VI. “Bob would go over big if he’d just keep his mouth shut.”—Jap.
VII. Never pet for amusement.
VIII. a. When in doubt keep still.
b. Never talk without something to say.
c. Never open your mouth unless there is some purpose to be served by doing so.
IX. They who play the victrola must buy the records.
X. Don’t be greasy a. go slow on salutes, etc.
b. go slow on sirs.
c. go slow on etc.
XI. “If you can make a man sit down, you’ve got him.”—Booth Tarkington.
XII. Success breeds Success.
XIII. Keep your word (in particular to men under you).
XIV. Be impartial.
XV. Don’t talk fight unless you mean fight, then don’t talk, fight!
By August of Plebe Summer, when the Plebe intercompany competition started, things were beginning to settle into a routine. His second set of dress white service arrived, and his blue service, too, so his kit was finally complete—just as well, as his cash reserves had dwindled to $3.50. Occasional “expense account” money from home helped, as did the $2.00 per month midshipmen received as their stipend. That wasn’t a lot, even in 1925, and out of his stipend he was supposed to save, by the end of four years, $1,000 for his graduation kit—formal uniforms including cocked hat and swords. It could not be done, of course: even though the monthly stipend increased throughout the four years, the total came to something less than $300. But that was a problem to be dealt with later.
He got along well enough with Frank Novak, but they didn’t really “connect,” so he decided to request a new roommate assignment in September. He did not give a reason in his letters, but there is one brief protest of a demerit for a disorderly room, during a day when Frank was supposed to be in charge of tidying up.38 Heinlein settled on Seraphin Bach Perreault, another Kansas City boy who had also been to the Civilian Military Training Camp in Fort Leavenworth (though there is no evidence they knew each other at that time). Perreault—“Perry”—was also on the lacrosse and fencing squads. They agreed and requested a rooming reassignment in September.
Heinlein still had trouble with his physical requirements. Late in August he wrote that he had pulled the weak squad the day before—that is, he was placed with others who couldn’t make the physical requirements—but he was making rapid improvement: “We had some instruction in life saving last week. I believe I could save a person now under reasonably favorable conditions, say from a swimming pool or the Blue River. It is interesting work.”39
If the hazing and social distancing and the constant overwork and lack of food had been unrelieved, the Academy would have been an unbearable place, and we would have in the United States something comparable to the British genre of memoirs detailing the horrors of the British public school system (the American public schools have their own horror stories). But the Academy had been functioning for a very long time, and there were relief valves built into the system. Some of the relief valves gave the boys something to focus on other than their emotions—friendly competition between French and Spanish companies, for instance. Or Superintendent Nulton’s regular Saturday afternoon garden parties and lunches for apparently randomly selected Midshipmen. Nor was the discipline in Bancroft Hall completely restrictive:
We had a broom fight last night between this deck and the one above. More fun! The Midshipman officer of the Watch, a first classman got beat up in the rush.
I got soaked with a pitcher of water in addition to touched with a broom.40
Such customs allowed the steam to bleed off harmlessly.
Late in August 1925, they had a bit of excitement: fire broke out in Isherwood Hall. The incident is remembered in the class history, but Heinlein’s firsthand telling, for his family, is better. He never did panic in a crisis—a trait he says he inherited from both sides of the family (though he might come down with the shakes afterward)—and he managed to enjoy this crisis, in some detail:
We had the first fire in several years here yesterday. It sadly interfered with me serving extra duty … .41
As I was dressing for the Com’s party, the gong sounded and the M.C. yelled, “Outside fire drill! All hands turn out!” I chased over to my station in the Fourth Wing and was ready for action before I knew it was an actual fire. I forgot to say, I am a fire chief. Oh, yes, a hose truck and sixteen doughty firemen.42 Only three of them were there when I arrived but we went anyway. We hauled out the truck and went hooting and yelling down officers row in front of the Admiral’s house.
The Admiral came out as we passed and wanted to know where the fire was. I told him it was in Sherwood Hall (Steam bldg.) He didn’t deign to come with us but followed in a Packard. It was some fire. The insides looked like a furnace. My hose happened to be the only one that got any real action. I didn’t get much as I was outside passing the word and trying to stop a leak. A couple of fellows up on the roof with a hose had a hose turned on them and were nearly knocked down into a blazing mass. Several fellows were slightly hurt by falling glass. The Admiral was drenched and knocked over a couple of times in the rush. After the fire was put out, it took me some time to sort out the defective hose in my lot. Consequently we were the last truck to leave. As we were leaving we were called back to attend to another truck that was deserted. We were about an hour late coming in. A first classman on duty attempted to get some of us excused from extra duty. He succeeded in getting excused from that period of which there was about an hour to go but we served instead a later period of full two hours. Such is life! Heroes are never appreciated. I think I’ll quit being one. Not even a word of praise from the Supe and me yelling my lungs hoarse all afternoon. ’Twas ever thus.
