by David Lipsky
Huck Finn is nervous about his summer assignment at Air Assault school, where he’ll be roping out of helicopters, risking his moneymakers. He asks Rizzo, “You think it’ll hurt my hands for fuhball season? Because they’re sensitive. I gotta use ’em to snap a frickin’ ball, you know? They’re gonna earn me a million dollars in the NFL.” But the new Huck is such a regulations devotee that he even arrives at Fort Lewis, Washington, in his formal white-over-gray uniform—as the travel orders specify—only to find every single cadet in the airport wearing civvies. His summer commander, a West Point grad, says, “I can’t believe you’re wearing that suit.” But Huck enjoys CTLT. For one thing, it’s like visiting a linguistic homeland, the soldiers swear just as much as he does, “they say some foul motherfucking stuff.” The one thing he dislikes are the salutes. “I don’t deserve a salute from these guys,” he says. “I’m not a commissioned officer yet.”
George Rash moves out for Fort Hood, Texas, another Military Intelligence unit. “It’s very hot,” he reports. The moment Rash-watchers have worried about—what effect George will have on actual troops—passes without difficulty, leaving no traces. “If you do what you’re supposed to do, how you’re supposed to, when you’re supposed to, soldiers will respect you. And they’ll overlook some of your minor inadequacies, help bring out your strengths.” George grasps the lessons a TAC like Major Vermeesch has hoped he’d learn. “These people—or some other people, or at least people like them—will depend on me to take care of them. And do what I can to safely get them into and out of combat,” he says. “Or, at least, as safe as combat can be.”
Ryan will have his shot at CTLT after finishing Buckner. Before he leaves, there’s a final round of first captain interviews, officers asking whether he’d like the job, what direction he’d go in. But in a sense the desk is stacked against him. Most of higher favors Andy Blickhahn. He’s twenty-four, prior service, dependable; he talks, acts and reacts like the administration. Andy even has the stylized looks of a first captain: the square jaw, bright eyes and pretty chin of an illustration in the old-time Saturday Evening Post.
Ryan’s last night at Buckner, Andy arrives all at once and asks for a tour. They ride together on a kind of golf cart (at West Point it’s called a fast action vehicle)—commander and commander, jostling over the speed bumps. Andy will motion for Ryan to stop, they’ll hop out, pose a few commander-type questions, pile back in. When Ryan asks a yuk, “How you making out?,” he listens for the answer. But for Andy, the asking seems to be enough—getting an oar in, inserting himself into the other guy’s thoughts. Andy’s hand is cocked to slap the yuk’s back before he’s finished speaking.
“I just want to see what the attitude is out here,” Andy says, stepping into a bay.
“Well,” a male yuk says, “we’re getting a lot of different points of view, of what we should expect next year, how to treat plebes—”
“So more than just ‘This is what team leaders do,’ it’s ‘This is what works’?”
The yuk closes his mouth. “Yes sir.”
Andy slaps his back, translates their exchange into higher-speak. “So now you have a little bit more of a knowledge base?”
The cadet shrugs. “Uh, mm-hm.”
Blickhahn asks another yuk, “What’s the number one thing that could make you guys feel comfortable as part of the corps?”
“Well,” he responds, “a motivated chain of command, I think. It gives you a positive attitude yourself.”
“OK,” Ryan says, “so you’re saying that what comes down—”
“Well,” Andy interjects, hand landing on back. “You’re all doing great things. Really. Thanks for your time, guys.” He heads back to the fast action vehicle.
“Have fun, fellas,” Ryan says as he turns to leave.
At the end of the summer, Andrew Blickhahn is named the 143rd first captain of the United States Military Academy. Ryan is given regimental command; he’ll head a thousand cadets. The firsties flood back into West Point, many driving the POVs they’re now allowed to keep on post. “The Army,” Huck observes, “is the only organization in the world that will replace a three-letter word like car with a three-letter acronym that takes longer to say.”
And they finally receive their rings, small dense objects—stone, insignia and class motto compacted together like a memory. The firsties cross Central Area to barracks wearing their new jewelry; plebes patrol the concrete in scrums of fifteen and twenty, grabbing the upperclass-men by the ring finger, falling at their feet. Then, another Academy ritual, the plebes chant in unison:
“Oh my God—what a beautiful ring!
What a crass mass of brass and glass.
What a bold mold of rolled gold.
What a cool jewel you got from your school.
See how it sparkles and shines?
It must have cost a fortune.
May I touch it? Can I touch it?”
Firsties hide, skulk and dart away, to give the plebes a run or just to avoid the time-suck. Huck makes it all the way to his stairwell door, yanks the knob; a dozen plebes surround him, yelling in the sun: “Oh my God—what a beautiful ring . . .”
Out on the Plain, firsties stand for photos, rings by their faces. Others collect to pose “ring-style”—smiling at the camera, hands extended in front of them, as if each cadet is dunking an invisible head. “This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me,” one says.
