Absolutely American

by David Lipsky

  With every few steps, he drops farther behind his new cadets. This is the last thing George needs right now: word will go back to Engen, and through Engen it will pass to Super-V. All the cadre has to do, to push him closer to the edge of his personal cliff, is let him stop marching. But Ryan’s instincts won’t allow him to let George stop. “What’s the problem?” he asks.

  “My right heel,” George says, “is on fire.”

  “Is new cadet Rosenfeld a member of the cadre?”

  “No, First Sergeant.”

  “Then why is he leading your squad?”

  George quickens his pace, catches up. “Oh, this sucks,” he says. Ryan marches to the head of the column to consult with the rest of the leadership. George begins to pull back again, and soon Ryan returns to his side.

  “My last one’s right in front of me,” George says quickly—meaning he’s leading, just leading from behind. “My foot—”

  “Get out in front and lead. Get in front of your doggone team. Where’s your squad?”

  “Just in front . . . God! . . . of me.”

  “Look at me. Why don’t you get up there and lead them?”

  “My fucking heel is getting ready to fall off my foot.”

  “No. Your heel is going to stay on. Your heel is attached to your foot, and your foot is inside your boot. Get in front of your squad.”

  George goes forward, begins to slide back. The ground along the side of the road makes its soft, inviting pitch. Ryan is with him immediately. “I’m not sure I’m gonna make it,” he says.

  “You’re a leader,” Ryan reminds him. “You need to lead your people. You better not be behind them.”

  Rash jogs up to his squad. And this time Ryan stays with him, shoulder to shoulder. George is fed up. Southerland decides to get George fed up with him. “You’re angry?” Ryan says. “Thinking about hitting me? Keep thinking about that. Hit me by just leading your squad, one foot in front of the other. You’re going to stay ahead of your people, and you’re going to finish this ahead of your people.” George glares, grits teeth; twenty minutes later he marches by Captain Engen, at the finish, leading his squad.

  Three days later, Bravo reports to the Bayonet Course. The cadets won’t actually train with rifles and bayonets; instead, they’ll spar with pugil sticks—long, Star Wars–looking staffs with padded ends. They’re less lethal than bayonets, but they can still inflict serious damage. Red Cross volunteers are there on a just-in-case basis. Calabanos removes his boot, hears gasps, receives his trench foot diagnosis. Captain Engen asks George when he last inspected feet. Rash says Friday—two days ago. As he talks it over with a female cadre member named Kim Wilkins beside the Red Cross table, he realizes the date was Thursday, just after the night patrol. He spends some time hunting down Engen and reporting his own error. The new cadets meanwhile practice their pugil technique on dummies composed of rubber tires and metal, firing themselves up by chanting “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Some new cadets lace into the model like it owes them money. In a few minutes they’ll run the course and finally get what they’ve been waiting all summer for—a taste of combat against the cadre.

  In the Old Corps, when cadets arrived at West Point they were separated into companies on simple terms of height. This approach made for better aesthetics during parades: rather than a mixed skyline of tenements and skyscrapers, you fielded a smooth and ascending progression of uniform heads. In later years, it also made for cleaner company photographs. Tall-man companies were “flankers,” small ones were “runts.” (The practice lingered on in various forms for more than a century, before cracking up against the hard shore of the 1970s.) One of the last places to retain any vestige of runts and flankers is the Bayonet Assault Course. New cadets pound down the lanes nine at a time, organized by height. That way, they will encounter a cadre member of equal size, guaranteeing a clean, fair fight.

  By manufactured coincidence George is placed in a flanker lane. (“I don’t know why or how,” one of the leaders tells me. “He just happened to be on that lane.”) During his first fight, George thinks it’s a mistake. By the third and fourth—when every cadet running down his lane is a big head on a thick neck—he understands what’s happened. He lifts his stick and fights it out. After an hour, George stumbles off the course with a concussion. (“He got his bell rung pretty good,” the cadre tell me.) It’s one of George’s last acts of the summer. The doctors advise him to skip the fifteen-mile march back to West Point; he and Calabanos sit it out together. Whatever resolution George has picked up from the end of Beast won’t matter. By the time he returns to post, he has learned he’s being investigated for honor—the specific charge is lying about checking his squad’s feet. The witnesses against him are cadet Wilkins, a woman from the Red Cross table and Captain Engen.

