by David Lipsky
For John Vermeesch, being a TAC is the finish to a before-and-after story. He graduated the Academy in 1990; a little more than half a year later he was stomach-down in Saudi, leading a rifle platoon against the army of Saddam Hussein. Vermeesch wants to see his cadets ready. “I remember feeling as a cadet like it wasn’t real—that what we do here isn’t completely real,” he says. “The big reason I wanted to come back was this obligation to tell cadets, ‘Hey, it is real. What you learn here is exactly how it’s going to be when you get out.’ What I wrote in my application essay was that I am very committed to making cadets understand the importance of the mission—of winning America’s wars, of taking care of America’s sons and daughters—and how soon they might be called on to go execute that mission.”
Vermeesch’s voice croaks and swells when he says something important; it’s as if the most significant words grow physically larger in his throat. Vermeesch is an intensely physical man. A little under six feet tall, with something a bit piggish and pugnacious about his features. If he likes what you’re saying, he’s nodding, marching along with you; the less he likes it, the stiffer he gets—you’re marching alone. When he casts around for a metaphor to explain how West Point builds values, he tells cadets, “You stress those muscles incrementally a little more each day—to sum up, it’s like lifting.” On the subject of George Rash, he gives a pained shrug that carries more weight than his words. When he wants to let you know where he’s from, he juts up his hand. “Michigan is shaped like a mitten. Roscommon, Michigan—first knuckle, second finger.” The most vital information rolls off his frame; the body is a keyboard for John Vermeesch.
His first weeks in Saudi—getting prepped for G-Day—Vermeesch spent his free time pushing into his soldiers’ tents, collaring guys after chow, downloading their stories. “Because the last thing I wanted,” the captain says, “was to not know them as people. I knew decisions I’d make in the very near future could impact on whether they lived or died. And the thing driving me was writing the letter home to mom and dad that said, ‘Your son didn’t make it.’ I envisioned myself sitting there trying to write this letter, and not really knowing the kid personally, and coming up with some bullshit. It drove me crazy, how nongenuine that would be.” Vermeesch isn’t sure that’s a drive George Rash can understand. “Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on sometimes in that guy’s head.”
For the first term—the natural result of George’s D at Buckner—Vermeesch put George in what’s called the Special Leader Development Program: once-a-month office meetings, the field Army confronting the cadet world, Rash staring at Vermeesch, Vermeesch staring at Rash. “I thought we really made some progress,” Vermeesch says; George earned a B in military development. Then, after Christmas break, George flunked his run (“So obviously, first semester didn’t work out so well”), and like a pitcher on the mound, Vermeesch has to make an adjustment. Being a TAC requires creative solutions on the fly. “I just don’t perceive any common ground with George Rash,” Vermeesch admits. So he sends George around for monthly meetings with Captain Lance Richardson, a buddy from his Saudi company who’s now teaching chemistry at West Point. They’re both brainy guys, and like Rash, Richardson played tuba in high school. “He was kind of the geeky guy growing up,” Vermeesch says. “He came into the Army to become a man, and it did that for him. He rose through the ranks, Special Forces, Ranger guy, an exceptionally successful officer.” Rash and Richardson, Vermeesch feels, have that common ground, a space where they can hail each other, geek to former geek.
The other problem child in Vermeesch’s Special Leader Development Program is Huck Finn. Vermeesch has a better handle on Huck—they’re physical in the same ways. He sees in Huck the thing nobody else has, a fine officer. “I was his TAC at Buckner,” the captain recalls, “and I thought, ‘This guy is gonna be the best cadet I’ve ever seen.’ He’s got more raw potential than ninety-five percent of the people here, just a super-stud leader. He can influence people naturally, but to what end is he gonna influence ’em?” Huck could end up a before-and-after story too. But he’s like a twisty math problem where Vermeesch can’t find the proper integer to plug into the formula.
