years earlier, who considered themselves enlightened, fell for such obvious manipulation. He might pose a tougher question to his class: are Americans today still being manipulated? Will our advertising, our cultural artifacts look just as simplistic and misguided to an audience a hundred years from now? But there is too much to cover. The cadets scribble on their handout sheets, checking off the learning objectives.

  Click. Another slide.

  The discussion moves to the Spanish-American War. Rikard mentions that although popular opinion in the United States was inflamed by the “yellow press,” the Spanish occupying Cuba were in fact brutal oppressors.

  Click. Another slide.

  Rikard says that the United States suffered 460 battle deaths, but lost 5,200 to disease.

  The cadets write these numbers down. Across the
room, Haglin is asleep. Rikard moves inside the horseshoe of desks to stand near him. When Haglin doesn’t respond, the instructor tells him to stand.

  Rikard moves quickly to another aspect of what he calls the “Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War.”

  The United States, he points out, quickly became bogged down in a guerrilla war, fighting Filipinos who didn’t want to trade Spanish rulers for American rulers. Rikard mocks President McKinley’s comments about annexing the Philippine Islands to “educate and uplift” the native people.

  “It was about access to the markets in China,” Rikard says.

  Haglin, standing behind his chair, still looks sleepy. Beside him, Jacque Messel’s eyelids keep sliding closed.

  Rikard starts a film about the guerrilla war in the Philippines. There are black-and-white stills of American soldiers in a trench, firing their rifles. White smoke drifts over the scene. There are photos of twisted corpses in blue shirts and khaki pants; they are Americans. In another shot, the bodies are Filipino guerrillas.

  “This was a brutal war,” the film’s narrator says.

  Racism played a part in the brutality: It was in this conflict that the word “gook” was first used by GIs. The narrator points out that there was substantial resistance to the war on the home front. “Many saw a war against a native people seeking self-rule as a monstrous twist of American ideals.”

  The screen shows a photo of Andrew Carnegie, who offered to pay the United States government twenty million dollars to buy Philippine independence.

  There is no sign that the cadets connect what’s on the screen with their own future as soldiers in an imperial Army. They do not draw parallels between what happened in the Philippines and what happened in Vietnam. “We don’t have much time for discussion,” Rikard says. Since this is a survey course we just have so much material to cover that it’s hard to go off on side conversations.”

  Critics of the West Point education—in uniform and out—say that it sacrifices depth for breadth. There is just too much going on. One graduate said that learning at West Point is “like trying to get a sip of water from an open fire hydrant.” Defenders point out that a large number of West Pointers go on to post-graduate education, including one Rhodes Scholar in the Class of 1999 and four in the Class of 2000 (making the Academy fourth in the nation in number of Rhodes scholars).

  West Point’s education may or may not compare with the Ivy League, but it is certainly adequate to the task. Being a junior officer a 1980 graduate said, isn’t all that intellectually challenging.

  “You don’t have to be an Alvin Einstein,” he said, thus proving his own point.

  THE WAY HE SHOULD GO

  Major Rob Olson walks quickly into his office, a sheaf of papers fluttering in his hand. Dressed in the long-sleeved shirt and black tie of his Class “A” uniform, he looks uncomfortable and—uncharacteristically—flustered.

  “Well, I just got my ass handed to me by the garrison commander’s staff,” he says, smiling.

  Olson is the executive officer for the next R-Day which means that he and his boss are responsible for setting up the conditions necessary so that the cadet cadre, the legions of Tacs, medics, and civilian workers can turn these high schoolers and enlisted soldiers into cadets in the six hours between report time and the parade.

  “This is my going-away present, Olson says. “I move [to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas] two days later.”

  The table in Olson’s office is covered with folders, fanned out in neat columns and rows, all labeled with R-Day concerns: issue points, traffic control, parents’ briefings. One sheet lists common parents’ questions: “Will my son/daughter be able to try out for varsity sports over the summer?” and, “How do I get football tickets?”

  R-Day is not a new event at West Point, of course, but the garrison commander—who controls most of the logistics, all of the military engineers, traffic, parking, everything that goes on at the post—is new to his job and wants to know the plan. His staff, eager to look good in the eyes of the new boss, asked Olson a lot of hardball questions.

  “I used to be excited about the prospect of being in the toughest spot,” he says. “I used to seek out the biggest challenges. But with this project,” he waves a blue folder, “I’m having to force myself to pay attention. This is the first time I’ve ever had to do that, and I’m a little concerned.”

  He puts a dip of tobacco between his lips and jaw, fetches a soda can from the sink. He spits into the can. He is quieter.

  “I’m a little concerned,” he says again, sitting at the conference table in his office. “I hope I don’t get out to the Army and find that I’ve lost it.”

