The Cadet

by Doug Beason

  Chapter Ten

  “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie”

  July, 1955

  Front Range

  Denver, CO

  … Before honor is humility.

  —Proverbs 15:33

  “At ease. Take a knee.”

  B Squadron rested in a clearing of scrub bush at the base of the foothills. The blue Air Force buses in which they had arrived were parked down the dirt road. From the pine and fresh smell of ozone, it was though they were a thousand miles from Lowry, but the bus ride at dusk had taken less than an hour. The lights of Denver glowed just over the ridge.

  Captain Justice held up a compact, olive-colored oval box and shined a flashlight on it. “This, gentlemen, is your new best friend. Never lose it, and treat it with care.”

  Sly leaned over and whispered to Rod, “It’s a pack of condoms.”

  Justice glared, trying to see who spoke. Rod tried not to laugh—a fate worse than death. “Pardon me, sir; pardon me, gentlemen,” Rod coughed.

  Justice unsnapped the box, revealing a compass. “You are never lost if you have a compass. Remember, it’s only as good as the person who reads it. Don’t lose it.”

  He snapped the case shut and pulled out a map. “Gather round.” He spread out the map in front of them and showed them how to align the compass. When finished he passed out an envelope to every other basic. “Each team has a set of directions in the envelope. This is a timed test.

  “Use the watches you were issued and return here by 0200. That is plenty of time to complete the course.” He held up a list, squinted in the dark, and said, “You should all have a whistle, canteen, poncho, matches, flashlight, folding knife, twine, compass, map, and mirror. Anyone missing anything?” He looked around.

  Sly opened his mouth but Rod dug him in the ribs, silencing his classmate.

  Captain Justice held up his watch. “I have a time hack for 2105. Adjust your watches on my mark—ready, ready, and set.” As the basics adjusted their watches he said, “If you hear a warbling siren, that’s the recall signal. Stop what you’re doing and get back to home base as fast as you can. Any questions?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Open your orders and carry on.” Captain Justice faded out of the light.

  “Why’d you jab me?” Sly said. “I was only going to ask why they didn’t include any toilet paper. Or the kitchen sink.”

  “Haven’t you learned anything?” Rod tore open the envelope. “Greetings.” He lifted an eyebrow at Sly. “Greetings? Uh, oh. I don’t think any AOC has ever greeted us before.”

  Sly sniggered. “Watch out, here it comes!”

  “Time: 0400 ZULU.”

  Sly grabbed the paper. “That’s Greenwich Mean Time. They use it as a standard. They’re seven hours ahead of us here in Colorado, five hours from my home in Boston. My father used Zulu time whenever he took us sailing outside the 12 mile limit; had to do with navigation accuracy—”

  “Will you shut up?” Rod snatched the paper from him and they read silently.

  When finished, Rod said, “They have us going from checkpoint to checkpoint, and it looks like arriving back here is the final checkpoint.”

  Sly looked around. Several of the groups had already taken off for the woods, but they all trooped off in different directions. A gleam came to his eye and he lowered his voice. “If we’re heading back here, then what’s to prevent us from just hiding in the forest and taking a nap until we hear the recall siren?”

  “Are you nuts? Why do you think we have to write down the number of each checkpoint? They want to see how many we hit, and how fast we hit them!”

  Sly shrugged. “What if we got lost? That’s why they gave us so much time. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t want the sleep?”

  Rod blinked. He couldn’t believe he had just heard his roommate suggest that they game the system and, well, cheat. “It’s not right. I won’t do it.”

  “Why not?” Sly leaned close. “There’s no law against it, and certainly no reg. And who’s going to know?” His Boston accent grated on Rod’s nerves.

  “I’ll know. And besides, it’s not the right thing to do.” Rod dug out his compass and snapped it open. He waited for the compass needle to stop jiggling and lined up the arrow against the N on the circular dial. He nodded toward a big tree, away from the clearing and strode off, leaving Sly behind.

