Absolutely American

by David Lipsky

  The last night, a captain named Greer—an infantryman who rebranched from Bragg, The Division—asks Whitey, “You’ve got Infantry experience, don’t you?” Whitey thinks of those long-ago weeks with the Rangers. “It’s relative,” Herzog answers mildly, “but I know what I’m doing.” Greer wants to unhinge the OPFOR: “We’ve been on the receiving end for a week. Let’s take the fight to them.” He details Whitey to take charge of part of the ambush. After dark, Whitey and seven guys cover the right flank of the field the OPFOR are aggressing from. They crouch all night in the turf at the woodline’s edge. Rain turns to freezing rain, bits of ice catching on the grass like rock salt. They change watch every hour. At 0350, Whitey’s turn, there’s the boom and flash of artillery simulators. The OPFOR is assaulting again, a jumble of shadows creeping across the field. Whitey and his squad open up on them. For the first seconds, the OPFOR don’t even know where the attack is coming from. “They didn’t know what was going on, it was obvious panic.” Textbook stuff, Whitey and his team trading off among three SAWs (heavy squad automatic weapons) to maintain a constant rate of fire. In the morning After Action Review, the OPFOR are reduced to sputtering complaints about how Finance shouldn’t go on the offensive.

  The counterattack thrilled Whitey. “I got on one of the SAWs, it was great, it was a rush, we tore them up. It reminded me what I love about the Infantry.” Then he catches himself. “But it’s not something I want to make a career of.”

  Whitey has a plan. For step three, Define End States, he’s aiming for the life Mark Matty didn’t get: start a family, have a lot of fun. “I’ve learned I want a predictable life,” he says. “And my family is gonna have the most wonderful father and the most wonderful husband.” But for step six, Implement Solution, he doesn’t pick a sunshine post like Europe or Hawaii. He requests Fort Drum, partly because Iggy Ignacio is there. But there’s another back-of-the-mind reason. Drum deploys all the time; right now they have the best real-world detail, Kosovo.

  Drum, on the snow prairies of upstate New York, is home to the Tenth Mountain Division—their symbol is two crossed bayonets above the motto “Climb to Glory.” During World War II, the Army put together a force that could ski, climb and shoot. The roster was filled out with Ivy Leaguers and championship skiers. (In 1944 the Tenth broke the back of the Nazis’ Gothic Line in the Apennine Mountains of Italy, sustaining 30 percent casualties, the highest rate of any American unit.) When the war ended, like disciples who’d been to the mountaintop, veterans fanned out across an America full of underused slopes and founded the U.S. ski industry—building resorts in Utah and Vermont, Vail and Aspen, spreading the gospel through downhill magazines and ski schools.

  Iggy has come to Drum from Ranger school. His fourth day there, before a run in BDUs, lugging packs and weapons, an instructor asked to see raised hands from prior heat casualties. Iggy had gone down at Airborne school. “I’m being honest,” Iggy remembers, so up went his hand. “OK,” the instructor said, “you run in back.”

  In the heat and the backwash of a hundred other joggers, Iggy had started to sweat, sweat a lot, started to bob his head. Instantly he had a Ranger instructor on him. “Put your head down one more time,” the RI said, “and that’s it.” It stopped being about legs or lungs; for Iggy, the run became all neck. “And it’s hard to maintain. Finally I couldn’t do it no more, my head slipped.” The RI said, “That’s it, that’s the end,” and pulled Iggy aside to trees and cool shade while the line jogged into the scenery. Everyone had been warned about arguing with instructors—“they can get you for insubordination. So I look at him, I say, “Scuse me, Sergeant, did I fail the standard?’ He said, ‘No, I just didn’t want to see a heat casualty.’” Iggy shakes his head. “I knew what was going to happen right then. I’m not used to that—I’ve never not finished anything in my life. And I didn’t even get to pass out, y’know? This is Ranger school—you’re supposed to go till you’re fuckin’ dead. But they’ve had a lot of serious heat injuries, I guess they were protecting themselves, which I understand.”

