Dress Gray

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “SIR, I HAVE SHOWERED AND SHAVED AND IT HAS BEEN (X) DAYS SINCE MY LAST BOWEL MOVEMENT, SIR!”

  They saw the plebes struggling through obstacle courses out in the field, making it over walls they never thought they’d cross, not in a million years. And then listened to the plebes at night, listened to them crying themselves to sleep because they all figured, each one of them, they were the only people on earth who knew the feeling of true pain, what it was to hit bottom, the experience of total failure, the reality, bitter and cruel, to have completely lost your sense of manhood. The upperclassmen knew their plebes; they identified with them, because they had been there. They knew what it was. They’d been plebes. And Beast Barracks … hell. This was their second Beast, they liked to joke. The fuckers who didn’t draw Beast Detail didn’t know what it was all about. Two Beasts … Jesus.

  Ry Slaight joined in drinking Cokes and joking on the stoops because that’s what you did with your nights, and because what was true for the rest of them was true for him. Everything was pretty much of a bell curve at West Point. The squads in Sixth New Cadet Company were all the same. When all was said and done, when all the beans had been divvied up, there was really very little deviation from the norm. Every squad leader had his good guys, his averages, and his fuck-ups. In any squad, it would be three or four good beans, three or four take ‘em or leave ‘em beans, and a couple of dead-ahead fuck-ups. In yearling math they’d studied statistics and probability, and sure enough, that’s the way it broke down, so neat you could predict what you’d get with your slide rule.

  And then there was David Hand.

  The kid from New Orleans was where it all broke down and fell apart. He was one of your classic Special Cases—Exceptions to the Proverbial Rule. There was nothing in any textbook, no chapter they’d read in Military Psychology and Leadership, no number on the slide rule to explain the phenomenon of David Hand. He simply could not be categorized. He was the closest thing anybody had ever seen to The Perfect Plebe.

  David Hand could do everything, and do it better than any new cadet in the company—hell, in the entire Beast Barracks regiment of plebes. At drill, his movements were crisp, precise, executed with an uncanny sense of timing, like a dancer. He could flip an M-14 rifle around like he’d spent four years on a high school ROTC drill team, which he had not. He picked up rifle drill fast and loose, the way he picked up everything else. Bayonet drill … he was like a combat vet, hungry and mean. The daily dozen … he could do more push-ups, more squat-jumps, more sit-ups, more of any exercise in the army daily dozen than anybody in the company.

  Back in the barracks, his shoes, his clothing, his locker, his bed—all were exemplary. He learned Plebe Knowledge a full two steps ahead of everyone else in the squad. He knew the famous “How is the cow?” poop when the rest of them were still stumbling over their three answers.

  “Sir, she walks, she talks, she’s full of chalk, the lacteal fluid extracted from the female of the bovine species is highly prolific to the nth degree.” The words tumbled from his mouth like dice coming up seven every time, maddeningly perfect.

  In the mess hall, he never made a mistake at the squad table. When it was his turn to be cold beverage corporal, the plebe who sat at the end of the table opposite Slaight, table commandant, Hand whipped out the beverages like he’d been born with a pitcher in one hand and a bucket of ice in the other, like a First Avenue singles bar bartender, he was so quick. It was impossible to catch Hand making a mistake because he simply did not make them. He was perfect.

  But David Hand was a problem, because he was aloof from his classmates. Despite the frequent warnings of his squad leader, Slaight, who knew of such matters, Hand had an attitude. His attitude was aristocratic, mirrored like the toes of his shoes, shiny perfection. He was better than the rest of them; therefore he needn’t stoop to their level. This was not the way of the plebe, and Hand knew it. He flaunted his attitude like an invisible red flag, and upperclassmen charged, only to be repelled by Hand’s command of West Point’s ways. He had the shit down.

  Not so his roommates. Dippel and Woodruff were the squad fuck-ups, a pair of dufus beans who were lucky to put on their pants right-side-out in the morning. Nothing they did was right. Their shoes looked like somebody had shined them with a chocolate bar. Their uniforms hung like parachute cloth, billowing at the back, gathered at the ankles, draped in grubby folds from the shoulders. Their beds looked like they’d been made by the help at a cheap motel. When it came to marching, Dippel went one way and Woodruff the other. Marching in step, to the beat of the big bass drum, seemed a near impossibility. They bounced and bobbed against the tide of the company formation. They were out of synch. They were classic fuck-ups.