Yours, Bob43
And with that, Heinlein’s introduction to life at the Academy was complete. His brother and the rest of the midshipmen would be returning from practice cruise the following week, only to leave immediately for a month’s leave in September while the Plebes formally commenced their academic year. Heinlein became so pressed for time that he could not keep up his correspondence with his family: the September 3, 1925, crash of the heliumfilled dirigible airship Shenandoah, launched from nearby Lakehurst, New Jersey, was not mentioned in correspondence, though it must have rattled around Bancroft Hall as much as did the fire.
He was doing reasonably well—well begun, though not half done. He had regained the weight he had lost in that first nerve-racking week, plus another eleven pounds of muscle. He had made up most of his physical deficiencies and had enough money for his limited needs (at least, until leave on September 7). Except for the minor annoyance of eyestrain that needed attention, all was well.
True, he had accumulated a few demerits for “room out of order” and had had “a couple of encounters with an overzealous Midshipman Officer of the Watch on the subject of dust,”44 but this just gave him enough material to complain about for his spiritual health:
I’m like the Toonerville trolley that meets all the trains. I’m the plebe that walks all the punishment periods … . “And lo! Blessed is he that has tried hard to be good, for he shall be papped.” It doesn’t worry me.45
5
PLEBE YEAR
By early August 1925, the incoming Plebes were ready to tackle their first big class project: in October, they would be required to put out a special edition of the Academy’s weekly news magazine, The Log—the first of the school year and the first opportunity for the incoming Plebe class to show their stuff.
The Log was an important publication at the Academy. Issued every Friday, it was the semiofficial voice of the institution, carefully supervised by officers, though actually produced by the midshipmen. The contents were usually in three sections. The first section was devoted to military humor and cartoons, the second section to current events, and the third section to sports. Every week, 6,500 copies of The Log went out to midshipmen and their families and “drag” (girlfriends). The Plebe Log’s h
umor section usually dealt with the events of Plebe Summer.
The Log’s regular staff was away on practice cruise during Plebe Summer. Robert’s brother Ivar (nicknamed “Ike” at the Academy) was working on the business end of The Log, soliciting advertising and so forth. Robert decided to get into the creative end of the venture. He knew as early as the beginning of August what he wanted to do, and he hit the mark on the first shot: his cartoon was chosen for the cover of the 1925 Plebe Log, proudly signed “—R. A. Heinlein—’29,” his first published work. He shows a barefoot and smudged Plebe, frustrated and dismayed, in characteristic T-shirt and white trousers, making a mess of the labels he is writing on his clothing. The name on the blotted sailor’s blouse he holds is “Joe Gish” (though a fold in the fabric makes it look like “Fish,” appropriate for the new-caught Plebes), that Plebe archetype, “one of the 10% Who Never Gets the Word and all five of the Three Stooges.”1 He is memorialized in The Lighthouse for 1929 as “[a]n international character. The best-known Middie in the world.”
Shortly before the end of August, the Plebes shuffled their temporary room assignments around, and Heinlein settled in with Seraphin Bach Perreault.
Life at the Academy changed drastically in the last week of August, when the practice cruises ended and the rest of the older midshipmen came back to campus. The Practice Squadron sailed up the Severn in the early evening of August 28 and anchored off Greenbury Point overnight. At five o’clock the next morning, all the upperclassmen were released at the same time, and they came flooding into Bancroft Hall, waking all the Plebes (an hour and a half before their usual reveille) and taking over the showers. Most of the returning midshipmen left immediately for a month of “September leave,” but Robert’s brother Ivar stayed overnight, just long enough to collect his civilian clothes, and left again for Kansas City on the following Sunday. The Plebes got a brief leave—their first—on September 7, just enough time to wander around Annapolis a bit and perhaps pick up some sundries they couldn’t get at the commissary. And then back to the grind. The Plebes were kept on a very tight leash, and their academic year started a month before everyone else’s.
They couldn’t have gone very far in any case. In 1925, Plebes were not even permitted to ride in an automobile except while on extended leave—and in any case the automobile was not yet a common accessory. Most travel was difficult and expensive. For longer-distance travel, the train was the only option, and it was not always comfortable or convenient: except in the longest leaves, boys from the West Coast could not get back to see their families at all.
Most of the Plebe year course work was taken up by the foundation disciplines for engineering: principles of boilers and mathematics. Naval officers were expected to know the applied mathematics needed in their trade—at a minimum, “spherical trigonometry, partial triple differentials, ballistics both for ordnance and for celestial mechanics, solution of empiricals by brute-force numerical integration, etc.”2—a tough course for kids who had previously had little exposure to mathematics. “Juice”—electricity—was an important course for all midshipmen. Mechanical drawing was particularly important because much of the instruction midshipmen would receive over the next five years would consist of making engineering diagrams of ships’ systems. There was language and history, as well, and light touches of other subjects—four books on astronomy, for instance, in one week during Plebe year, though as Heinlein noted, all were significantly out-of-date: a textbook by F. R. Moulton, the head of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Chicago, published as recently as 1922, did not even mention the ongoing measurements of the speed of light, which Michelson had started at the Naval Academy in 1887.3
The teaching staff at the Academy was a very mixed bag. Usually the Superintendent was an elderly and distinguished figure who did not participate in the teaching but served as a father figure and might have little feel for the academic life of the institution.4 There was a hard core of professional teachers—some very good—and then a cadre of officers assigned to the Academy, about half the size of the core of professionals, who might or might not have any aptitude for instruction. The general opinion of the midshipmen was that those officers had been assigned to the Academy for reasons of punishment or discipline. Their opinion was that the Academy in those days was a kind of dumping ground for the Navy’s odds and sods5—not entirely reasonable considering the number of top men in their field who have been associated with the Academy.
