The midshipmen had traditional side trips to the naval station on Mare Island, and to Mount Tamalpais. But Heinlein found his own diversions, too. The cable cars were free for the midshipmen, and San Francisco was notoriously inventive in entertaining sailors with dissipations, then more than now. The Barbary Coast still lived, a little faded and a little tattered, bordered by the Chinatown which had only recently acquired the look that has since become world famous: when the earthquake and fire of 1906 leveled Chinatown, it happened that the Chinoiserie architectural style was in vogue, so that’s how it was rebuilt, in haste and almost all in wood, before the city fathers could ordinance it out of existence to seize the land for their own uses.
The rapid rebuilding of Chinatown was not a unique occasion; San Francisco had recovered from the earthquake and fire of 1906 with extraordinary energy, hosting a world’s fair, the Panama Pacific International Exhibition, in 1915. The Fair had revitalized the city’s flagging economy, but it had also put San Francisco’s local politics in the national and international eye. The Barbary Coast was infamous throughout the world, so the city council had been cracking down on the area since 1919. Heinlein caught the tail end of some of the sights Mark Twain had seen when he was a newspaper reporter in San Francisco more than fifty years earlier.
The wharf area on the bay side of the city had enough dissipations for seamen ashore, and if he had not yet sampled drink and marijuana (he clearly implies in a late essay5 that he was familiar with the local connections in Kansas City in 1924), now was the time.6 Somehow he got into a fistfight—the last time that was to happen in his life—and broke his opponent’s nose.7
Oklahoma weighed anchor on July 12 and headed back down the West Coast, with more braising engine-room heat and engineering diagrams and gun practice shaking the ship for days on end. She made harbor at San Pedro on July 14 for four days before heading farther south, back to Panama City for a two-week layover before crossing to the Atlantic side and making for Guantánamo Bay and three weeks of target practice. The mids could be blasé about the Canal this time, on their second trip through.
Heinlein’s girl back home, Alice McBee, was in a serious automobile accident about this time. This was a stroke of upsetting news for him: he was probably already planning to ask her to marry him when he got back home on leave the next month.8
On the day Oklahoma cast off to go back through the Canal, Heinlein was caught absent without leave—“Frenching Out,” as it is recorded in the discipline section of his permanent record dossier (called his “jacket” at the Academy)—and given seventy-five demerits. This was unprecedented for him—but the circumstances were unprecedented, too.
Very late in the evening, just before their liberty was to expire at midnight, he had boarded a shuttle boat back to Oklahoma, filled, as it happened, with First Classmen. For one reason or another, the boat did not get to Oklahoma until just after midnight. Liberty had expired, and everybody would be put on report.
But the Midshipman Officer of the Deck was First Classman Joseph Finnegan, and in the Academy ethos, loyalty to one’s class comes before even proper Military discipline. The First Classmen knew they would get off, and they did: Heinlein was the one passenger on the boat not a First Classman—and the only passenger on that boat who was placed on report for Frenching Out.
Frenching Out was regarded as a Class A offense, comparable to drinking or gambling, for which the penalty was a certain number of demerits plus being confined to the Academy’s brig ship, the Reina Mercedes, for a period up to sixty days. In this case, Heinlein was also penalized two weeks of his September leave, from August 26 to September 10 that year. That left only thirteen days of September leave. The Oklahoma’s dittoed “Radio Press” dated August 25, 1927, published Navy Department’s Orders to Midshipmen, ordering Heinlein to “two weeks (extra) duty, U.S. Naval Academy.” Although the jacket does not say so specifically, he must have been in the brig for at least one week this time. He would also have a public record of dishonor in his jacket, the Black N.