  For an Infantry officer like Iggy, not having the Ranger tab can consign you to second-class citizenship. “You can’t do without it as a mud crawler,” officers like Jim DeMoss explain. “Ranger school is as close to the continuous strained experience of combat operations as we can come. When I meet another Infantry officer, that tab is the first thing I look for. If it’s not there I feel like I wanna ask why.” Captain Vermeesch wears the tab, but on his first try he got eliminated by the PT test before Ranger even started. “I consider that to be my greatest failure in my life,” he says flatly, frowning. “You hear all the stories about when guys report in and, first thing, the battalion commander turns them around and looks on their left shoulder to see if they have the tab. I got sent off to my unit as a brand-new lieutenant without one, and that’s an ugly situation to be in.”

  That’s Iggy’s situation now. When he sees his buddies from Ranger school at Drum, “they’ve all got the tab. I’m so happy for them, because they’re my friends. But you know what it feels like to watch your guys move ahead when you’re not getting to go along with ’em.” He sighs. “Whitey knows. Guys who went straight to Vietnam—they never had the tab, they did fine. But I won’t feel complete until I get it.”

  So here Whitey and Iggy are, roommates. They live in Watertown, New York, such an Army company town the local waitresses perform the birthday song in cadence. (“I don’t know but I been told / Someone here is getting old. / Sound off: hap-py, / Sound off: birth-day.”) It’s been more than a year since they said goodbye in Hawaii, and they’ve both met surprises and setbacks. They find an apartment, a floor-through in a weatherbeaten Victorian.

  Whitey drives to Buffalo one weekend. He pays a call on the Mattys, shares a restaurant meal with his Buffalo crew. A cocktail waitress skims by, takes his attention. She’s very good-looking, dressed like a cowgirl: pointy boots, suede skirt, leopard-skin Stetson. “Holy shit,” Whitey says. “That’s Loryn Winter.”

  She’s supposed to be in Los Angeles, enjoying the goods: good car, good job, the good civilian guy she dropped Donald for. It’s the kind of meeting you rehearse in your mind a hundred times, and then the moment reduces you to ad libs. He stands and takes her arm. “Hey, Loryn,” he says, “nice hat.” Loryn’s face actually goes white—something Whitey has read about but never seen in real life. She disappears behind the kitchen’s swinging doors and doesn’t come out.

  But she must be watching, because as they’re settling the check she’s back at his side; Whitey smells her perfume, feels the old irradiation on the parts of his body that are facing hers. “I want to talk to you,” she says. “I’ve been so sorry. I want to apologize for walking away that time.”

  “Don’t worry,” Whitey says. “I wasn’t too concerned about it.”

  She brightens. “So how are you?”

  Whitey starts to answer, but the perfume, smile, hat—it all sidetracks him. “You’re . . . ,” he says. “You’re a—cocktail waitress.”

  Brave Soldier

  Reporting for his honor hearing, George Rash looks more presentable than he’s ever been. Even his eyeglasses appear creased and pressed, as if they’ve returned from the dry cleaner’s. He has the job applicant’s blank-slate look, the willingness to exhibit only what others want to see. By the end of the day, nine cadets will decide whether he gets to stay at West Point.

  George is wearing his white-over-gray honor uniform. When the process kicks off at 0730—the JAG representative sitting on a raised podium like a tennis umpire, making sure the hearing keeps within the lines, the honor president rubbing sleep out of his eye—George is alone. An accused cadet is permitted to bring one cadet adviser with him into the hearing room: the adviser can sit at his table, pass notes, offer strategy and the moral support of the raised eyebrow, everything but speak. George asked Steve Ruggerio (his bar mitzvah guest) if he could do it, but Steve is away from post. Then he turned to Phil Sacks, an H-1 c
ow who’s his best friend from Jewish choir. “But he told me he didn’t feel he could give it all his efforts, or help me as thoroughly as I deserved,” George says and frowns. “Yeah, he pretty much backed out.” So George meets his fate alone, the chair empty by his side.

  But the G-4 crew does turn out. A good half of the company stops in for some of George’s trial. Beyond the dependable fishbowl entertainment of any honor hearing, there’s the historical factor to this one, like attending the Beatles’ last concert. Scott Mellon spends most of his day; during the months of rooming together, the two cadets have patiently negotiated from what George calls “an armed truce to almost friends.” Neither one is exactly the square-jawed West Point standard, which lends their bond a solid underdog basis. Even Sergeant Mike Tierney is here, drawn by the NCOs’ helpless affection for soldiers, even soldiers they don’t entirely approve of.

