by John Jakes
One was celerity. The army that could move fastest would gain the advantage. A transportation revolution was under way in America and the rest of the world. Even in this relatively depressed decade railroads were expanding everywhere. Railroads would make celerity more than a classroom theory; they would make it a reality.
Information was Mahan’s second new principle. Information from other than the traditional earthbound scouts. The professor loved to speculate about the use of balloons for observation, and about experiments now being conducted with coded messages sent long distances along a wire.
A great many cadets absorbed and pondered Mahan’s ideas, George and Orry were told. But few preached them as fanatically as Bent. This was impressed on them when they were unlucky enough to draw Bent as drillmaster a second time. Mahan taught that the great generals, such as Frederick and Napoleon, never fought merely to win a piece of ground but for a far more important objective—to crush utterly all means of enemy resistance. During drill, Bent delivered a queer little lecture in which he referred to this teaching of Mahan’s, then stressed the upperclassman’s duty to promote military discipline by crushing all resistance among the plebes.
A smile wreathed his sweaty face as he held forth. But his dark little eyes were humorless. Jackson was in the squad and that day became Bent’s particular target. Bent reviled the Virginian with the nickname Dunce. He did it not once but half a dozen times.
Back in barracks, Jackson declared that he thought Bent somewhat “tetched.” “And not a Christian. Not a Christian at all,” he added with his usual fervor.
George shrugged. “If someone slapped you with a first name like Elkanah, maybe you’d be crazy too.”
“I don’t know much about the Army,” Orry put in, “but I know Bent isn’t fit to command other men, and he never will be,”
“He’s just the kind that will make it, though,” George said. “Especially if he has those connections he brags about.”
It was traditional for the first classmen to fling their hats in the air at their last parade, then harry them around the Plain by kicking them and stabbing them with their bayonets. That was the entire West Point graduation.
Soon after the ceremony, the first classmen left, having willed or sold their uniforms and blankets to friends remaining behind. Each class then moved up, and the Board of Visitors, convened under the command of General Winfield Scott to examine the prospective graduates, now turned its attention to the prospective plebes.
General Scott was the nation’s foremost soldier, pompous and obese, but a great hero. His nickname, not always uttered affectionately, was Old Fuss and Feathers. He took up residence at the hotel with his daughters and presided at the entrance examinations, although he dozed through most of them. So did a majority of the regular Army officers who sat on the board. The work of the examinations was done by the professors, who could always be identified by what they wore—not regulation uniforms but dark blue coats and trousers with a military look.
The new cadets had been randomly sorted into small groups, or sections; all academic work at the Academy was done in sections. The examinations were patterned after regular classroom sessions. At West Point students did not passively receive lecture material and months later spew it back to the instructor in a test. Every day, according to a fixed schedule, certain members of each section recited. A blackboard was always used for this demonstration, as it was called.
At the examination George and Orry and the others had to step to a board and demonstrate their facility in all the required subjects. George had done no studying. But the examinations still didn’t worry him, and his relaxed manner showed it. He passed with no difficulty.
When Orry’s turn came, he found the examination room hotter than the pit, the officers bored—Scott was snoring—and the demonstration work an excruciating embarrassment. He and Jackson were being tested at the same time. It was a guess as to which one sweated more, squirmed more, or got more chalk on his clothes. Was such torture worth it for a cadet’s princely pay of fourteen dollars a month? Orry had to keep reminding himself that struggling at the board was the price of becoming a soldier.
At that he was lucky. Twenty young men failed and were sent home. The rest received uniforms; after these few weeks that had seemed endless, they were now officially plebes. Just to run a palm over the sleeve of his swallowtail coat of cadet gray was the greatest thrill Orry had ever experienced.
3
THE TWO-MONTH SUMMER encampment, prescribed by law, began July 1. Except for the new second classmen, who were home on furlough, the entire cadet corps pitched tents on the Plain. Orry was initiated into the mysteries of standing guard and of dealing with upperclassmen who came sneaking around in the dark to see whether they could confuse the new sentinel.
Bent was now a corporal. He placed Orry on report three times for different infractions. Orry thought two of the charges trumped up and one highly exaggerated. George urged him to submit a written excuse for the third offense to Captain Thomas, the commandant of cadets. If the excuse was sufficiently persuasive, the report would be removed. But Orry had heard that Thomas was a stickler for grammar and felicitous phrasing and often kept a cadet in front of him for an hour, while, together, they corrected the written excuse. It sounded too much like blackboard demonstration, so he let all the reports stand and collected the demerits for each.
George seemed to be Bent’s favorite target. Somehow he always managed to wind up in the Ohioan’s detail. When the plebes policed the encampment, Bent hazed George to exhaustion by making him pick up pebbles and straighten blades of grass the corporal claimed were crooked. George wasn’t good at keeping his temper—much to Bent’s delight. He collected demerits—skins, the cadets sometimes called them—at a dizzy rate. He soon had three times the number that Orry did.
Despite the cramped tents, bad food, and incessant ragging by a few of the upperclassmen who criticized everything about the plebes from their salutes to their ancestors, the encampment delighted Orry. He relished the infantry and artillery drills that occupied most of the day. The evening parades, watched by visitors from the hotel, were splendid martial demonstrations that made all the travails worthwhile.