  In any military organization, there is always congenital affection for true fuck-ups. The institution understands that they have to be protected—from themselves, as much as from anyone else. And there is humor. Fuck-ups are funny. They have to be. At bottom, humor is the final survival mechanism. Without a sense of humor, they might as well cash their checks. Hand’s roommates fit the pattern. Dippel was so gangling and awkward, watching him get out of bed was like watching a baby bird trying to fly—all legs and wings, flapping around, sheets and blankets flying, everything moving except Dippel’s torso, which attached itself to the mattress, refusing to budge until his bed self-destructed, taking with it the better part of his uniform supply, hanging in a neat row along the wall of his alcove next to his bed. By the time Dippel hit the deck, the area of his bunk looked eligible for federal disaster relief.

  Woodruff was simply a monster—huge, at 250 pounds, six feet tall, one of those guys with no neck … his head disappeared into shoulders so huge it took three tailors to fit him for his uniforms, they hovered around him with pins sticking from their mouths, standing on little stepladders, chalking and pinning and muttering to each other. Woodruff’s uniforms probably cost double the average cadet’s.

  He’d been recruited to play football, and though he was an excellent athlete, up in the barracks he was just plain slow. Everything he touched took time. If there was one thing plebes did not have, it was time. So Woodruff was late. Late. And later. He was the kind of guy who found zipping his pants a true challenge, who’d grab his roommate’s toothbrush by mistake, and use it to apply polish to the soles of his shoes, then use his Brasso rag to spitshine them, removing another layer of carefully applied polish base with every turn of the cloth until finally it occurred to him that he was rubbing fresh polish on raw leather…. But like an athlete, Woodruff had an incredible ability to absorb the blows of Beast Barracks like a huge pillow. He could take it and take it and take it and still come back for more. When the whole squad was down in the dumps, having performed poorly at parade and received a half-hour ass-chewing from an irate squad leader replete with threats of punishment tours and loss of weekend privileges when they finally arrived, Woodruff was the guy who would rally the squad, get them together in his room, and ten minutes before taps, you could hear them. They’d be singing some marching-cadence lyric Woodruff had composed on the spur of the moment, usually at the expense of their nemesis, Slaight:

  Hey! Hey! Beast Squad three!

  Who’s the pride of the Infantry!

  It ain’t Slaight

  And it ain’t Buck

  So it can’t be me!

  We got wrinkles

  We got knocks

  We got shoes

  That looks like socks!

  Take us marchin’

  With our guns

  This one’s for fightin’

  This one’s for fun!

  Hey! Hey! Beast Squad three!

  Which is the right end

  Of this here M-fourteen?

  I don’t know

  But I been told

  That Rysam Slaight

  Is growin’ old.

  Hey! Hey! Beast squad three!

  Newest record Slaight got

  Is Lewis, Jerry Lee!

  A
nd so on.

  Sitting in his room at the other end of the hall, Slaight could not keep himself from laughing as his squad yukked it up down in Room 1144. At moments like those, he could even bring himself to think there must be a worse place on earth to be than West fuckin’ Point. Right now, he couldn’t think of one.

  For the first two weeks of Beast, everything went by the book, or close to it. Then one morning at reveille, Slaight wandered out to formation to find a small but significant change. Dippel and Woodruff were standing in Late Ranks, where they could usually be found along with the rest of the company fuck-ups. This time, Hand, their roommate, wasn’t with them. On the surface, it was a minor matter. Hand had left his room, heading out to formation without them. Until that morning, Dippel, Woodruff, and Hand could be found in Late Ranks at nearly every formation. Dippel was so spastic and Woodruff so slow, getting the two of them out to formation on time was a task beyond even the considerable talents of David Hand. And so Hand suffered the ignominious appearance in Late Ranks along with his roommates.

