First order of business was the endless issue lines for the Plebes’ traditional work clothes, consisting of white cotton trousers, T-shirts, and pullover sailors’ blouses, always in the traditional sizes of too large and too small, and a shapeless soft cap with a blue band around the forehead. They had been measured for white and blue dress uniforms, but the formal clothing would not be ready until September. They would live in their issue cotton, marked with their names in permanent India ink.
In the battalion office, the bewildered Plebes were deluged with instructions given in the arcane jargon of the Academy: “formations, late blasts, roll-calls, study hours, pap-sheets and various other odds and ends of vernacular …”8 Unless, like Heinlein, they had an older brother who had already been through it, there was nothing to help them sort out the barrage of jargon until their student manual, The Lighthouse, came out in the fall.
Then to Bancroft Hall, the Academy’s residence building, where they could settle in. Most rooms were designed for two students, with simple furniture—one desk/table, two beds, a sink, a wardrobe, chairs—and bathrooms down the hall. Water for personal uses—drinking and washing—was carried in milk cans from enormous butts (casks), with locked spigots, and measured out, a bucket a day. The corner rooms on each floor had 4-sets with a common room. There they found an assigned Mate of the Deck who had a podium seat to watch over the activity of his deck (floor) and maintain order. The midshipmen would rotate mate-of-the-deck duty a certain number of days of the year. Every day a commissioned officer—usually a lieutenant—would come in for inspection, rapping on a door. By custom the mids jumped to attention, saying, “Welcome aboard, sir.”9 In addition, the Plebes rotated duty in the main office.
Heinlein looked at his half of the wardrobe and knew immediately that he couldn’t keep his civilian clothing, so he expressed it all home that day, except for one suit, which he left at the tailor’s, to be cleaned and stored in mothballs.10
The United States Naval Academy was unlike anything Heinlein had ever encountered before, a step into a new way of life, strange and new and wonderful and foreign and overwhelming. Even the dining hall was enormous and intimidating, large enough to seat four thousand. The tables were served with exotic foods like scrapple and grits and fried green tomatoes—and oysters (legendarily oysters for lunch on Saturdays). Nothing tells you you’re not in Kansas—or Missouri!—anymore like the odd and unlikely things outlanders eat.
One of the trials of Plebedom surfaced immediately: at meals, the upperclassmen who supervised each table of Plebes kept snapping questions so the Plebes could hardly eat—“How many ships in the China Station, Mister?”—and Heinlein had not yet developed ways to compensate for the interruptions. In the first week he lost ten pounds he could hardly afford to lose. He went to bed those first nights more homesick than he thought he could ever be.11
Although the lowest form of naval life, a midshipman—even a raw Plebe—is an officer in the U.S. Navy (by a peculiarity of the law, a West Point cadet is not an Army officer). The Naval Academy used the Army system for its Table of Organization: the Corps of Midshipmen was divided up into regiments by classes, with officers of grades going from Third Class to Second Class to First Class. On graduation, a midshipman would be commissioned with the lowest rating in the Naval table of organization, the ensign. 12 When the bell rang for the Class of 1929’s first formation, Second Classmen (the equivalent of juniors in college) who for some reason did not go on the practice cruise that year formed them up into two battalions of two companies each—two called “French” and two “Spanish.” (The boys would be encouraged to speak these languages among themselves, and this would help satisfy the Academy’s modern languages requirement, called “Dago.”) This would be their permanent organization during their four years at the Naval Academy. Heinlein was in one of the French companies.
The Second Classmen who had charge of the Plebes were brusque and businesslike but not particularly oppressive—a class history recalls their most common remarks to the Plebes as “Brace up, Mister,” “Just what do you think you rate, anyway?” and the ever-popular “You’re on the pap!”13—that is, reported for demerits. Heinlein was an old hand at drill, but most of the Plebes had no exposure to military ways.
The summer was traditionally given over to the initial training of the incoming class of Plebes. A daily schedule for Heinlein’s Plebe Summer is preserved in his scrapbooks:
ROUTINE, MONTHS OF JUNE, JULY, & AUGUST, 1925
reveille 6:30 A.M.
Assembly for morning roll call 7:00 A.M.
Morning roll call late bell 7:03 A.M.
Publish conduct report and orders
March to breakfast
Inspection of rooms by Midshipman in Charge 7:40 A.M.
Prayers immediately after breakfast
Sick Call 7:40 A.M.
Call to first drill period 8:00 A.M.
Late bell 8:03 A.M.
March to drill
Recall from first drill period 9:30 A.M.
Assembly for second drill period 10:00 A.M.
Late bell 10:03 A.M.
March to drill
Recall from second period 11:30 A.M.
Assembly for Midday roll call 12:30 P.M.
Late bell 12:33 P.M.
Publish orders. March to midday meal
Assembly for third drill period 1:30 P.M.
Late bell 1:33 P.M.
March to drill
Recall from third period 3:00 P.M.
Assembly for fourth period 3:15 P.M.
Late bell 3:18 P.M.
March to drill
Recall from fourth period 4:30 P.M.
