Duty First

by Ed Ruggero

  From the stands, from a distance, their movements are surprisingly smooth. They salute, stand at parade rest, then back to attention on command. Brigadier General John Abizaid administers the oath, his voice echoing against the barracks and the green hills beyond.

  I, —–, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and bear true allegiance to the National Government; that I will maintain and defend the sovereignty of the United States, paramount to and all allegiance, sovereignty, or fealty I may owe to any State or country whatsoever; and that I will at all times obey the legal orders of my superior officers, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

  For those families who came here thinking that West Point was just another college on a list of schools their talented sons and daughters might have attended, the sight of all those uniforms and the solemnity of the Oath Ceremony reminds them that this is something different. They stand on the bleachers to take in the sight, and the spectacle is impressive. This morning’s thirteen hundred civilians have been changed dramatically, and if they’re not yet soldiers, they are no longer high school students.

  Up in the aluminum stands, two women who look remarkably alike, perhaps the mother and grandmother of a new cadet, sing with gusto when the band plays the National Anthem. Across the whole of the bleachers, there is a good deal more enthusiasm for the song than is usually heard at baseball games. There is a flurry of commands and sharp salutes, though the flags stir only occasionally in the heavy summer air. Then the companies pass in review, wheeling by the Superintendent (the three-star general who is both president of the college and military commander of West Point) and the Commandant (the one-star who is responsible for cadets’ military training). There are ripples of excitement as the cadets pass close to the bleachers, while families strain to spot a son or daughter. The new cadets tramp by at 120 steps per minute, on past the generals, on past their families; they wheel sharply in front of the white confection that is the Superintendent’s House, then, quickly, the class of 2002 disappears back into the dark tunnels.

  For the mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, and grandparents, the parade marks the end of something momentous. They will leave West Point without the children who have been with them for seventeen or eighteen years. Understandably, the families take their time getting out of the stands, as if they’re unsure that their part in the drama is over.

  In the barracks, the members of West Point’s Class of 2002 have hours of unfamiliar tasks ahead of them. There is equipment to draw and store, rules to be memorized, whole new ways of speaking and eating and walking to be mastered. Somewhere in the course of the evening, they will be told to sit down and write a letter home. Most of them will manage only a line or two, something about all the work to be done on this, the first of many long days ahead of them.

  BEAST

  The first days of Beast Barracks slide by in a blur for the new cadets. If they are remarkable for anything, it is for the mundane and seemingly endless nature of the tasks to be learned: how to wear various uniforms, how to salute, eat in the Mess Hall, march, carry a rifle. But over the first week, the details add up, and by the time the new cadets climb down off the trucks for their first day of field training, they have started to look like GIs.

  They clamber out of the big five-ton trucks onto the dusty road wearing battle dress uniform, or BDUs, the familiar baggy camouflage. They carry big green rucksacks, with rolled foam pads slung across the top; load-bearing equipment (called LBE); a set of suspenders and a belt from which hang canteens, first aid, and ammunition pouches. They wear the coal-bucket Kevlar helmet, which everyone calls a K-pot, and carry the M16A2 rifle, standard issue for the Army and Marine Corps. In the past few days they have learned to put all of this together: the hooks and buckles and belts and straps, so that they at least look like soldiers. They have learned how to form into squads and platoons, to respond to marching commands to get them from one place to another. They stand straight, head and eyes to the front, and wait until they’re told to move.

  This first day of field training has brought them to a pleasant, shady hillside on West Point’s sprawling reservation, the “NBC Site,” where they will be introduced to Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Warfare. They will learn how to wear the “MOPP” suit, a charcoal-treated coat and pants that, with its rubber gloves and overshoes, is supposed to keep the soldier safe from chemical weapons. They will learn to wear the protective masks, the huge, black-rubber headpiece with its monstrous goggle-eyes and a green plastic hood. Wearing it is like wearing a head-sized, portable sauna.