  Seconds later Sly jogged up behind him. “Just joking back there, Rod.” Sly stepped up beside him and kept quiet. After a few minutes of silence he said, “These woods are really different from New England. I miss the maple trees and soft forest ground cover; this dirt and granite wears on your feet.”

  “We’re in the Rockies if you haven’t noticed.”

  “I have. This whole mountain range is younger, wilder than what we have back east. Our version of roughing it was dressing up for a reception at our lake resort in the Appalachians, cocktails at five and dancing all night. That’s the civilized way to rough it. In fact, if it wasn’t for Uncle Jack, I’d probably be taking ROTC and not killing myself out west.”

  “Uncle Jack?”

  “Jack Kennedy. Uncle Jack said it would look better attending the new Air Academy rather than going through ROTC, so he offered me a congressional appointment.”

  Rod stopped. “You mean Senator John F. Kennedy’s your uncle?”

  “Not really. He and Daddy were classmates at Harvard; he’s a close family friend.”

  Rod checked his compass and spotted a jutting rock in the direction they needed to be heading; he turned to Sly and furrowed his brow. “So why did you come here?”

  “Part of the plan, my man. You know: military service, then law school so I can go into politics. It worked for Uncle Jack.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Half hour later, they spotted a sign off to the right, a circular metal dish on top of a five foot high pole with the number 8 painted on it. Light from their flashlight glinted off the sign.

  “That’s it. What are the next orders?”

  Rod dug the embossed paper out of his pocket. After reading the directions, they trooped off, this time to the southeast. Sly shined the flashlight ahead of them as Rod watched the compass.

  They hadn’t gone more than fifty feet when Rod spotted a glint reflecting off something. “What’s that?”

  Sly flicked the light to the left. Through the pines and sticking in the ground next to a rock the size of a dump truck was another sign. The number 6 was painted prominently on the front.

  Rod frowned as he consulted his map. “I wonder if this is our checkpoint?”

  “Can’t be. The orders say we have half a mile to the next one.”

  “No, I mean our first checkpoint.” Rod pulled out his own flashlight and shone it around the woods. “Number 8 is about fifty feet back there; this is number 6. Which is the right one?” He glanced down at the compass. “This thing isn’t very accurate.”

  Sly flicked off his flashlight and said wearily, “Let’s get going. Who knows why they put the two signs so close together? Maybe they’re trying to see how much we got off the right track. Or maybe they’re just trying to confuse us.”

  Rod hesitated. Sly was right. Unless they went back to the beginning, there was no way to determine which of one of these two checkpoint signposts they were supposed to hit. The best thing would just be to press on. In spite of the cool night air, Rod began to feel hot. He rolled up the sleeves on his khakis.

  “Okay,” he looked down at the compass. “Let’s go.” He had a feeling it was going to be a long, long night.

  O O O

  Three hours later they stopped, dead tired of trudging through the thick woods. They climbed up and down hills, sometimes slipping on pine needles, and once nearly walked off a granite boulder the size of a house.

  Sly reached for the map. “Any idea where we are?”

  “Within a few miles,” Rod said wearily. They had only found one additional checkpoint and needed two more before recall—w
hich they should hear sometime within the next half hour.

  “What do we do?” Sly squinted at the map, trying to figure out where they were.

  “Keep hiking.”

  Sly was quiet for a moment. “Doesn’t it seem weird it’s so quiet? You think we’d run into some of our classmates, or at least hear them.”

  “It’s a big forest,” Rod said, shining his flashlight around. There were only 300 of his classmates in an area bigger than the island of Manhattan, so it made sense that they wouldn’t run into anyone. In fact, they couldn’t see much of anything in the dark—nothing but shadows of trees, trees, and more trees. Just outside of the main glare of their flashlight the pines rose up, marking a hill. Every now and then they caught a glimpse of the night sky, but the trees were so thick they couldn’t get a bearing.

  Suddenly, the warbling wail of a siren came from behind them. Sounding like an old air raid siren, it rose in pitch and echoed across the mountain hills.

  Rod turned at the sound. “They’re calling us in early.” He started off.