  Slaight had been careful not to take Hand to task for his Late Ranks appearances. Clearly, it was not the fault of Hand that Room 1144 was usually late. In fact, Slaight had assigned Crolius, another guy from the squad, to help Dippel and Woodruff achieve the seemingly impossible rewards of being on time. It was beginning to work. Already they’d made it to quite a few formations on time, even if they did look a little sloppy. At least they knew it was possible. It was a matter of morale. Slaight wanted the squad to get that rush of togetherness … the special feeling he knew they’d have when they were pulling together and it was all working. They were on time. They looked good. They marched well. Nobody fell out of reveille runs. They could be proud. They would be a unit.

  And now this. Dippel and Woodruff in Late Ranks. Hand in formation. Slaight let it slide. He wanted to see if it was a quirk, a temporary thing the three of them would repair by dinner formation. But all day it happened. Hand on time. Dippel and Woodruff in Late Ranks, looking worse and worse every time. Clearly, Hand had given up on his roommates. His aloofness from his classmates had reached a new high. Slaight told Hand to drive around that night, twenty minutes before taps. It was time for a talking-to—one which Hand had had coming for a long time.

  Hand knocked on Slaight’s door three times at precisely 9:40 P.M. Slaight told him to enter and grab a piece of wall. Hand stood against the wall next to Slaight’s desk, bracing. Slaight lectured about the rules of the game, that old thing about “co-operate and graduate.” Hand listened respectfully … at least he didn’t pipe up with a bunch of lame excuses. If there was one thing Slaight hated, it was a plebe who manufactured excuses for his fuck-ups. That was one of the few good things about Dippel and Woodruff. They didn’t make excuses. They just were.

  Slaight told Hand he hadn’t gotten himself in trouble for helping his classmates. Everyone in the company, including the company commander, knew Hand was perfectly capable of being on time to formations. Hand wasn’t running any risks of losing privileges or receiving demerits and landing punishment tours on the area. But Slaight knew there was a key element to that weird thing in the army about institutional affection for fuck-ups. The organization would tolerate them only so long as it sensed the fuck-ups were trying. Slaight knew the rest of his squad, similarly mired in the noxious fumes of Beasthood, sensed Dippel and Woodruff were at least trying. What about Hand?

  “Nosir. I don’t believe they are trying.”

  “What do you mean, Hand? I put Crolius in there helping you last week, and by last Friday, you two had them down into formation at least half the time. They’re not trying? You got to give them a goddamn chance, Hand. That’s all.”

  “I just don’t think … I don’t believe … they’re trying, sir. If they are … well, then, sir, they just don’t have it.”

  “What do you mean, smack, they don’t have it? Who are you to determine whether or not they have it, whatever the fuck it is?” Slaight was angry, but Hand remained impassive, bracing against his wall.

  “Sir, I’ve spent two weeks down in Late Ranks with Dippel and Woodruff, getting laughed at and hazed by the first-classmen. I’ve given them as much time as I believe they deserve. If they want to spend the rest of their days in Late Ranks, sir, that’s up to them. I am determined to make it my business to be on time from now on.”

  Slaight was nearly seething with rage. But there was nothing he could do. Ultimately, whether or not Hand helped his roommates get to formation on time affected the performance, thus the morale of his squad. But classmates helping each other was something worked out between classmates. Technically, Slaight could not order Hand to help them. But there was something in the tone of Hand’s voice … he didn’t like the ridicule and abuse he suffered in Late Ranks because Dippel and Woodruff couldn’t get their shit together. That was understandable. But something else ate at Hand. Slaight smelled it.

  “Hand. What else is going on in your room? What’s bothering you about Dippel and Woodruff? I don’t think this Late Ranks thing is the whole story. Now give me the rest of the poop.”

  Hand paused. Slaight knew he’d been right.

  “Sir, it’s not Woodruff. He’s okay. He’s just, you know, sir. Slow. But Dippel. It’s different with him, sir. I just can’t take Dippel any more.”

  “Come on. Out with it, Hand. This is just between you and me. Close the door.” Hand closed it. “Now fall out. Relax. I want to hear it. What you say to me will remain in confidence.”