  The biggest challenges for the new cadets are simple tasks: learning to wear their specialized equipment, for instance. Upperclass cadets like junior Greg Stitt are on to more difficult things: Stitt is learning to be a platoon sergeant. Just as the squad leaders take care of their ten or eleven new cadets, Greg Stitt takes care of four squads, seeing to all the details that make the machine run smoothly: food, water, transportation, accountability. He gives instructions to the squad leaders, passes information from the platoon leader—a senior—and generally acts as a second-in-command and chief of operations.

  Stitt stands in a central location, in the same uniform as the new cadets, including the weapon. As they complete their various tasks, the new cadets report to Stitt, who records their successes on a card. New cadets who don’t complete the summer’s required training will lose their spring leave and take the tests over again while the rest of the class enjoys the break. This is another innovation of the Commandant, Brigadier General John Abizaid: Rewards are tied to performance, just as in the regular Army, where a soldier who hasn’t mastered the required skills is not promoted.

  Stitt, who was an Army enlisted man before coming to West Point, thinks these are good changes.

  “The Comm has some good ideas; he’s moving this place to be more like the army.”

  Stitt looks up as a new cadet reports that he has successfully completed the task, “Don the protective mask.” Stitt nods, makes a quick pencil mark, and tells the new cadet, “Move out.”

  Greg Stitt isn’t losing any sleep worrying whether or not CBT is too easy, or if the new cadets should be yelled at more. He thinks new cadets should be treated like basic trainees in the Army. That way, he says, “They’ll know what it’s like to be a private, and they’ll learn how to treat other people.”

  Stitt, who is older than his classmates, is five eight, with red hair and the compact build and coiled energy of a lightweight boxer. He was a helicopter crew chief in the 82nd Airborne Division before applying for West Point. His experience as an enlisted soldier has shaped his view of how leaders should treat subordinates.

  “Most people don’t realize they’re being developed until after it’s over,” he says. “If they pay attention, they realize they can learn from both good and bad examples. I can learn good points, or I can learn bad points,” he notes. “There is a lot of emphasis on thinking for yourself.”

  All through a hot afternoon, the new cadets move from one station to another in squad groups. The equipment is unfamiliar (except to those new cadets who were enlisted soldiers and thus have been through Army Basic Training). Every station includes some timed task, but the pressure is not great; the tasks are just not that tough for this bunch of two-varsity-letter-winner, National-Honor-Society new cadets. A letter home might sum it all up as “spent the day getting dressed and undressed in unfamiliar and uncomfortable extra clothing.” The new cadets joke among themselves, compare notes on hometowns, slouch, and stretch under the shade of the trees as the classes drone on.

  Major Rob Olson, Alpha Company’s Tac, notes that this is the first time the new cadets have had the chance to talk to one another at length, to find out they’re not the only ones worried about fitting in, about handling the stresses of basic training. “For some of them this is the first time they’ve smiled [in the seven days since R-Day]. And there was a line at the latrine. It’s the first time some of
them have taken a shit in a week.”

  The new cadets stand in clusters in the shade after removing their equipment. Squad leader Grady Jett, an Army football player from Houston with a TV-star cleft in his chin, lets the new cadets joke around a bit, just a little banter, but he doesn’t hesitate to put them in the front-leaning rest—the push-up position—if they don’t respond fast enough to instructions.

  Platoon Sergeant Stitt, who stands off to the side, says the platoon sergeants and company first sergeant—the highest-ranking cadet NCOs in the company—are saddled with a great deal of sudden, wide responsibility, especially considering that for most of them their entire leadership experience has been supervising one or two plebes during the previous semester. Now they’re responsible for forty or fifty or in the case of Company First Sergeant Josh Gilliam, 158 new cadets.

  “We’re allowed to try things and do things differently,” Stitt says. “They [the Tacs] guide us into the right lane.” He holds up his hands to indicate a left and right limit. This is the same description Olson used when talking about letting the cadre figure things out on their own.