The Ring
Ryan Southerland is completing the Myers-Briggs personality indicator at a long table inside the Jewish chapel; the test is part of a leadership conference, and Andy Blickhahn is here, along with the three other regimental commanders and cadet leaders from the Navy and Air Force. The Myers-Briggs is one more device for boiling the instincts and gestures of command down to measurable specifics—“just so you can understand what sort of person you are,” Ryan says, “how you’ll work with others.”
When you go somewhere for the day, would you rather
1. Plan what you will do and when.
2. Just go.
(Ryan darkens 2.)
In daily work, do you rather
1. Enjoy an emergency that makes you work against time.
2. Plan your work so you don’t need to work under pressure.
(Ryan fills in 1.)
At 0915, adult officers whisper, turn on the television. Cadets take in gray towers and charcoal smoke set against a coloring-book sky. “This fundamentally changes everything,” Ryan thinks. “I’m looking into the future.” Twenty minutes later, another jet arrows across Virginia to smash into the Pentagon’s outer ring—and Ryan and the other cadets understand the country is at war.
Down the hill, across the warm Plain, in the classrooms of Thayer Hall, word is passing around, instructors are switching on TVs like parting the curtains on the same inexcusable view. “We’re not going to stick with the syllabus today,” one professor declares, replacing the chalk and folding his arms. “This is going to affect your lives more directly than any lesson I have to teach.”
Huck Finn is walking the corridors between second-hour and third-hour classes. A cadet he doesn’t know—quivering lips, swimming eyes —tells him, “An airplane just crashed into the Trade towers,” and ticks down the hall. Huck thinks, “What a stupid frigging joke.” Another cadet hustles by, unfolding a cell phone. Huck hears the guy say, “Planes rammed into both buildings.” Huck flexes his hands and begins moving quickly. As he thumps down the hallway, he catches sliced glimpses of sky and fires in every room. In his third-hour class, cadets are staring with parted mouths at the square buildings growing their ruffles of cloud. His professor switches off the TV and tries to conduct the morning’s exercise, but he might as well be speaking in Aramaic. The professor is called outside for a few minutes. At 1030 he skims back. “Both towers just collapsed,” he announces, voice shaky. The TV comes back on and the cadets watch scurrying pedestrians, the rolling wall of dust, ash and smoke. Professors begin releasing cl
asses early: “I understand that many of you are going to have phone calls you’ll need to make.”
As Huck pushes across the Plain, he passes cadets walking private circles, spiraling around sweet spots where their phones can find reception. In his room, friends ding him over instant message.
GuinessMAN83: just heard. car bomb in front of State dept.
GuinessMAN83: somebody saying martial law in lower NYC.
Hucklberrry: fuckin martial law bro . . . never thought I’d live to see the day. man I’m so pissed.
Hucklberrry: hold up. flight out of Newark to San Fran . . . Flight 93 . . . went down 80 miles outside Pittsburg. can’t believe it’s come to this shit man.
GuinessMAN83: “this appears to be a coordinated terrorist attack that appears to be going on as we speak . . .” CNN says it’s Ossama.
Hucklberrry: gotdamned right it is. He had his day and got the best of us. I’m tellin you . . . we’re going to do some shit . . . we’re Americans, we don’t just sit down and take this.
Hucklberrry: hold up. riz phone ringing.
Huck’s roommate, Josh Rizzo, grew up in Flatbush, a kind of feeder system for the New York Police and Fire Departments. Huck takes the phone, recognizes the voice of Rizzo’s mom, doesn’t wait for a report. “Y’all are OK?” he asks. “What about Josh’s sister? How about his dad?” Huck hears they’re accounted for, and it’s the moment he cries, fat tears inching down his cheeks. He’s got to head for lunch formation. (Cadets will stand in jittery rows, eyes on the sky; a plane locating the Military Academy would remove four thousand prospective lieutenants.) Huck grabs a black Sharpie pen, scrawls over a sheet from his notebook, leaves it pinned to the door: “Riz: Family ALL OK.”
Josh Rizzo is blond-haired, with sloppy good looks below bright, questioning eyes; as he makes his way through the cadet tangle along the Plain, the light drops out of his face. He presses upstairs, finds Huck’s note. There are still the friends and neighbors who wear city uniforms or have other business that might have put them in the rubble. He went to high school with a cadet named Joe Quinn, worked at adjoining desks; they’ve stayed close. Quinnie’s brother sells stocks for Cantor Fitzgerald, on the top floors of the North Tower. Rizzo races across post, yanking on doors and banisters. When he climbs to the room, he finds Quinnie sobbing with the chaplain.
West Point is placed on the highest alert, Threatcon Delta; the post clenches like a fist. Cadets can’t leave, soldiers patrol the gates with automatic weapons and grenade launchers, five-ton Army trucks block the lots, heavy barricades protect the deep-porched residences of the comm and supe.