One mid-February Saturday—snow dusting the building sides like stuff left too long in the freezer—there’s a TA-50 inspection. TA-50 is your temporary Army gear: canteen, ammo pack, gas mask, flashlight, a deep-pocket-sized shovel called an entrenching tool. Cadets are required to scrub their tackle down, arrange it on a towel in an attractive, combative table setting. Huck just spills his ruck upside down over his rack. The equipment has gone untouched since Buckner; actual leaves pour out, along with a terrarium’s worth of dirt. Then Huck wanders down the hall. He hears a voice shouting, “What the hell is this?” and he laughs—whoa, somebody is getting ripped. He strolls back to his room, and there’s Captain Vermeesch, lifting his crusty shovel with two fingers. Vermeesch moves in for the correction, eyeball to eyeball. “Cadet Finn”—then the TAC’s face stops dead. “Did you shave today?” One more screwup, Vermeesch promises him, and Finn will have batted his way up to a battalion board.
Vermeesch arranges a marathon special counseling day: eighty minutes with George, eighty with Huck. He opens up their peer evaluations—thumbs-up, thumbs-down, here’s what your cadet critics had to say. George listens and nods as the captain lists his shortcomings: physical skills, communication skills. Vermeesch tells George that if he fails his next APFT retest, he’ll be highly recommended for separation from West Point. (The constant shock for officers is that George simply listens, offering no explanation, showing no emotion. But George does have a response: “Ouch,” he tells me.)
Huck doesn’t even want to read his evaluations. “Well,” Vermeesch says, “you’ve gotta see it.” Huck stumbles out of the office shaken, wanting to drop some big redneck tears. “Wow,” he says. “People had some not-nice things to say about me. I am an absolute asshole. In fact, these kids think I am the biggest flaming asshole around here.” Crushing reviews; one star, half a star. “Huck Finn does not care about West Point, Huck Finn only cares about himself.” What cut most were the cadets who wrote, “I can see cadet Finn starting a fight with one of his classmates, and I can see cadet Finn punching his classmate right in the face.” Huck sighs. “And bro, that’s not me. I swear, if the TAC ever has to show me one of those forms again, it’s gonna say something different.”
Then, in March, another problem arises that puts Finn and Rash in the shade. It starts with Maria Auer, Jasmine Rose’s roommate. Maria comes from upper Wisconsin, the icy dairyland where Canadian pronunciation (aboot for about) flattens the local accent. Maria has been sneaking out of her room in the evening—a regs violation—to study, she says. The rumor is that Maria is actually sneaking into her boyfriend’s room. Vermeesch pulls the two cadets aside for the brass-tacks question: Are you guys messing around in barracks? They swear no—even Maria’s boyfriend’s roommate vouches no—and a week later, they’re discovered on the same piece of furniture, under the covers, watching Seinfeld. G-4 braces itself for a strange spectacle. How can Jim Edgar hand around punishments when everybody in company knows he and his girlfriend have been breaking the identical rule? “You can’t stand in front of people and give out quill,” Jake Bergman says, “while you’re doing the same dumb shit. It’s just the ultimate hypocrisy.”
Jake is surprised and bitter. “There’s a lot of nice people here, but Jim is truly one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, so how can he do it? I told him, ‘How can you look at yourself in the mirror and do that? You’re a snake.’ And I’m not the type of person to go talk to a TAC ever.” But when Vermeesch makes his way to Jake’s room, the XO has already prepared his answer. “Sir,” Jake says, “I’m not going to give you details about it, Jim can give you details. You’re asking me to confirm rumors, I’m telling you the rumors are for the most part true, and the situation’s been out of control since February.”
Vermeesch motions for the comp
any to fall in around him after morning formation. He says he’s had it with male-female relationships in company, with people breaking regulations. Maria stares at her boyfriend, other couples exchange worried looks. “Because Captain Vermeesch had heard different rumors about other cadets,” Maria says. “He’s like, ‘I will burn you to the ground.’ I’m looking over at my boyfriend like, ‘That’s us. We’re going to get burned.’” The rule-breaking ceases, and that’s how Vermeesch acquires his nickname: Super-Vermeesch, Super-V.
Spring break is a jump into ten days of civilian life; a high dive, a swim, a splash through the non-uniformed world. The cadets limp back the following Sunday showing different degrees of tan above their collars. (Jake hits Cancun—bikinis, alcohol, whooping—and doesn’t fully recover his voice for a week.) Vermeesch has already met with Jim Edgar. Fifteen minutes before 1900 formation, the company commander pulls Jake Bergman aside and warns him something’s coming. Then Jim Edgar stands in front of his company, and the G-4 cadets get to witness something historic, an act they’ve never seen or heard about before: a West Point company commander resigning his command.