A cadet hop was held each week. To make sure there were enough partners for the ladies who attended, the Academy offered its students the services of a German dancing master. George brushed up on the jig and double shuffle and attended every hop if he wasn’t on duty. Plebes were permitted to mingle with the female guests, but of course had to defer to upperclassmen at all times. In spite of this, George enjoyed himself immensely and on several occasions strolled down Flirtation Walk with a girl—a deliberate defiance of the rules that placed certain sections of the post off limits to members of his class.
One night after a hop, George crawled into the tent with the smell of cigars on him. He found Orry still awake and urged his friend to join him at next week’s dance.
“I’m a terrible dancer.” Orry yawned. “I never have enough nerve to hold a girl firmly. I reckon my trouble is that I think of a woman as an object to be admired from a distance, like a statue.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” George whispered. “Women are meant to be touched and used—like a nice old winter glove. They like it.”
“George, I can’t believe that. Women don’t think the same thoughts as men. They’re delicate creatures. Refined.”
“They only pretend to be delicate and refined because it sometimes suits their purposes. Believe me, Orry, a woman wants exactly what a man wants. She just isn’t allowed to admit it, that’s all. You’d better get over that romantic view of the fair sex. If you don’t, one of these days some woman will break your heart.”
Orry suspected George was right. But he still couldn’t bring himself to attend a hop that summer.
At the end of August the furloughed class returned and the corps of cadets moved back to barracks. On that day upperclassmen took advantage of the plebes as beasts of burden,
ordering them to carry their gear. Corporal Bent sought out George, who made four trips with staggering loads in ninety-eight-degree heat. At the start of the fifth trip Bent ordered him to run. George got halfway up the stairs in North Barracks, gasped, and passed out.
He bloodied his forehead as he crashed to the landing below. Bent didn’t apologize or express sympathy. He placed George on report for damaging an upperclassman’s belongings through carelessness. Orry urged that his roommate write an excuse.
George said no. “I’d have to admit I swooned like a girl. I don’t want that on my record. But don’t worry, I’ll get that bastard. If not next week, then next month or next year.”
Orry was starting to feel the same way.
The morning gun, the evening gun, the fifes and the drum soon became familiar sounds, even friendly ones. It was the drum Orry liked best. It not only served as a kind of clock; it reminded him of why he was here. It cheered him up whenever he felt the classroom work was too hard—which was almost every time he went to the board.
Plebes received instruction in mathematics during the morning and in French during the afternoon. For the first week sections were organized on a random basis. Then at week’s end new cadets were ranked. Orry found himself in the mathematics section second from the bottom. In French he was in the lowest section—among the immortals, as the cadets called them.
Orry’s French section recited to Lieutenant Théophile d’Orémieulx, born in France and Gallic from his shrug to his peg-top trousers. He was highly critical of the accents and abilities of his pupils, and his grading showed it.
Class standings were announced once a week at parade. Some cadets rotated in or out of the lowest French section, but Orry remained. This led d’Orémieulx to question him about his background. Orry was prodded to admit that the founder of the Main family had been a Frenchman.
“Then surely your relatives speak the language?”
“No, not anymore, I’m embarrassed to say. My mother can read a little, and my sisters are being tutored in French, but that’s all.”
“God above,” cried the instructor, storming around the room. “How do they expect me to instruct barbarians? I might as well try to teach the M’sieu Attila to paint teacups.”
The conversation only seemed to worsen Orry’s relationship with the instructor. One day in October, after Orry had given an especially halting recitation, d’Orémieulx blew up:
“Let me tell you something, M’sieu Main. If the M’sieu Jesu Chri were to say to me, ‘M’sieu d’Orémieulx, will you listen to M’sieu Main speak French or will you go to the hell,’ I would say to him ‘I will go to the hell, s’il vous plaît, M’sieu Jesu Chri.’ Sit down. Sit down!”
Next day, Orry started practicing his French aloud. He did this whenever he was alone in his room. Bent was always snooping around and two days later caught him during one of these recitations. The Ohioan roared into the room, demanding to know what was going on. When Orry explained, Bent scoffed.
“You are entertaining someone in here, sir. Socializing.”
Orry reddened. “Sir, I am not. Look for yourself, sir—”
But the corporal had already waddled out. He placed Orry on report for attempting to deceive a superior.
Orry wrote an excuse. After an awkward interview with Captain Thomas, he got the report removed. He learned later that Bent had raved and cursed for ten minutes when he heard the news.
The autumn went faster than Orry had expected. Formations, drill, classroom work, and endless study left little time for anything else. The West Point system was founded on filling all a cadet’s waking moments. Only on Saturday afternoons were plebes free to do what they wished, and often that time had to be spent walking extra rounds of guard duty to work off demerits.
In bad weather the duty was miserable. Superintendent Delafield, nicknamed Old Dickey, had some strange ways of economizing. One was his refusal to issue overcoats until after the January examinations. Why give a cadet an expensive coat he would carry off with him if he were dismissed? Consequently, in autumn’s rain and sleet, new cadets stood guard clad only in thin, incredibly filthy sentinel overcoats that had been in the guardroom, collecting dirt and vermin, for years.