Sick call 5:30 P.M.
Assembly for evening roll call 6:45 P.M.
Evening roll call, late bell 6:48 P.M.
Publish orders. March to evening meal
Call to rooms 7:45 P.M.
Release from rooms 9:30 P.M.
Tattoo 9:55 P.M.
Taps-inspection by Midshipman in Charge of Floors 10:00 P.M.
“Study” he penciled in wherever he had a half hour to spare in the schedule (he took a break in the fifteen minutes between third and fourth drill periods); athletics took place between fourth drill period and evening Sick Call, and he penciled in “letters—2 a day” before “Call to rooms”—with care of uniform, shaving, and washing up to take place after.
But Plebe Summer was mostly reserved for drilling. The midshipmen went everywhere in formation. Drill was the Academy’s principal tool to introduce them to the proper order and discipline that would be utterly necessary in overcrowded conditions when the full complement of midshipmen got back in September.14
There was method in the exhausting drill and labor the Plebes underwent: in addition to teaching the Academy’s regulations and necessary self-discipline, it gave them a chance to develop personal skills they would need to survive when the academic year started and the pace racheted up. Between drills, the Plebes were lectured by anyone handy, on subjects nautical and military. And between lectures, they drilled.
In the remaining time they also got their first exposure to the academic departments of the school. All the upperclassmen helped to “raise” the Plebes: there was an enormous amount of naval lore to be learned, and it wasn’t covered in the classwork or the drill. The routine hazing gave the Plebes a very unpleasant incentive to pick up the lore and be able to spout it back without hesitation.
They sailed on the Severn and learned the etiquette of the water and other matters of basic small-craft seamanship. Heinlein loved ship handling and went sport sailing as often as possible.15 They got a brief exposure, too, to naval ordnance, once with an inspection tour of the armory. Heinlein was enthusiastic about the airplane motors he studied in the Department of Engineering and Aeronautics. He had an ambition to become a naval aviator.
In addition to drill and study, the Plebes were required to go out for one of the school’s sports, and Heinlein first tried track-and-fi
eld, where the coach thought he had potential as a high jumper. But it didn’t really attract him—in any case he never followed up an initial positive evaluation.16 There were two mandatory-pass tests for sports requirements, boxing and wrestling. He hated both.17 He did go out for soccer and was, for a short time, the manager of the two Plebe lacrosse teams. Perhaps he wangled this position to get out of the line of fire, for he says of it: “There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it to death with butter.”18 Although he continued with lacrosse through Plebe Summer and into the academic year, he decided he didn’t like any of the body-contact sports.19 He passed his qualifying tests20 and then went to the other end of the gym, where he took up “dirty fighting”—la savate, judo, cane fighting, and rough-and-tumble under its various names.21 For his required sport, he finally settled on fencing.
In a sense, it was almost inevitable that Heinlein would choose fencing as his sport: he had been playing at fencing for years, ever since he saw the stage play of The Tales of Hoffmann in about 1915. Fencing was the Academy’s oldest sport and was followed with interest by many of the midshipmen for that reason.22 His fencing master was a real French (actually Belgian) swordsman with a mystery in his past. Capitaine Deladrier gave instruction in épée, fleuret (foil or small-sword), and saber. Heinlein decided to specialize in épée: it was the closest you could get to real swordplay without (usually) serious bloodshed.23 Fencing was a good choice for him: it gave him a chance to use his speed and reflexes without a great deal of knocking about.
Heinlein’s weaknesses were in swimming and rifle. He was one of those rare, naturally buoyant persons who cannot sink in water24 and so had never really worked at swimming. He was placed on the “weak squad” for remedial work until his swimming skills were considered up to standard.
Heinlein also did not do as well as he knew he could on the rifle range. He was a little exasperated because of the poor shooting conditions—and because there was nothing he could do to improve them.25 While he was shooting on the rifle team, his coach saw that he was really too light for the shooting, so he put a sandbag across Robert’s shoulders to help with the recoil. 26 Heinlein qualified as a marksman on July 24.
In the evenings and on weekends, during the weeks before their first leave to go into Annapolis, the Plebes had little relatively free time to themselves—except for Sunday afternoons, when they were expected to write letters to their family and spend at least two hours in athletics. They had no access to cars or even to newspapers and radios (for which reason Heinlein missed the Scopes trial that July, the first trial ever to be broadcast on the radio). Most evenings Plebes would gather in “Smoke Park” and shoot the breeze.27 Heinlein wrote home frequently—short and sometimes awkward notes:
I found out as Ivar predicted that this place isn’t much fun. But I shall stick it out and manage somehow to enjoy it. I like it even now fairly well. And I know the training is wonderful; I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Just the same I’m looking forward to my first leave … . We are well into the swing of the drills now. I am getting along satisfactorily but not brilliantly. I can see a long hard pull ahead if I distinguish myself in anything.28
The family knew just what he needed from home, based on Ivar’s two years at Annapolis. For his eighteenth birthday on July 7, they sent a package with letters and hometown newspapers, which made him even more homesick, and cookies and candy that he shared with his “wife” (Academy slang for roommate). Heinlein thanked them profusely for the treats. “I get awfully hungry between meals and it surely helps to have some thing around.”29
Homesickness was making him reflective. About two hours every afternoon he felt homesick (though he could not account for the regularity of the experience).30 In a pocket notebook he carried all through his years at the Academy, he tallied all the letters (and packages) received from family and friends in his Plebe Summer (along with a “Hate List” of five names, with one name checked off and noted “settled!”).31 In a letter written on July 7, his eighteenth birthday, he opened up to his mother:
I know, mother, we didn’t always think alike, but I nearly always see your viewpoint in the long run. The same way with dad. He’s generally right but I can’t always see it at the time. But then in some of the things you didn’t approve of, you weren’t in a position to see the pressure I was under. 32
His mother’s birthday was exactly a week later, and he continues in much the same vein:
Dearest Mother, I hope this gets to you by your birthday. Many happy returns of the day and all the love in the world.