The Black N mirrors the Academy’s Gold N (for “Navy”), given for conspicuous public honor—usually athletic achievement. Heinlein was to receive a Gold N of his own, yellow felt on a larger black felt diamond, later in the year. The Black N itself represented a week of confinement in the Reina Mercedes. For second (and subsequent) confinements, the Academy’s yearbook record would show asterisks.9
The gross injustice of the Frenching Out incident was offensive—particularly that the older were picking on the younger. This was a grave injustice to him, and one he never forgot.10
Somehow he got through the next three weeks—a three-day passage back through the locks and lakes of the Panama Canal. Three days to Guantánamo Bay, followed by two weeks of target practice, then what must have been an excruciatingly leisurely passage of five days back up the Atlantic Coast, to anchor at the Academy on August 25. Early that morning, the midshipmen were released. Heinlein, however, was met by a discipline detail and marched directly into hack at the Reina Mercedes. It must have felt like every eye was on him as he was branded with shame.
The Reina Mercedes was a place of temporary detention for midshipmen, rather than a true brig. A wooden sailing vessel, she had been captured in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and then, declared unfit for modern warfare, anchored at Annapolis to accommodate the Academy’s problem children and all the school’s floating gear except racing shells.11 It was the Brig, but it was not durance vile: the midshipmen under hack would spend nights and weekends there, foregoing any special privileges that might be given the rest of the Corps of Midshipmen and sleeping in hammocks that had to be lashed and stowed away every morning. Heinlein was used to stowing his sleeping gear in a closet each day.
They ate the common seamen’s mess and were formed up and marched to and from classes during the academic year, or to the extra duty they would be liberally assigned. They were allowed no visitors other than parents (not a possibility in Heinlein’s case, anyway), and they were not allowed to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities. This last was not particularly onerous for Heinlein, as his school year had not yet started.
And there was layer after layer, Pelion upon Ossa, of bitterness in this particular confinement for Heinlein: the Reina was under the command of Captain Halsey, and much of his extra-duty punishment must have involved scut work for the flight squadron—cleaning up after the service-and-repair operations and hauling the light, canvas-winged planes back into proper orientation for takeoffs on the Severn. Having washed out of piloting, he was condemned to scullery work for the ground crew of his flight squadron. And the eyes of the man who might have become a mentor—if he noticed Heinlein at all—saw only a bilger in midshipman blues.
Flouting Academy discipline was a routine pastime of the more rebelliousminded midshipmen, a kind of exercise in how much you could get away with—or not get away with, as the case might be. It was a way of counting coup on the establishment that oppressed, “getting back” some of your own—showing your classmates that you were not broken in spirit. In a later, more liberal time, disciplined midshipmen would wear their Black Ns as bad-boy badges, like scarlet letters on T-shirts and sweatshirts.
This punishment was particularly arbitrary, and Heinlein made a vow with himself to “go over the wall” (French Out) of the Academy grounds, usually after lights-out, once for each day he was in hack. It suited his sense of justice.12
On September 10, he was released from the Reina and had a few days on the campus, deserted except for the Plebes boning their ac. As a Second Classman he was expected to participate in the routine hazing of the Plebes. He did, and he may have visited some of Marsh Gurney’s aberrant practices on Plebes and Youngsters alike—the only time anything like this would happen. 13 Some of them exacted revenge the next year when his cousin Oscar Allen Heinlein, Jr., came to Annapolis as a Plebe: “I well remember in 1928 Youngsters and Second classmen that you had been rough on, would come over
from the 4th to the 2nd Batt. just to beat my rear.”14 (On the other hand, another Plebe that same year remembered Heinlein and the entire Class of 1929 as protecting them somewhat from the unusually sadistic Class of 1930—the Second Classmen Oscar referenced).15
Heinlein seems to have disgusted himself:
I hated the hazing that went on at the Naval Academy and never indulged in it as an upperclassman. My only real political ambition for office was someday to be Undersecretary of the Navy and thereby to have the N.A. under my thumb so that I could stamp it out.16
Under the circumstances, this was the best use that could be made of a bad experience. This time in his life undoubtedly fed the insight, written out decades later, of one of his protagonists, who realizes what it means to be human when he sees a monkey beaten by a bigger one that takes out his frustration on the smaller and weaker.17
Knowing you are brilliant does not entirely compensate for knowing you are odd, and Heinlein knew he was inescapably not like the “normal” boys around him. And his self-esteem had been taking a beating recently. This early, this young, he had only rudimentary tools to deal with his pain. He could only experience it as rage. He managed to get through his confinement to the Academy without raising official notice. And he made time for a lightning trip home.