When Edgar steps down, his XO automatically becomes company commander. The cadet charged with enforcing the regulations is now Jake Bergman—a cadet who hates regulations. Jake accepts the promotion with grace. “Pretty ironic, huh?” he says. “Asking to be XO really bit me in the butt.” He laughs. His first thought isn’t about the honor or leadership experience; it’s just going to mean more work. “These last couple months are not going to be very fun. I kinda feel like I’m in charge of a sinking ship, I’ve just gotta keep it floating till graduation.”
Becoming a Man
Huck Finn is trying to do better. But it isn’t like football, where you’ve always got the other guy’s helmet crashing in as a reminder of what you’re supposed to do. There’s nowhere to grab—how do you block out your own random impulses?
A week after counseling with Vermeesch, Huck passes up a mandatory lecture in Thayer Auditorium. “And they sent around an e-mail, the subject line was ‘Attendance’—it said, ‘If you weren’t there, let me know.’ So I coulda gotten away with it—I mean, no one woulda ever known. But I was like, ‘Well, shit, I missed it.’ So I e-mailed back, and I knew what was coming for me. I was like, ‘Damn, might as well just call up the fuhball coach now and tell ‘im I won’t be there.’”
And just as Super-V promised, Huck arrives at his first battalion board—with Major Andrea Thompson, who’s now the battalion commander—and receives maximum punishment, a sentence straight out of Greek myth. Finn is a physical cadet who loves being around people; he’s ordered to pass the rest of the semester indoors and alone. Sixty days of room restriction, the kind of home confinement low-ball criminals get handed when jails overflow. He has authorization to leave for class, meals, ninety daily minutes of exercise in the yard, and that’s it. And there’s no more football, which is what Huck came to West Point for. Huck stays in his barracks for seven weeks.
By day fifty, his chair pulled to the window, smelling spring and the crust of cadet barbecues, he decides he’ll sign whatever is necessary to reopen that door. He’s ready to file his LOR, his letter of resignation from West Point.
Spring is the busy season for drops. Headshake, embarrassed smile, the phone call home. For yuks, it’s a last chance to use the door before penalties apply. Cow Commitment falls the first day of the next year, and from then on, the first two years will be treated as a deposit. Agatha Glowacki—the one cadet George Rash has a crush on—leaves West Point for the sweaters and ivy of Harvard. Captain Vermeesch admires her decision. “She’s a wonderful young lady, just not selfless, and she knew about herself enough to realize that she could never place other people’s interests in front of hers to the extent this profession demands.” Chrissi Cicerelle has had a rotten year, and it’s all been Mark. Every day they’re having their standard argument—does West Point have to be the way West Point is?—and cadets see them moping around post. They have the scowling weather look (private clouds under clear skies) of a couple in trouble. Chrissi is about ready to resign—but then her roommate does it for her. And seeing the costs convinces Chrissi to stay. “It’s a lot to walk away from—not only all the time you’ve put in, all this is gonna do for you in the future.”
Spring is also high season for separations. Adrian Cannady, the yuk who was shocked that anyone would willingly drink the grog at last year’s Dining-in (“that’s just ignorance”) is about to become a firstie. “Almost done it,” he says. “One leg of the race to go, man—the last quarter mile. Almost there, man, almost there. It’s emotional. It’s like—you just want to get on your knees sometimes, because you just been through so much stuff.” Instead, Cannady gets the word, separation for academics. He heads back to Texas to await decisions from the Army, his last quarter mile just hanging in the air.