George still didn’t study much, but he was always in the first or second sections of mathematics and French. He already had 110 demerits; Orry had 93. Bent was responsible for two-thirds of both totals.
Harassment by the Ohioan slacked off as the January examinations drew near. Orry took to sneaking down to Tom Jackson’s room after lights out. They studied together by the glow of banked coals in the fireplace.
Orry regarded Jackson as inherently intelligent, perhaps even brilliant, yet the Virginian had a lot of trouble with lessons and formal classroom routine; each passing mark he obtained required a monumental struggle. Still, he was determined to succeed, and some of the other cadets recognized this extraordinary drive; Jackson had already acquired his cadet nickname, General.
Sometimes, though, Orry thought Jackson was crazy—as when he would sit upright for five minutes at a time so that his internal organs could “hang and arrange themselves properly.” He was maniacal on the subject of his own health.
George wrote an occasional letter home; Orry wrote a great many and received an equal number. But letters didn’t help as the end of December drew near. Never before had Orry been away from the family plantation at Christmas, and he got quite sentimental over the fact. Showing rare emotion, George admitted that he too would miss home a great deal. Finally, Christmas dawned, and although the chaplain preached an inspiring sermon in the chapel and the mess hall served a fine dinner, the day was a sad and lonely one for most of the cadets.
Soon bitter January weather closed in. Dismal skies lowered spirits as examinations loomed. The Hudson started to freeze, but Orry was hardly aware of it. Even when he stood guard duty in a snowstorm, his mind was on French.
Somehow he survived the inquisition at the blackboard, After the results of the examinations were announced, he whooped and crowed outside his room while less fortunate cadets silently packed their trunks. Sixteen plebes took the Canterberry road. The others took the oath, signed the articles of enlistment—and received a cadet overcoat.
February was only a couple of days old when George made a daring proposal to his roommate. “I’m all out of cigars. And we never really celebrated our brilliant success with the examinations. Let’s run it down to Benny’s.”
Orry looked toward the window. Moonlight touched starry patterns of frost on the glass; the fireplace did little to relieve the night’s fierce cold. The Hudson had frozen over almost completely now.
“In this weather? At this hour?” Orry looked dubious. Tattoo and taps would be sounded soon.
George jumped up from his bed; he had been reading a novel. “Of course. We’ve yet to visit that esteemed landmark. We owe ourselves a celebration. Where’s your spirit of adventure?” He was already donning his new overcoat.
Orry’s inclination was to say no. But some of George’s past remarks about his hesitant nature prodded him to do the opposite. Half an hour after lights out, they sneaked down the iron stairs, eluded the guards, and ran toward the river in the bitter, breathtaking cold.
They scrambled down the path on the side of the bluff and tried to make their way through the snow and frozen underbrush along the shore. They found it hard going. George squinted at the glaring expanse of white to their left.
“It’ll be easier if we walk on the ice.”
“Think it’s thick enough to hold us?”
George’s pale eyes reflected the moon sailing high above the Hudson Highlands. “We’ll soon find out.”
Orry followed his friend, chastising himself for his eternal failure to act boldly. What sort of behavior was that for someone who might be called upon to lead a battlefield charge? He stepped onto the slippery ice and heard a sharp creak.
Ahead, George stopped. “What was that?”
; Orry peered at the black mass of the bluff above them. “I thought it came from up there.”
“You don’t suppose someone’s following us?”
Orry looked around. On the moonlit ice they would be completely visible from shore. “It’s too late to worry about that.”
George agreed. They pressed ahead. Several times the ice creaked and threatened to break beneath them; it really was too thin for safe passage. But there were no signs of pursuit, and very shortly they were peering over a windowsill at the cozy fire burning inside Benny Haven’s little drinking establishment on the riverbank. George rubbed his hands together, then blew on them.
“Luck’s with us. Not an upperclassman in sight.”
In fact Benny Haven had no customers from the post and only two from the village of Buttermilk Falls, located on the bluff above the tavern. Genial, middle-aged Benny had black hair, a big nose, and features reminiscent of an Indian’s. He had been selling beer, wine, and ardent spirits for more years than the cadets could remember or the tactical officers cared to acknowledge. He greeted the two arrivals cordially. The townsmen gave them sullen looks.
George ordered three cigars and two pots of beer. The friends sat at a corner table next to a window with a view of the stoop. Should an upperclassman show up, they could cut for the curtained doorway beside the fieldstone chimney. Orry relaxed a little, enjoying the taste of the beer and the smell of hot ham drifting from the kitchen in back. He ordered a plate of ham and some bread.
Benny served the food, then struck up a conversation. As a newcomer Orry was very welcome, Benny said. But Orry’s accent identified him as a Southerner. Hence Benny couldn’t help asking politely about the Southern clamor for the annexation of Texas. Was it motivated by a desire on the part of politicians to add more slave territory to the Union?
Orry had heard the charge too often to be offended. Besides, his brother Cooper—much to the annoyance of their father—said it was true. Orry took his time framing a reply.