Heinlein’s record of land trips from this period shows the travel of September 1927 as “Annapolis–St. Louis–Kansas City–Carrollton, Missouri–Kansas City–St. Louis–Annapolis.”18 He could not have left before September 10, and he had to report back at 10 A.M. on September 23. Three days each way by train to and from Annapolis left only a few days for family and that side trip to Carrollton, fifty-eight miles east-northeast of Kansas City, where Alice McBee was probably recuperating. His high school pal, Sammy Roberts, had a car, so it is possible that they made the trip together.
In the Second Class academic year, the preparatory subjects were now out of the way, and the midshipmen were expected to find an area of specialization and work toward it. They boned “professional theory and practice,” adding intensive courses in electricity, engineering, and navigation, while the Academy arranged for special activities in the major specializations. Early the next year, for example, a submarine came to the Academy for an exposure trip up the Chesapeake Bay, and the midshipmen got a crash course in submarine operations, including a lecture on salvage by Captain Donald R. Osborn. At the midterm their mathematics requirement—“the ogre of artistic minds,” according to the class history19—ended, and the midshipmen celebrated with appropriate burial ceremony. Ordnance and seamanship replaced mathematics in their academic schedules. They would also be introduced to the difficult subjects of military organization and theory of discipline in the Navy. Mastering these subjects was essential for advancement in their final year at the Academy.
Heinlein had seemed destined for the extra stripes of honor rank, but he had a hard time getting back into the grind. Any slippage in academics was minor, though on his October 1927 report card class standing dropped to 145 out of 251. This is remarkable, as it means that, even with the Class A offense for Frenching Out on his record, about half the class had more demerits than he. Possibly this reflects his hard work avoiding demerits in prior years. His Executive marks remained high: 3.69 and fortieth in class.
He continued with sword work, competing with distinction in the Intercollegiate Fencing Championships in New York City—the occasion of a Navy Gold N for athletic excellence. So he had a matching set for his collection. On one occasion, his swordmaster, Capitaine Deladrier, arranged a match with a Heidelberg épée fencer. He had the aristocratic manner affected by the Heidelberg Studentenkorps, which Robert had expected from Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad (1880), and a face so marked with schläger dueling scars Heinlein later said he looked like a checkerboard. But his swordsmanship backed up his affectations: “He utterly outclassed me.”20
Heinlein accumulated three more demerits during the month of October, but that was inconsequential. More serious was a series of small medical problems. His wrist hurt sometimes, and his vision was beginning to blur—an alarming development in view of Ivar’s eyesight problems. Robert began to be in and out of sick bay, trying to keep in shape. His October report card shows incompletes in engineering and electrical classes. But he was still maintaining. When the entire First Class left the campus at the end of October to attend the Navy-Pennsylvania game in Philadelphia, an Executive Department Regimental Order dated 28 October 1927 named Heinlein CPO (Chief Petty Officer) of the regiment.21
They normally had only enough officers for drill, and the unusually small size of the Class of 1928 gave the Class of 1929 some special opportunities to assume regimental offices temporarily—circumstances unusual enough to be remarked upon in the official class history in the 1929 Lucky Bag. This is the first occasion on which the honor of regimental office is recorded for Heinlein.
November brought two more demerits (eighty for the year), but his class standing rose to 129. Navy lost the Army-Navy football game over Thanksgiving weekend in New York—the last Army-Navy game until President Hoover reinstated it in 1930.
In December there were five more demerits. Heinlein was inching toward serious attitude problems: his Executive marks in the end-of-term report cards were in the ignominious “Fair and Passing” range (in other words, a C) and ranked him 225 out of 266.
That Christmas—set by Special Order 102-27 to start after midday meal formation on Friday, December 23 and to end at evening roll call on January 2, 1928—he could again not get back to Kansas City. He was in Annapolis part of the time and then went to Washington, D.C., for the last ten days of his leave, as a guest of Dr. Philip B. Matz (not otherwise identified). The City Club of Washington, D.C., extended membership privileges to Heinlein as a visiting midshipman.22 Perhaps Dr. Matz was his sponsor on this occasion—a common enough practice.