  A new cadet appears beside Stitt to report that he has successfully completed one of the required tasks. Perhaps inspired by the casual surroundings, the new cadet stands in a relaxed posture. Stitt, who has a serious demeanor for a young man, doesn’t even vary his voice as he says, “What do you want?”

  “I completed …”

  “Don’t be dropping ‘sirs’ or I’ll be dropping you,” Stitt interrupts.

  “Sir, I have completed the task, ‘don protective mask.’”

  Stitt makes a note on a card that lists the names of all forty-plus new cadets in his charge. A moment later another new cadet walks by on his way to the Porta-John that serves the site. He is bareheaded.

  “Where’s your helmet?” Stitt asks.

  The new cadet looks at the platoon sergeant, then scrambles to retrieve the helmet, which he jams onto his head.

  “Drop,” Stitt says, matter-of-factly.

  The new cadet, who is also carrying his rifle, bends over to get into the push-up position, but he doesn’t know what to do with the weapon. Somehow he knows he shouldn’t just lay it on the ground.

  “Like this,” Stitt says. He drops into the front-leaning rest, his rifle resting on the backs of his hands.

  Stitt didn’t get to West Point by the traditional route. The son of an Air Force enlisted man and grandson of a World War II Army Air Forces veteran, Stitt enlisted to become a helicopter pilot. He ended up at Fort Bragg, flying in the back of the Army’s workhorse aircraft, the Blackhawk.

  His lieutenant saw his potential and said to him, “Hey, Stitt, you’re not married, you’ve got good SATs; how about applying for West Point?”

  “I told him, ‘No way, sir. I’m not a school guy’” Stitt says, narrating.

  “And then one day I was on detail at the [82nd Airborne Division] museum. I’m sweeping up and I notice a display about General [Jim] Gavin.”

  Gavin, USMA ‘29, commanded the 505th Parachute Infantry regiment on D Day, and later commanded the entire division. He is a legend in a unit with no shortage of heroes. Even as a general, he carried a rifle into battle. In today’s division headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, an entire wall is covered with photographs of division commanders; Gavin is the only one wearing a helmet in his photo.

  “I looked in this case and I noticed that General Gavin was an enlisted man before he came to West Point,” Stitt says. “So I went back to the lieutenant and said I’d give it a try. I wrote the essays [for admission] the week they were due. I did everything at the last minute.”

  Stitt’s claim to fame as a cadet is an attempted “spirit mission” just before the Army-Navy football game the previous fall.

  “Spirit mission” is a catchall description for almost any high-spirited, unorthodox activity that is designed to shake up the status quo; organizers of the most imaginative missions can taste a bit of fame. Douglas MacArthur, who was number-one man in his class of 1903, engineered the removal of the reveille cannon to the top of the clock tower in what is now Pershing Barracks. It took the post engineers, working in daylight, several days to remove the cannon the cadets had moved in one night. Other cadets have won a degree of notoriety and many of them have been punished heavily when caught, for such antics as filling the Commandant’s office from floor to ceiling with balled-up newspapers; for dragging cannons from Trophy Point to various places on post, such as in front of and aimed at the Superintendent’s quarters. A favorite of modern times is the kidnapping of the Naval Academy mascot, Bill the Goat.

  “I’m the only cadet, as far as I know, who has ever climbed Battle Monument and kissed Victory,” Stitt says without smiling.

  Battle Monument, a giant granite shaft that sits on Trophy Point, is topped with a statue of Winged Victory that sits some sixty feet above the ground. It is a memorial to the officers and men of the Regular Army who died in the Civil War.

  Stitt and his cohorts planned meticulously, doing a good bit of reconnaissance and outfitting themselves like commandos, complete with headset radios and night-vision goggles they bought from a commercial outfitter. They used a water cannon to shoot a line over the flat top of the monument, then used the line to pull up a climbing rope. Stitt then used a system of knots to scale the vertical climbing rope.

  “I got halfway up, then had to come down when the MPs [Military Police] came around. Then I climbed the whole thing.”