  George seems surprisingly well rested. “I only slept five hours last night, but that’s probably also because I took a three-hour nap yesterday afternoon, but that’s beside the point.” He cracks his neck, and the hearing begins. First comes jury selection, composing the nine-member cadet Honor Board. Who you pick could determine how you fare—and George is supposed to be on the lookout for any pro-officer or anti-Rash bias. He only rejects one guy, “just because he’s sat on so many juries, it wouldn’t be fair to force him to do another.” During the 0930 recess—coffee, latrines—Sergeant Tierney can’t watch in silence any longer. He takes Rash aside, stands him by the wall, “strongly suggests” he face this with a cadet adviser, any cadet adviser. “Heck,” George says, “why not?” Tierney sends a cadet runner—and Jerry Davis, a steady, personable firstie, is nabbed coming out of a helicopter lab. He changes uniform, trots over, shakes George’s hand, smoothes his hair, and George isn’t alone anymore.

  They’re sent to cool their heels while the Honor Board reads George’s packet. Like most available West Point real estate, the Ninnies Hall walls are trimmed with inspiration. There’s a framed saber that once belonged to the “Brave Soldier,” the class of 1951’s honorary graduate, Robert A. Renneman. Renneman actually graduated Navy. But he’d grown to six feet seven inches—leaving him the wrong size for duty at sea; he commissioned Army and Infantry. During Korea, he led troops so hard he ended up far ahead and isolated, amid entrenched Chinese troops, batting away grenades with his free hand. When Renneman eventually fell, there was no safe way to retrieve the body. The next day, his unit approached his remains cautiously, expecting theft, violation, booby traps. Instead, the Annapolis ring was on his finger, his boots—one of combat’s prime salvage items—were untouched. His face and uniform had been cleaned and repaired. A note from the enemy lay nearby: “Brave soldier. Take him home.”

  A cadet opens the door. “Everybody’s finished. We’re ready for you to come in now.” George takes a breath, steps inside and delivers his opening statement. Being George, he has to use the time clearing up an earlier misstatement. His voice effortlessly slips into the legalese adopted by defendants on shows like The People’s Court. “If you’ll refer to the third board exhibit, which was my third written statement, you’ll notice I self-admitted. This was because I was unaware of the true semantics of the definition of lying, which is telling a falsehood with the intent to deceive.” That’s the key to his defense. George sits down, Jerry gives him a sharp nod, and the witnesses begin.

  Captain Chris Engen rolls in like a thunderhead, darkening the room for George. He takes his seat at the witness stand and provides a live version of his written statement. Rash watches closely, listens carefully. At an honor hearing, the board—the jury—also conducts the witness examinations. Engen explains that George waited three hours before changing his story. The Honor Board inquires, “Where were you during the remainder of the day, sir?” “Would it have been difficult for cadet Rash to find you, sir?” The delay has raised questions in the jurors’ minds about George’s candor. His own explanation was that the company had become so spread out it was difficult to track Captain Engen down. The captain says he was always nearby. Then the board tries to home in on George’s demeanor. Did he seem nervous, guilty? The captain explains his voice did seem cautious and slow. (This line of questioning makes Scott Mellon snort. “Of course anybody talking to his TAC is going to think he’s in trouble. He’ll sound nervous whether he’s lying or not.”)

  Then the board sets a speaker phone on the witness stand to relay Mrs. Como’s testimony. For all the cadets know, she could be steering a minivan or sitting in a tree. It takes only five minutes for the Red Cross volunteer to undo all of George’s diligent work at the preliminary hearing; she verbally reinstates all the objectionable language he had whited out. George, she says, is aloof and cold, and nobody liked him. Then she goes too far. George is also remorseless, and he scares people. The board members glance politely away from the phone, as people do when a voice has stopped commanding belief. They know George Rash has never scared anybody.

  Then Mrs. Como reports the basics: cadet Rash failed to notice a case of trench foot in one of his squad members, and she overheard him lie about it to cadet Kim Wilkins. At their table, George and Jerry exchange notes, and George rises to cross-examine the phone. “Mrs. Como, do I have any medical training or basis for judging feet?”