  “It’s not too late to write down one of those other checkpoint numbers we ran across,” Sly said; he sounded out of breath.

  “They weren’t the right ones.”

  “Are you ready to catch it from Captain Justice when we show up with only two?”

  “Or what, lie? That’s even worse.”

  Sly was silent for a few minutes as they crunched toward the sound of the siren. There was not much underbrush, since the trees were tall enough to prevent light from getting to the forest floor, so the going was fairly easy; it was the hills and boulders that presented a problem.

  Rod sloshed through a creek, stepping on rocks that lay underneath the water’s surface. Sly yelped as he slipped in the water. “Hey, warn me next time, would you?”

  “Sorry.”

  Hearing the siren grow louder, they scrambled down a steep embankment, then climbed up a ridge and pulled themselves through a patch of scrub brush. As they looked down into a valley, Rod saw a flickering light. “They’ve got a bonfire going.”

  “I don’t remember this valley.”

  Rod pulled out his compass. “That’s because our first heading took us southeast, down that incline.”

  Sly started down the hill and called behind him, “We must have taken the longest way possible to get back.”

  Fifteen minutes later they trudged into the clearing. For the first time since BCT had started, Rod had not been around an ATO, so simply making it back made him feel as though they had accomplished something worthwhile.

  Rod and Sly reported to Captain Justice. “Sir, Basic Cadets Simone and Jakes, reporting.”

  Justice returned the salute. “Where are your orders?”

  Rod handed him the paper with the checkpoint numbers on it.

  Justice lifted an eyebrow. Light from the fire danced across his face, making his expression hard to read.

  That didn’t last for long.

  Justice crumpled the paper. “What the hell were you two doing out there? Taking a blow?”

  “No, sir. We—”

  “What’s the correct response, basic?”

  Rod and Sly braced. “Sir, no excuse, sir.”

  “That’s right, there’s absolutely no excuse. You men had five hours to hike somewhat more than three miles. And what do you have to show for it? Nothing. I bet you two took a blow; you went to sleep and woke up just in time to trot back into camp.”

  Rod felt a surge of emotion well up inside him. “But sir, you don’t understand—”

  “Knock off fifty, smacko. Just because we’re in bivouac doesn’t mean you’re out of basic training. What did you do, leave your brain back at Lowry?”

  “No, sir!” They fell to the ground and started counting pushups.

  “It’s time you cretins learn a valuable skill. What’s the worst thing you can ever do?”

  They answered in unison. “Sir, pimp over your classmate, sir!”

  “That’s right. And saving your classmate’s life is the best thing you can do. It’s about time you morons learned how to do that. When I say grenade, I want you to throw yourself on the ground and cover a grenade for your classmate. Save his life. Take the entire explosion with your body. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Then stand up!” After they scrambled to attention he yelled, “Grenade!”

  Rod and Sly simultaneously dropped to the ground. Rod involuntarily put out his hand to break his fall and grunted when he hit the dirt. Dust swooshed up around them.

  “On your feet!” Justice yelled. “What are you trying to do, Simone, kill your classmate? You fall on your hands and you’ll allow shrapnel to escape, which will take out your classmate’s eye. Will he appreciate that?”

  “No, sir!”

  “You’re damn right he won’t! Now when I say grenade, you hit the ground with your puny little chest and cover that mother. Grenade!”

  Rod splayed on the ground with an oof as the air rushed from his lungs. He gasped for breath. He blinked dirt from his eyes.

  “On your feet!”

  Rod struggled up.

  “Grenade!”

  Oof.

  “Grenade!”

  Oof.

  “Grenade!”

  They saved each other’s lives for five minutes.

  A crowd of ATOs gathered and watched them create a dustbowl.

  Captain Justice announced in a loud voice. “These gentlemen took a blow in the woods, while the rest of their classmates negotiated the terrain. Now they’re learning what it’s like to sacrifice themselves for their classmates. What flight are you men in?”

  Rod braced to attention. “Flight B-2, sir!”