I wish I could see you now. I never knew till I left home, Mother, just how much I loved you and Dad and the rest, too, but you two especially. I never have been as good a son as I might have but I’ve always tried.33
By that time he had received one set of his dress whites and had a photo taken for his family. He sent it along with birthday greetings (July 23) for his favorite—Rose Elizabeth. (He always said that he had two girlfriends: his “big girl friend” was his “drag” at the Academy, and the other was Rose Betty, his “little girl friend.”) The family had recently sent him a sixteen-page memory book, with a whole roll of photographs of the family (plus one of a downtown street scene, to use up the last picture in the roll) and a crayon picture Rose Betty had made for him, of the house with lawn and trees.
Throughout his life, Heinlein was easily roused to emotions of all kinds, and so he gradually developed ways of coping with his excitability. But this early, he had few psychological tools to deal with his feelings. He was finding that he was the outlander at Annapolis, the rustic from the Wild West plunked down among eastern “sophisticates.” His easily aroused emotions of wonder and his strong sense of dedication were unfashionable and déclassé in the crowd of mostly privileged, mostly white, mostly Protestant young men who nevertheless thought of themselves as “rainbow spectra, collected from the corners of the sky.”34 Once he decided to abandon his policy of keeping his mouth discreetly shut, his first overtures were not met with easy acceptance. This may have been one of those defects-of-his-virtues things: he had been made platoon leader early on—the battalion officers were often chosen from ROTC men, and Heinlein was a natural candidate on that ground—but he was probably not very gracious in sharing his ampler knowledge of procedure. Toward the end of Plebe Summer, he complained to his brother Larry:
I can’t write letters like I should any more. I was just interrupted to explain to my dear company commander the intricacies of company drill. The drill competition for the summer occurs Saturday [August 22?] and he hadn’t studied it as yet. Ignorance is annoying. We are going to be beaten and there is little I can do about it. I am the only plebe striper in the company that knows the D.R. and there are half a dozen former cadet officers in the ranks, colonels and on down. It’s a great life,
Bob35
Word got around about his rank of brigadier general at the Civilian Military Training Camp and the 1924 General Smith trophy for Best Drillmaster, and he was nicknamed “the Boy General”—a very cutting nickname to carry through a military school.
Although he never talked about it explicitly, Heinlein must never before in his life have felt more like a square peg in a round hole than in those first months at the Naval Academy. That sense of being misfitted is probably at the root of his determination to persevere and work through, and he did refine there an important tool of self-presentation (which must have been already familiar to an atheist teenager in a religious home): to maintain a public face that will protect and conceal the private reality. He had no buffer of camaraderie to ease the pangs of homesickness (even Ivar was off on a practice cruise that summer), and he later said that the experience forced him to grow:
I was very homesick, as I had never been so far away from my home and my parents and brothers and sisters and friends. But eventually that feeling wore off and I began to behave like an adult, able to stand on my own feet and no longer needing the emotional support of others. The trans
ition from child to adult is not easy, but it is necessary.36
In his pocket notebook he made a list of principles, with “keep your mouth shut” repeated on different pages. Controlling his tongue was his biggest personality problem.
The book is full of excellent advice for himself:
Worldly Wisdom from The Old Master
Speaking of the Ladies
I. Don’t force the issue.
II. No matter who she is, or how low she is, treat her like a lady, they always fall for it, no matter how low.
III. Humor them.
IV. Don’t, above all things, force the issue.
V. When likely to go bad, read one of Bljdf’s37 letters.
I. Say what you’ve got to say in as few words as possible.
II. Keep your mouth shut and soldier.
III. It isn’t what you believe, it’s how you act.
IV. Don’t expect a square deal.
V. a. Make all the acquaintances you can.
b. Make all the friends you can.
c. Never miss a chance to meet anyone.
d. Never drop an acquaintance.
e. But don’t be greasy.
XI. When in Rome shoot Roman Candles.
XII. When discouraged by the start anyone has on me remember my first year in military; dogged persistence will overcome any lead.
XIII. And don’t do anything rash. Your judgment is bad in emergencies.—Captain Kearney.
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Page 6