  Any basis?

  “Do you believe that I have any specialized professional knowledge, to determine if somebody’s feet are OK? Especially if the cadet had already informed me his feet are fine?” Jerry nods, writes on his pad where George can see: Don’t need to get more from this witness.

  The board thanks Mrs. Como, removes the phone and breaks for lunch. In the mess hall, George helps himself calmly to everything. He’ll need to keep his energy up for the rest of the day, and it’s incidentally a good menu—corn chowder, hot wings, chicken patties, bread sticks. Jerry Davis congratulates him on his composure; at other honor boards, he’s watched cadets race into the latrines to throw up.

  George strolls back into the hearing room, head held high, as if his case hasn’t taken the beating it’s just endured. Cadet Kim Wilkins takes the witness stand; the look she throws George is like a flashed knife. After cadet Calabanos’s foot problem was diagnosed, she confronted George with the how-often-have-you-been-checking question. A few hours later she visited his tent to ask again, and that’s when George downgraded his estimate to “most of the time.” Her next move was reporting him on honor. The board snags on this issue. According to the honor code, if a cadet is aware of an honor violation but fails to report it, it’s toleration—an honor violation of its own. But you’re supposed to make a formal Approach for Clarification to the cadet you suspect before you file any charges. “Did you tell cadet Rash ‘I’m here for clarification’?” a board member asks. “Did you say, ‘I’d like you to clarify something for me’?” Looking stumped, Wilkins admits no, she didn’t.

  A different cadet might pass up the opportunity to cross-examine her. The board has already extracted good stuff, there’s probably no more to find. (Jerry writes on his pad, Don’t need more.) But George is suddenly curious, on a human level that transcends the hearing. Why did she ask the second time? He figures, as long as they’ve got her here, this could be his last chance to find out. Wilkins explains she was angry, she was hoping George would incriminate himself. It’s the wrong thing to say. Noses wrinkle on the board. The word for this is headhunting, and the Army is a team. George sits down having finished off a witness.

  The next witness is George’s immediate cadet superior at Beast. He simply says there was no schedule for foot checks; the guidance essentially said “most of the time.” George realizes if he can prove that’s how often he did it, he’s not guilty on honor.

  The board pulls in George’s old Beast squad one by one. George is up and about, asking questions and nailing down the timeline in his deliberate honking voice. So much is happening at Beast—bidding hello and goodbye to two different lives—that new cadets often have no idea
how much time is passing. Days rise like cliffsides, the way a calendar might look to an ant. At first, they’re no help, describing two-day gaps as lasting “a week and a half.” Jerry is scribbling notes (Ask when Warrior Forge was), but George understands what he has to do. He sharpens the plebes’ memories and soon they recall: George checked—spreading toes, examining heels barehanded, gloppy work—every other day. Cadet Calabanos, whose feet started all this, testifies that George checked “almost every morning.”

  Then George invites his character witnesses. There’s Ahmond Hill, a G-4 cadet. (George asked him by chance a few days ago. “I was just wandering around the company, trying to learn to be sociable.”) Then Jerry Davis turns to George, says “I’ll do it,” and he stands up and says a few good things he knows about cadet Rash. And then Phil Sacks shows up. He describes George’s straight-and-narrow behavior on choir trips, dubbing him “the party pooper of the Jewish choir.” He says he isn’t surprised to see George at an honor hearing—which gets George’s heart racing. He means that George gets in trouble for everything. But George never has trouble with maintaining his integrity; he gets in trouble, but he admits it, takes the hit, and drives on. “George is the cadet everybody knows about but nobody knows,” Phil says.

  Before George makes his closing statement, he glances at the nine faces on the honor board, hair short like his, uniforms like his. There’s no way to tell if he’s changed any minds.

  The board deliberates for ninety minutes while George waits in the hall. They know that if George manages to graduate, he’ll represent the Academy to anyone he runs into. People will adjust their impressions of West Point as a result. But they also know West Point has to remain a fair place. After the ninety minutes, they ask George to stand. The board president announces in a flat voice, “You are not found.” Then they give George advice. To keep this problem from recurring, he should speak more clearly and concisely.