  Acceptance

  The Academy has the veteran host’s exquisite gift for pacing and the appropriate gesture. Each class marks the end of summer training with a celebration. For the firsties, there are dates and the arrival of new military jewelry at Ring Weekend; for the cows, there’s the gulp and promise of Cow Commitment. Yuks kick away their BDUs to waltz in dress whites at a ball called Camp Illumination. And new cadets march the Plain for Acceptance Day. It’s the parade equivalent of osmosis. The new cadets cross the lawn—above the low shadows of noon—where three thousand fellow soldiers are waiting. Then the probationary new in new cadet falls away forever as they step forward, merge ranks with their elders, to become a single corps.

  This is the first chance parents have had to examine their children since R-Day. Families choke sidewalks and lawns; there’s a firing line of dads with recording equipment. Mothers wave signs. Some look professionally manufactured, with a mysterious sponsorship element: BABY GAP Salutes Company A; an Energizer bunny wearing cadet gray next to Cadets Keep Going and Going. Then there are patently homemade posters: a labor-intensive sign drawn like a Monopoly board, West Point inside jokes occupying the squares for each property: ANDREW—Welcome Back, You Are Now a Man. You Are Our MAN-opoly Champ. Younger brothers squeeze off air horns, moms hug children, exclaim over weight loss, dads rub shaved heads.

  The restaurants and supermarkets of Highland Falls host orgies of consumption. In the parking lots, parents exchange observations about poise and new confidence, but they are mostly astonished by the gorging. “She kept music—blaring—in the car. All. Day. Long. She told me what CDs she wanted us to bring. And just sat in the car playing music.” “I have never seen him eat so much as he did at that cookout. He ate three hamburgers. Then he ate a chili dog. Then three or four cookies. Chips. Baked beans. And then homemade ice cream. Then he came back to us and said, ‘Mom, Dad, I’d like you to take me to a restaurant.’”

  A week separates the last march and Cow Commitment—seven days of mulling. Captain John Vermeesch receives reports on Huck Finn and George Rash. When the summer began, the two cadets were crew-mates on the same foundering boat. Vermeesch can’t get over Huck’s transformation. “I was about ready to throw in the towel on that guy,” Vermeesch says. “I mean, the jury’s still out, but he is the biggest turnaround success story so far.” Even Huck can’t quite believe it; he talks about his old self the way you’d describe a person you didn’t approve of in school. “Last year, I hated everything: didn’t wanna be here, didn’t wanna go in the Army. If I ever got stuck in the Infantry, I’d cut my trigger finger off—you know, whatever it took. Now I think this is a great place.” He thinks it over, adds with surprise, “I’m not even ruling out the Infantry.”

  But if there’s been a change in George Rash, Vermeesch can’t see it. “The summer,” he says, “fully met my expectations of what was going to happen. The whole notion of quitting, on a road march.” Vermeesch knows all about the honor case; he knows it’s not another cadet, it’s Captain Engen who’s charged George. “I’m not absolutely confident, but I’m pretty confident of what is going to occur. George will sit in front of a jury of his peers. And there’s only one pe
nalty for being found during an Honor Investigative Hearing—separation from the corps of cadets.” Vermeesch would rather not see it come to that. “My hope is that he will assess his performance over the summer and say, ‘This is not my bag. And I need to self-select out of this profession.’” Vermeesch squares his shoulders, glares as if Rash is in his office. “Because I have a very strong opinion about whether or not George Rash deserves to be an officer in the Army. But I don’t know that I have a tremendous amount of effectiveness at influencing George Rash.”

  So Vermeesch sends Sergeant Tierney to George with the hard facts, in the days before Cow Commitment: You are being investigated for honor; if you take the oath and lose the hearing, you’ll owe money (at this point, George would owe $125,000), or you’re going to owe time as a Joe. The officers you’ll meet in the Army, even if you make it through West Point, are like Captain Vermeesch and me: if you can’t hang, that’s like red blood in a school of sharks. George listens and nods.