  As if he were a judge announcing a death sentence, Justice said, “The new name of your flight is Weenie B-2. You men are all a bunch of weenies. You’ve disgraced your flight for eternity. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “So who are you?”

  “Sir, we are … we are Weenie B-2.”

  Justice nodded. “Announce yourself as such wherever you go. Grenade!”

  Once again, they threw themselves on the ground, covering an imaginary grenade so as to save their classmates and bring honor back to themselves … and their flight.

  O O O

  The next night Lieutenant Ranch left Flight B-2 alone in the squadron assembly room, but everyone was too tired to talk. They sat in a circle, facing each other and staring at the floor, relieved to have some time of their own. Without the ATOs constant pressure, it was hard to discuss something as esoteric as establishing an honor code, but Rod felt he had to say something.

  Rod’s chest still hurt from the grenade drill as he shifted his weight on the hard wooden chair. “I know that if we’d had an honor code when we went out on land nav, Sly and I would have been trusted at our word that we weren’t napping. And Captain Justice wouldn’t have made us fall on those grenades.”

  Sitting across the circle, Fred Delante said, “He would have done that anyway. All the ATOs are doing it now, thanks to Comrade Justice. He’s a masochist.”

  Someone sniggered. Rod only knew Delante as being a football player from Colorado Springs, and from the previous way he had interacted in the squadron, the guy seemed to have a chip on his shoulder.

  “I think you mean sadist,” said Manuel Rojo softly.

  “So Justice is hard ass,” Sly said, looking around. “What’s new?”

  Rod waited patiently for the chatter to subside before speaking again. “I think having an honor code is the right thing to do. My father has taught me that without a man’s honor, then he has nothing.”

  Jeff Goldstein, the dark-haired basketball player, spoke with a Bronx accent. “Why don’t we just use West Point’s code? Or Annapolis’? If the military academies are the only ones with an honor code, why reinvent a new one?”

  “That’s not true,” Manuel Rojo said. “William and Mary instituted the first honor code in the nat
ion in 1779, at the behest of Thomas Jefferson who was then Governor of Virginia. The University of Virginia established theirs in 1842, and even Princeton instituted an entirely student-run code in 1893.”

  Sly’s eyes widened. “How do you know that?”

  “I researched it at the Menaul School before I applied to college.” Manuel looked around the room. “Personal honor is very important to me; my scholarship to Menaul was contingent on me teaching integrity and self-reliance in the South Valley barrio, so this is my life. I think there’s no question that we should have an honor code; instead, we should be asking what the code should look like. Anyone think differently?”

  The room fell quiet. A few nodded their heads, but one or two of their classmates looked uncomfortable.

  Rod pushed back his chair and stood. “We have a week to come up with our own code. I nominate Manuel as our Honor Representative. Does anyone second the motion?”

  O O O

  Three nights later Manuel Rojo stood in front of a chalkboard at the side of the Squadron Assembly Room; the board was covered with names of various universities, colleges, and military schools along with their Honor Codes. Blocked off in the center of the board were the words I WILL NOT LIE, CHEAT, OR STEAL.

  “Okay, tonight’s the last night,” Manuel said. “Once we decide on our code, the Honor Reps will hammer out any differences, and we’ll hold a Wing-wide vote. Any questions?”

  Rod raised his hand. “This is a good start, but I like the idea of not tolerating any of us who breaks the code. What Lieutenant Ranch said that first night makes sense to me. You know, putting honor above loyalty to the individual.”

  “You mean you want us to rat on each other?” Delante said.

  “No,” Rod shook his head. “Trust each other.” He tried to keep his cool. Fred Delante had been a pain all week, always finding something wrong with establishing a code but never giving any suggestions how to make it better.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Delante said. “Why do we have to tattle to trust? In high school our football team trusted everyone without question, and we didn’t have a code. You’re forcing us to rat.”

  Rod stood his ground. “And I say our code wouldn’t be different from anyone else’s if we didn’t hold ourselves to a higher standard. Such as not tolerating any breach of honor.”