George Rash doesn’t want to end up in the same boat. Vermeesch has given him the warning: another APFT failure and he’s out of West Point. No one trains him this time. He’s a yuk, he is expected to motivate himself. “It’s all on me now,” George says. Back at Beast, when his toes grew blisters on blisters, George smiled: it meant calluses were forming. George is developing a West Point callus. “I took a lot of last year personally,” he says. “I’ve mellowed out a lot. “And the other cadets have mellowed toward him: they no longer sneer Rash! Meeting George now generates a more diverse set of responses. “Some of ’em take it pretty well,” George explains, “and consider having met me a good thing. For a variety of reasons. Some because they’ve learned from me—others because they’ve learned to be not like me.” Video games have been George’s balm, his emotional convalescence. He plays the on-line role player EverQuest. “Also referred to as EverCrack,” he says, “because it’s extremely, extremely addictive.” Selecting a video game character is like walking a dog, displaying your personality on a leash. It’s your subconscious declaring your survival strategies and your sense of self. “I play a monk,” George explains. “Monks have no magic at all. Our defenses suck, we can’t take hits the way a warrior can. But we heal damage unparalleled by just about any other characters. When I’m fighting battles, I have to keep flicking on reverse view to make sure I’m not getting ganged up on and attacked from behind. And my character has got a new skill, it’s called ‘feign death.’ Basically, it means the monsters think I’m dead and leave me alone.”
Sergeant Mike Tierney thinks George’s cadet career is dead in real life. Tierney is G-4’s TAC-NCO: each company gets a noncommissioned officer, to perform the same up-to-the-elbows tasks—training, inspecting, motivating soldiers from ground level—that NCOs do in the field Army. Tierney is red-haired and fair-skinned. He has a broad smile, and the shipwreck humor of NCOs everywhere: We are pleased to have accurately predicted that things would eventually turn to crap. On a mild April Saturday, he administers the remedial APFT to the Fighting Guppies. He’s pretty sure this spells the end of George’s line. “George missed the last time by forty-five seconds,” Tierney says, “and that’s an eternity in the run game.”
No G-4 cadets turn out at Gillis Field House to cheer George on; it’s just cadets who are also on the firing line. Anthony Bowers and Ahmond Hill are track stars. They move at the easy glide of cadet athletes—people for whom any movement is a minor sport; they’re here because the last APFT conflicted with a track meet. Steve Cho is a thickly built Asian kid with small red acne colonies on his cheeks, giving him a fed-up look. Amy Saul is a chunky plebe. (She’s George’s plebe, his Member of Squad; taking a remedial APFT beside your plebe is the kind of blunder other cadets notice.) Marcus Genova is from Colorado, a wiry, watchful kid with more hair on his legs than the track cadets—shaved for speed—have on their heads. Marcus has weak stomach muscles; because he’s always on the verge of being separated for sit-ups, Tierney has enrolled him in G-4’s PT-for-Life program. Every time a G-4 cadet takes the APFT, Marcus has to turn out too. He frowns
like a man waking up to find he’s back in a repeating dream.
I ask George how he feels being back here, with another two-mile run between him and graduation. “Slight cough,” he says, clearing his throat. “Otherwise not too bad.” Push-ups come first. Amy kneels, flexes, knocks out forty-five. “That’s pretty damn good for the women’s standard,” George tells her; he’s working his way toward APFT statistical mastery. “And it’s passing for the men’s.” George’s turn comes, he scrunches way past the necessary forty-two. “That was an all-time best for me, Sergeant Tierney,” he says.
“Good,” the sergeant says. “You just do the run, you’ll be all set.” Tierney is wearing a new leather jacket. He leans back against his motorcycle, folds his arms.
“I now know I can do seventy-five push-ups,” George muses. “All I have to do is drop a minute on my run.”
“Can’t do it walking,” Tierney replies.
Then sit-ups, on the chilly lawn in front of Gillis. Bowers and Hill take turns, pressing down on each other’s Nikes; they don’t deign to touch the more imperfect cadets. They encourage each other in clipped gym patois: “Run it baby, burn it baby, come on come on come on, burn it and run it baby.” Genova chugs through twenty sit-ups, thirty—actually cuts a concussive fart at thirty-five—and reports another glum pass to Tierney. “Fifty-six.” The cadets trade places. Their knees are blotched red, and field dandruff—leaves, grass—sticks to their shins. Before his turn, George lays aside his glasses with a vaguely Supermannish gesture of resolution and grit. He flies past the minimum, then reaches for his glasses, repackages himself as Clark Kent and reports his seventy-three. Sergeant Tierney and the cadets watch the Army lacrosse team warming up one field over, sticks fanning the air. “Thinking of giving up basketball for lacrosse, Amy?” Tierney asks. George chooses to field the question. “Looks like fun,” he says. “But my eye-hand coordination is not that hot.”