  After tying himself in at the top, Stitt unrolled a long vertical banner with “GO ARMY” and an MIA symbol on it. The idea was that the sign would be visible to most of the corps when the cadets came outside for breakfast formation at 6:30. But the Military Police, on their regular patrols, spotted Stitt’s ground crew. Those cadets, perhaps thinking of the adage “Live to Fight Another Day” scattered, leaving Stitt alone on a tiny footing, looking for the first signs of dawn from his perch. Although the MPs hadn’t spotted him, he couldn’t get down without help. After half an hour, he called down to the startled patrol. The worst part was that they made him bring the banner down with him.

  “No one got to see it or even take a picture of it,” he says, disappointed.

  It is time for lunch, and the new cadets have been issued their first MREs (Meal, Ready to Eat), the bagged, freeze-dried field rations. As with many of the things they do that are new to them, the new cadets defer to those with prior service. In this group where experience is measured in weeks, a new cadet with a year in uniform is an old veteran.

  New Cadets Ryan Koolovitz and Deborah Welle coach the third and fourth squads as they navigate the tricky waters of eating Army rations. Koolovitz was in radio repair before attending the USMA Prep School. (Most enlisted soldiers admitted to West Point spend a year at the prep school, preparing for college-level work.) He has a narrow face and bright eyes and is older than most of the second class cadets. New Cadet Deborah Welle was in Advanced Training at Fort Sam Houston, preparing to be a lab tech in the medical field, when she was accepted directly into West Point. She skipped prep school because of her academic record and high test scores. Welle, who smiles all the time, is the first person in her family to pursue a bachelor’s degree. She is already thinking about her commissioning and graduation day: She wants her grandfather, a veteran of World War II Battle of the Bugle, to pin on one second lieutenant bar while her drill sergeant from Army basic training pins on the other.

  In the brown packages, the meals look the same. New Cadet Joshua Renicker, a quiet, red-haired football player, studies the labels intently and eats everything he can peel out of the plastic. He is worried about losing too much weight during Beast, a common concern of the coaching staffs as well. Other new cadets shun some of the side dishes beans and peanut butter and hard crackers—as dry as road dust. Everyone eats the candy.

  New Cadet Zachary Lange, a recruited hurdler from Minnesota, inspects his first MRE. He rips the top off a foil packet and s
queezes the pasty contents into his mouth.

  “What’s that?” someone asks.

  “I don’t know,” Lange says, chewing thoughtfully.

  The upperclass cadets sit in a group nearby and talk about the most memorable event of so far. They agree that yesterday’s was a toss-up. At a swimming test, one new cadet, male, stripped down completely to put on his bathing suit. In a mixed group. Another new cadet took off his shirt to reveal a decidedly unmilitary nipple ring. (Body ornaments are supposed to be removed.)

  As they finish their meals and fold the plastic wrappers, the new cadets talk about who is resigning. (“Quitting,” a word heavy with judgment, is the most commonly used term to describe leaving the academy. No one ever says, “so-and-so wants to transfer to the University of Oklahoma.”)

  Rob Olson attributes these early resignations to the schedule of the first week of CBT: The new cadets spent most of their time standing in line at issue points to draw equipment or be fitted for uniforms; attending welcome lectures by the Superintendent, the Commandant, the Dean; taking tests for advanced-placement courses. They spent the July 4th holiday on guided tours of West Point’s historical sites; they go to chapel on Sunday. There was none of the adventure promised in the recruiting literature. There was no time off, just busy work and constant commands in a strange new jargon.

  Olson thinks it’s critical to get the new cadets into the field and let them try something new. “I tell [the cadre] that if you can sponsor two or three consecutive successes you won’t lose one new cadet [to resignation].”

  As the new cadets finish lunch, the talk moves quickly to the day’s big test: the gas chamber. This small block building, which sits some thirty yards from the break area, will be flooded with CS, the code name for the military version of tear gas. The new cadets will go in and, once inside, remove the mask. The stated purpose of the exercise is to give the trainees confidence in their equipment, specifically, in the protective mask. But there is another purpose here as well.