Over the holidays, Robert received a letter from his brother Ivar, important enough for him to keep in his scrapbook. Back in Kansas City, Ivar had surveyed his options and taken an appointment in the Army—in Robert’s old unit, in fact. The Army did not require 20/20 vision of its line officers. He became second lieutenant for the 110th Engineers, where Larry was first lieutenant of the headquarters.
Ivar looked back on his experience at the Naval Academy. “Treasure this unique opportunity,” he advised Robert: “You are enjoying now probably the best time that you’ll ever love in your life, so make every moment full of pleasure.”23
It was good advice—and possibly just what Heinlein needed to turn himself around. There were no more demerits in January or February 1928.
In January 1928 he had a telegram from home: Alice McBee had died suddenly, of appendicitis.24
I think this was the only time in my life that I ever felt suicidal. Alice was a lovely girl, just turned twenty-one, blue eyes, brown hair, beautiful face, perfect figure—and with a merry, happy disposition to match. We were simpatico in every way, and all my hopes and plans were tied up in her. With Alice gone, all that remained seemed pointless. “Despair” is the word and I shan’t elaborate … . Oh, I remember every detail of the bad times; the shock when I got the telegram, the painful interview with the Commandant when I tried to get leave and was refused (I was crying and midshipmen aren’t supposed to do that, certainly not where it can be seen). I remember the grim, zombie days that followed, the utter despair.25
Another disaster followed. He had been experiencing eyestrain for weeks. Whatever benefit he had gained from the Bates exercises the winter before coming to the Naval Academy was gone. In mid-January 1928 his vision was found to be 20/70 in the right eye and 20/50 in the left eye, with occasional flashes of 20/20 without correction. On January 18, 1928, he was admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy Hospital, where the myopia was diagnosed hopefully as “ciliary spasm.” He was sent to consult a specialist in Washington, D.C., on January 21, and again on February 3. Dr. Carl Henning recommended to the Academy’s Chief Medical Office
r, Edward H. H. Old, a course of treatment with atropine, 1 percent solution three times a day, to relax the eye muscles, probably for a week to ten days (though it might take six to eight weeks).
He was released from the hospital on February 13, after less than a month, so the treatment was more rapidly successful than originally anticipated. But he had taken incompletes in all academic subjects, to be made up later. A psychologist might note that his eyes had disgraced him not too long before, weeping in front of the Commandant of the Academy.
He was able to return to school, where the pace of life was picking up for the Class of 1929, after the Dark Days of late winter—baseball, lacrosse, crew, the Masqueraders, and weekend dances. That spring was the last Gymkhana at the Academy—that “quaint combination of tournament and Mardi Gras” went out “[i]n a gorgeous pageantry of music, dramatics, and acrobatics.”26 Heinlein did not participate in the skits or other entertainment, but he did participate in the fencing exhibition; the fencing team had a bout with the Princeton team the night of the Gymkhana, winning 11–6.27
But something was happening to his wrist, and he was losing speed and flexibility. By the end of the season, he had to withdraw from the épée team. “The loss of Heinlien [sic] was regrettable,” The Lucky Bag noted that year. He certainly regretted it. This may also account for some of the additional demerits he accumulated in March and April, bringing his total for the year up to ninety-three. He retired the tiny ivory elephant charm he had always taped to the inside of his wrist for matches, though he always kept it with him.28
Heinlein’s series of hard knocks that year must have turned him a little in on himself; he no longer threw himself into the activities of his class, except for the Ring Committee he had joined as a Youngster.29 Although mathematics was no longer required, he continued his personal studies. He discovered C. H. Hinton’s A New Era of Thought (1888) in 1928, with its fascinating method of using n-dimensional geometry to introduce esoteric philosophy. He was ready to start a more systematic search for this kind of thing and talked over finds like this with some other midshipmen who shared such interests. Caleb Barrett Laning, another Kansas City boy, was one of them. Allan “Gus” Gray was another.30
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Page 11