  “Sir, Dippel has been buying favors from others guys in the squad in return for fixing them up with dates as soon as privileges start. Last week his mother sent his high school yearbook up from the Bronx, and he’s been spreading the word around he’ll fix you up with a date, if you’ll help him out with stuff. Like guard mount. One guy took his guard mount last week. Another guy has been shining his shoes. Somebody else has been coming into the room before reveille and making his bed while Dippel gets dressed. For all of these guys, he’s done this: He takes out his yearbook, and he lets them pick out a girl’s picture. Then he writes his mother a letter and asks her to get the guy a blind date with the girl. They all live down in the Bronx, so they’re close enough to come up here when weekend privileges start. I just don’t like it, sir. It’s like he’s buying his way through Beast. He’s pimping for these guys so he won’t take so much gas.”

  Slaight was stunned. What Hand said made perfect sense. He couldn’t blame him. West Pointers were conditioned to despise weakness in those around them, and there was a reason for it, like there was a goddamn reason for everything else at West Point. Weakness was contagious. If you stayed near it long enough, some of it would rub off. In a small military unit like a squad, this was especially true. Hand had suffered the rigors of Late Ranks with Woodruff and Dippel for two weeks, and now here was Dippel, trying to trade blind dates for “favors.” The favors were actually the stuff he was supposed to learn how to get done for himself every day. Because Hand had revealed Dippel’s seedy practice to Slaight in confidence, there was nothing he could do about it for now; not unless someone else in the squad made a formal, aboveboard complaint about Dippel. Unlikely, so long as they all believed Dippel was the pathway of least resistance where girls were concerned. Slaight remembered what it had been like coming to West Point from Kansas … not knowing any girls … it had taken months to get fixed up with a date as a plebe. Dippel had quite a scam going.

  “Look, Hand. I see your point about Dippel. And I appreciate your candor. But I’ve got to warn you. You’d better spend some time figuring out how you’re going to handle this thing with your roommates. I can’t order you to help those guys. What’s between classmates is between classmates. But it’s like I told you on the first day of Beast, remember? You’ve got to live with those guys. It’s like you’re married to the fuckers. And at West Point, it’s like the Catholics. They don’t recognize divorces here, right? Understand?”

  Hand nodded.
>
  “Now post on out of here back to your room. It’s almost taps.”

  Hand saluted and left. Slaight had a new respect for Hand. The kid had principles, he thought. He was aloof, and being aloof was going to get him into trouble—sooner rather than later. But now Slaight knew there was substance behind Hand’s style, camouflaged by his aloofness. Or there was something back there, anyway—something Slaight hadn’t seen yet. He couldn’t be sure. He went back to work on his squad book. In the distance, one of the Hellcats blew taps. It was 10 P.M., and Beast was just about half over for Ry Slaight and the rest of the First Detail July upperclassmen.

  21

  Almost nightly, the plebes received training on the Honor Code, traditionally, the sacred cornerstone upon which the academy has been said to rest. In fact, the class had been at West Point only a few days when they were introduced to the code formally. Most of them knew about the Honor Code in advance, having read in the West Point catalogue, which had been mailed to all candidates, that “A Cadet does not lie, cheat, or steal.” That was the code, lock, stock, and barrel. Or was it?

  Omitted from official documents relating to the code was the so-called toleration clause, which required—and still requires—that cadets report any and all violations of the code to which they are witness, or be expelled as an honor violator for having failed to make a report. But knowledge of the toleration clause would come soon. For the time being, the Honor Code seemed simple. The thing which lay behind the code would be explained to them at a lecture delivered by the chairman of the Cadet Honor Committee.

  The new cadets attended the lecture at night, after supper, in a huge auditorium. It would soon become known to them as “South Aud.” Sweating, wet from the heat outside, they froze within the air-conditioned cavernous hall, located in what was once the old Cadet Riding Hall, Thayer Hall, a place of the 1920s and 1930s, of mandatory equestrian training for cadets, of polo practice and saddle soap and the brown-shoe army. The old Riding Hall, now the main academic building at the academy, was drenched in tradition, with an overpowering air of those who had come before: the Long Gray Line. But who, exactly, was the Long Gray Line? With the exception of a few heroes like Eisenhower, Mac-Arthur, Patton, and Pershing, the new cadets didn’t know. But they were in awe. It was the business of plebes to be forever in awe.