In Heinlein’s day, however, most of the teachers didn’t try to be more than a referee between the midshipman and his books,6 and The Lighthouse defined “Prof” as “the referee in our struggle.” In the most egregious cases, it was noticed, the professor was simply timing the number of problems and solutions that could be put up on the board during the class period. Nevertheless, there was generally a good relationship between the Mids and their instructors.
Academy education was just a beginning. This was never made explicit, but it gradually dawned on most of the midshipmen that “education” would be something they did themselves, later.7 They were being given the fundamentals and exposures to this and that, rather than an education in depth. Except for the Seaman classification, every job in the Navy is specialized—sometimes highly specialized—and the Academy couldn’t do more than touch lightly on some of the specializations during this basic course work, leaving it for later instruction to develop the more highly specialized skills.
Instead, the Academy concentrated on developing a generalized engineering background, which would serve as the fundamentals to learn anything else. The humanities, except for the modern languages requirement, were brushed over lightly. The Plebe Summer and Plebe Year curriculum concentrated on composition and literature. The English Department, which also supervised the history curriculum, encouraged library research for the Plebes and wide reading—self-disciplines that stood Heinlein in good stead all his life.
More emphasis was given to customs and etiquette, especially the dances they would need to know; there were one-hour sessions with an instructor to talk the midshipmen through the basics—waltz, fox-trot, and so on—so they wouldn’t disgrace the Academy when they began to be invited out by the townspeople of Annapolis. Heinlein probably needed this instruction, despite claiming on his scrapbook list of miscellaneous jobs to have worked as a “roadhouse hoofer,” since his family was strictly raised under the Methodist discipline, and dancing—particularly of this recreational sort—was not allowed at home. But dances were the main social activities midshipmen could expect to participate in, and one of the few opportunities to associate with girls.
The Academy made out monthly report cards and sent them home to his father. The cards showed both a grade point for each subject, on a descending scale from 4.0 (“Distinction”) to 2.49 or lower (“Failing”), and a class standing. The academics were not in themselves a problem for Heinlein—all his marks were in the “Distinction” range—but his class standing varies from subject to subject, and class standing with respect to conduct is given as 91 on his first report card, for the month of October 1925. He has three demerits. He would stay at three demerits until nearly the end of the academic year.
The monthly report cards also note the size of the class, which was already losing members. From a starting size of 478, the Plebe class had dropped to 403 in November. In December it fell to 400, and the number continued to fall until it stabilized at 316 late in 1926. It would fall to 240 by the end of the four years.
Midshipmen left the Academy for all sorts of reasons. Most common were failures in academics, but the physical requirements also accounted for some of the attrition in the early years. Some couldn’t cut the athletics. There were some discipline problems. Medical problems cropped up, too: one of Heinlein’s best friends—a healthy-looking boy named Art Stiles, broadshouldered and athletic, went in for his end-of-Plebe-Summer physical, and the doctors discovered a heart murmur. Stiles was given congé—leave to go. Myopia, too, was a
big problem, as the Navy then and for decades thereafter continued to require all its officers to have perfect, uncorrected vision. That was troubling to Heinlein, who had passed his own physical: nearsightedness ran in his family, and during the summer he had begun to experience some eyestrain.
Some midshipmen left for other reasons: the economic boom was starting, and they may have been offered other opportunities more congenial. That was the case with Heinlein’s friend Woody Teague, who resigned in 1928 to go into banking.8 A few may have washed out because of the hazing.
Hazing is always a problem at closed institutions. At the Academy, it was officially forbidden but by long tradition unofficially tolerated. The hazing welded the Plebes into a community with a common enemy: every other midshipman in the Academy, but particularly the outgoing First Classmen.
Hazing varied in degree from time to time and from person to person. Heinlein left a more or less accurate portrait9 of the hazing at the Academy in his fictional reminiscence of classmate Delos Wait in “The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail,” a segment of Time Enough for Love:
But the unceasing barrage of questions did not bother [him] save for the possibility of starving to death at meal times—and he learned to shovel it in fast while sitting rigidly at attention and still answer all questions flung at him. Some were trick questions, such as, “Mister, are you a virgin?” Either way a plebe answered he was in trouble—if he gave a straight answer. In those days some importance was placed on virginity or the lack of it; I can’t say why.
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Page 7