  Outside the window, thin gray clouds skate by periodically. Everyone is watching the weather forecast with great interest, and the reports are still sketchy for graduation day. In the cadet area, things are in an uproar. The barracks are not in their usual state of upkeep. Firsties wander around in gym uniforms, moving stereos and computers and clothing and books, stacking the boxes in the hallways for shipment home or to their first duty station. Inside the rooms, bunks are unmade, every flat surface is covered with papers and books, the detritus of eight semesters of study, of forty-seven months of living in the barracks.

  Outside the rooms of the first class, discarded cardboard boxes contain trash, reams of paper, worn-out three-ring binders, gray tunics and white shirts and even old shoes. There are footlockers, with fresh labels identifying their owners as second lieutenants.

  The underclass rooms are better, but not by much. The plebes have packed up almost everything for the move out to Camp Buckner, where they will train after a short summer break. The yearlings and cows are scattering to assignments all over the Army to leave, to schools at Fort Benning, to training all over the world. Duffel bags and suitcases and piles of uniforms compete with boxes for hallway floor space.

  Sergeant First Class Donald Mercier, Company E-2’s Tac NCO, is trying to keep account of who is going where, of last-minute changes to school assignments, last-minute additions to summer school. He’s also trying to keep a handle on the barracks; he has to allow the cadets room and time to move, but he must also stress security of their belongings and safety above everything else.

  Rob Olson is focused elsewhere.

  “I’ve been reading a bunch of books from the business world to see how they define the difference between leadership and management,” he says. “I know what I can’t become, and that’s just another manager, the guy who worries about a resource problem because it’s a resource problem, instead of worrying about it because of the impact it would have on those who’ll suffer because of it.”

  Olson is looking ahead to the assignment that will follow his ten months of schooling at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. When he joins an artillery unit in the field, Olson will be one of only two majors in the unit, the second or third most senior man in a five-hundred-man outfit. As executive officer of a battalion, he’ll be squarely in charge of the staff officers and the unit’s physical resources; he will manage resources and people so the commander is free to prepare the unit for war. The job is a necessary step, but Olson does not want to become another bean counter, sitting behind his desk looking at spreadsheets and numbers representing unit readiness.

  But it isn’t just his anticipation of new responsibilities that has him worried.

  “My biggest fear is being promoted above my level of competence,” he confesses. “I mean, I was a pretty high-speed artillery captain. What if I turn out to be the world’s shittiest major?”

  “It’s not like when I was a lieutenant, and I was just one of a bunch of lieutenants. I’ll be one of two majors in the whole unit. I’ll go in there and people will probably know I’m a BZ [early promotion, called “below the zone”]; they’ll expect a lot. I don’t want to be in a situation where somebody pulls the curtain back and there’s the wizard … and I’m him.”

  Olson believes his fear will be enough to keep hi
m honest. The right level of anxiety will help him pay close attention to his new responsibilities. He also knows that leaving this job will be hard on him. “I’m leaving something I really love,” he says.

  The evening before, the company had a “Hail & Farewell,” a social event that is a tradition throughout the army: Arriving soldiers and families are welcomed, and the group says good-bye to those moving on.

  “First, we welcomed the new Tac and said good bye to the yearlings.”

  Cadets are shuffled to new companies at the end of their second year, the whole class redistributed throughout the corps.

  “Then the firsties. Saying good bye to them, that was the toughest speech I’ve ever had to give. Holly even said to me, after I was finished, ‘You got a little choked-up there. Glad to see you’ve got at least one sentimental bone in your body’ ”

  Olson spits into the can, then leans back in the chair and surveys the office, the walls covered with guidons, unit flags, plaques, and mementos, including his West Point diploma and his master’s degree. In the corner, the drawers of a gray, government-issue file cabinet are marked with class years: 1999 at the top, 2002 at the bottom.

  “Usually by this time, this close to leaving, I’d already have most of my shit packed up and ready to move.”

  Nothing is packed. There isn’t even an empty cardboard box waiting to be filled.

  Olson has never been as closely attached to the development of young people as he has been as a Tac. He likens the experience to watching his daughter head to the bus on her first day of school. The connection isn’t a function of how much time he’s spent with cadets. In fact, in Regular Army units he has spent more time close to soldiers, but there was always the gulf of rank. Most soldiers are not trying to emulate their officers, but cadets do watch their Tacs and say “I want to be like that,” or “I don’t want to be like that.”

  Olson is constantly amazed at how much he has learned from his job, especially when it comes to communicating. For instance, second class cadets have the same level of intelligence as a second lieutenant, but have absolutely no reference point of experience to help them make sense of things. It was up to Olson to give them the “why” with the “what.”