  At 1815, the cow class marches to Thayer Hall, laughing and singing cadence in the evening light: “Hail to thee, Infantry,” “Wanna be Airborne, you gotta do it my way” They doff their caps as they enter Thayer Hall, rub what hair they have into place. As they walk the halls the joking begins: “I don’t feel so good anymore—I’m pushing my feet down the hall.” “Aw, don’t even think about it.” They take their seats by company, and G-4 is there: Jasmine Rose, Huck, Josh Rizzo, Maria Auer, Mark Thompson, Kevin Hadley, all the cadets who’ve made it this far. Before the Affirmation Ceremony, commemorative coins are handed to each TAC for presentation to the cows. There’s a speech—“Your country calls on you, now, to take the handoff”—and then Colonel Adamczyk stands on the stage and leads the cadets in their oath. “Now, at ease. Raise your right hand and repeat after me: I—state your full name—”

  George states his name along with a thousand other cadets. He stands near the end of G-4’s row, with a look that’s pinched and determined. “I acknowledge my commitment, if I am separated between now and the graduation of my class . . . ,” he says with his classmates. When the oath is completed, cheers ring off the ceiling, and the TACs distribute the coins. Vermeesch shakes hands, says a few words to each of his cadets. To Finn he says, “Hey Reid—congratulations. Welcome to the profession of arms.” When it’s George’s turn, Vermeesch’s face turns cold, and he says, “You’re staying, and you need to step it up. Now there are consequences.”

  The Corporation

  Two cliques have emerged in G-4. The first consists of reckless cadets, always on the verge of trouble or just climbing out of it: Huck Finn, Josh Rizzo, Steve Cho, Will Reynolds, Huck’s football teammate Cal Smith. Punishments at West Point come in the form of time—you get hours, in blocks of five, spent spiffing up the grounds or staring down the clock at the military version of detention. Huck’s group is more or less the Hours Boys.

  The second clique is the core of G-4 professionalism. One night Josh Rizzo—an evening of beers still filtering through his system—rode the barracks elevator with a bunch of them. They stood firmly and dutifully, respectfully watching the numbers ascend from one to six. When Riz threw open the door to the room he once again shares with Huck Finn, he said, “I just rode up with the Corporation.” “The who?” Huck asked. “That whole crew—Rob Anders, Eliel Pimentel, Matty Kilgore, Mark Thompson. You know—they’re a fuckin’ corporation, man.”

  The name stuck. The Corporation is composed of the patient cadets who understand that every chapter of life is also groundwork for the next chapter, that cow year is really an audition for firstie year—that all the good striper leadership positions will be handed out on the basis of their performance now. “They’re way too ‘Yes sir,’ ‘Yes ma’am,’ whatever,” says Cal Smith. “They just don’t get any hours.”

  Eliel Pimentel is G-4’s first sergeant, a likable cadet with the striking good looks of the young Marlon Brando. (When Eliel jackpots on girl-meeting trips, fellow Corporation members call him “Pimpentel.”) Eliel’s family emigrated from Puerto Rico to Orlando before he started sixth grade. “Eliel” was a tongue buster for the Floridians, so his teacher suggested the name “Eddie,” which some Guppies use now. His father is a pastor with the Disciples of Christ, and his mother is also active in the church. This gives him some extra, celestial confidence. “My parents both felt, as I did, that God wanted me here,” Eliel explains. “For some reason, it was part of God’s mission for me.”

  God had some help: Eliel served with naval JROTC, came up through the West Point Parents Club of Central Florida (via the club, he already knew Chrissi Cicerelle and Jeremy Green, currently the number one–ranked cadet in the class of 2002). “When I got here, the central Florida upperclassmen came around and said, ‘Anybody gives you trouble, we’ll take care of you.’”

  Pimentel is an odd mix. He listens to so much Dave Matthews he’ll often drop the name “Dave,” as if referring to a pal who just left the room—but he has never smoked pot, never sipped an underage drink. For cadets like Eliel, West Point involves not so much abandoning an old personality as raising the original self to the highest power.

  During his first year, Eliel knocked himself out trying to perfect the role of plebe. “I tried to really do everything. Wake up early in the morning to memorize the meals and the newspaper for the upperclassmen. Sometimes I hated getting up—I was thinking, ‘Damn, what are my friends back home doing right now?’ But I worked really hard, and I thank God for how things have gone.” When cadets like Eliel say “thank God,” they really mean it: they are genuinely thanking God. If anything, Eliel would have asked that plebe year be even harder. “Not that I wanted somebody to beat me—but I read all the old West Point stories, and I did come here for that. I mean, if something’s not challenging, then it’s not that great when you’re done. But if you’re challenged and you still make it through, then it’s that much better at the end. It takes pressure to make diamonds.” As first sergeant, he wears a diamond-shaped insignia on his collar; he’s responsible for checking rooms, checking uniforms, enforcing standards. In four other companies, first sergeants have already been relieved—“for doing stupid things, underage drinking, opposite-sex person in barracks”—but there’s no chance of this with Eliel. “He’s one of those guys I wish I could clone,” Captain Vermeesch says. “Eliel’s so mature, he understands everything that we’re preaching here already. He’s a stud all around, morally, ethically, without peer, really.”

  G-4’s new company commander is another take-no-chances selection. Jeremy Kasper is a slim, pale firstie from the outskirts of the Corporation. He’s an antidote to Jim Edgar, last year’s commander. “The cadets say the company’s running great,” Vermeesch says, “because we have someone who upholds the standard, and there’s never a question of what that standard’s gonna be. If I could take one cadet from here to be a lieutenant with me out in the Army, it would be Jeremy. I trust him implicitly—with my kids, with my wife, on my right or left flank, wherever.”

  When the company commander is out for a good time, he knows where to turn. “When I really need to release some frustration and steam—I go to Barnes and Noble, buy a cup of coffee, sit there and read a book.” On weekends, Kasper will kick back with a program called OPD, Officer Professional Development, screening movies for G-4’s plebes. During films like Glory, The 13th Warrior, Starship Troopers and U-571, he hits Pause—stopping the fantasy in its tracks—and isolates the lesson. Before a frozen image of Antonio Banderas slugging a barbarian in the jaw, he’ll say, “This is about what it means to sacrifice the comforts of your society in order to protect it.”

  Look closely and you can see something Rashian in Kasper—not in his appearance but in his deliberate, absorbed demeanor. But unlike George, he has consciously developed a soldierly manner. At OPD, he’s showing plebes the road map he used to reach a leader’s persona—how he shopped the culture for words, gestures, attitudes he admired and fashioned them into a self. He grew up watch
ing John Wayne movies, and he moves with John Wayne’s dismissive sway, gives the distracted half-grin Wayne would flash after two hours spent proving he was handy with a sidearm.

  Jeremy grew up smart and solitary on a dairy farm outside Almond, Wisconsin. As a hobby, his mother painted portraits of horses; soon the portraits were earning as much as the dairy, then a little more, then the family was relocating to Lexington, Kentucky, home of the derby, “the horse capital of the world,” Kasper says.

  Lexington was culture shock. Jeremy walked into his prep school—“If your daddy was somebody, you went there”—wearing his dairy clothes. “Jeans rolled up farmer style and a flannel shirt,” he remembers. The students weren’t great about it. “If you didn’t wear Gap you didn’t fit in—the Gap was the minimum acceptable standard—and I’d never even heard of the store before I went there.” The way his mother turned to painting horses, Jeremy began filling out the forms for West Point. “It was more of a hobby than anything else,” he says, “so much paperwork to get through.” He made his candidate visit in the winter. Snow everywhere, bleak and gray, “I was just having flashbacks to Wisconsin.” He watched a rugby game, four cadets were carried off on stretchers, next morning he watched the medevac helicopters fly in. “I was like, ‘I am not coming here, I don’t know what these people are smoking, they are nuts!” Six months later, Jeremy was marching the same fields on R-Day.