Rumors sweep the corps—plebes resigning, war isn’t what they signed up for. Then that gets sorted out: firsties were asking to resign so they could enlist and fight. Word passes of terrorists staking out military bases. In the mess hall, General Lennox informs the corps that he’s volunteered their services to the rescue—four thousand sets of arms, legs and able backs—but there’s no need for additional workers, so cadets must exercise battlefield patience. The rescue crews eventually call, ask for something the cadets can provide: socks. Ryan Southerland organizes the sock drive for Third Regiment. “It’s impossible to just sit there in your chair,” he says, “and watch this on your TV, and know it’s just down the road, and not be able to do anything. So this is our first bit of relief—they’re going to end up with twenty times more socks than they could ever deal with.”
The Firstie Club reopens Thursday night. The talk inside is a live, inperson version of the expert analysis on TV: asymmetric warfare versus total warfare, missile strikes versus ground troops, urban combat versus mass deployment, rushing to retaliate versus identifying the parties responsible. Cadets know that I grew up in New York, and before I can speak, hands reach for my shoulders and the questions turn to me: Am I OK? Are all my people—as if city life secretly consists of squads—accounted for? Same as in New York, their words are about morale, patriotism and determination, about preparing themselves and watching out for one another. Just as on the subways and sidewalks, people meet each other’s eyes, looking for sympathy and trying to supply it at the same time.
During my three years at West Point, friends who don’t follow the military have asked, “Do these guys know we’re not fighting those kinds of wars anymore? Do they ever wonder if they’re living in the past?” Now, as flags flap on cars and people bellow “America, the Beautiful” like a ballad and a threat, the country feels like West Point. It turns out that instead of living in the past, West Point has been living in the future, and now they’ve been joined by everyone else.
Huck and Rizzo enter the club. The past two days have twisted and wrung Josh like a sponge. Every call from home brings word of another death: a neighbor, somebody’s brother or mom, a friend. “My mother is telling me, ‘Don’t come home, you don’t wanna be around here right now,’” Rizzo says. “I feel physically sick from all these emotions. But I need to be there. I see pictures, I can’t believe it—Huck, that’s my home.” Rizzo’s phone rings again, the two cadets exchange looks; Rizzo finds a corner. When he returns, he’s stowing the phone in his pocket. “This friend,” he says, “her dad died in the fire.” He squints. “I don’t know, I hear it, but I don’t feel it. It’s so distant, it’s like another news flash.” Huck lifts a big hand to massage his friend’s neck.
Huck and Riz carry plastic cups of beer outside, stare over the Hudson hills. There’s a silent electrical storm, discharges spotlighting tree-tops and grassy hills from behind. The cadets on the back porch—smoking, murmuring—glance up, to see if something new has happened.
Huck and Rizzo’s friends follow them outdoors. Everyone’s heard from the home front—where news is shouldering its way out of its usual slots, spreading over the dial—voices stretched thin by anger and fear. It confuses the cadets; with their post at Threatcon Delta, they’re safer in Highland Falls than the people they left behind to protect. The other fresh sound is something they never anticipated: friends thanking them for what the Army will do. “Our buddies,” Huck says quietly, “who five days ago wouldn’t of given a crap about the Army. It makes you proud.”
For Megan Youngblood, a pale, doe-eyed cadet from Nashville who’s branching Military Intelligence, the thanks carry a strange emotional responsibility, like salary for a job she hasn’t performed yet. “I’m getting all these IMs and phone messages, they say, ‘I feel a little safer knowing you’re going to be helping do something to take care of this.’ And honestly, I don’t know how to take that. Because I don’t feel that I know enough and can do enough right now. But I know I’ll have to be ready in a few months—we’re going to have to go out there and turn this whole dreamworld into a reality.”
The toughest conversations have been with parents. Bryan Hart is from Baton Rouge; at the edge of high school graduation, he had advised Huck to stay away from West Point; they’re friends now. “My dad called,” Hart says. “He was choked up like I haven’t heard him choked up in years. He said, ‘If this is war, what if they graduate you boys early?’ He said people around the coffee machine were talking about ‘Let’s go get the bastards’—but armed retaliation takes on a whole new meaning when it’s your kids.”
“Do it,” Huck sputters. “Graduate me in December, send me to Ranger school, get me into the Army, I’m ready to go.” He fingers his West Point ring. “I wanna die with this ring on me.” Hart laughs (“I don’t plan on dying, the bullet hasn’t been made yet that can kill me”), Josh stares at his own hand.
Next morning, in Thayer Hall, the attacks thread into the lessons. Cadets discuss future military action in the cool, unruffled tones of cops predicting the Saturday-night blotter traffic in the station house.
“Ma’am,” one addresses his professor, “I think we’re in kind of one of the worst positions we’ve ever been in. Uh, we’re looking at fighting an enemy that we can’t really identify, in a land that we can’t really identify. And we know at this point that nonretaliat
ion is not an option. But we also know any retaliation is only going to breed more hatred against us in the Arab world. And like we all saw, it only takes four guys with knives to rain all this destruction on us. It’s pretty easy to find four extremist people, if you go into a whole country full of ’em.”
The professor nods. “Smart point.”
Another cadet speaks up. “Ma’am, I think the only realistic option is: if we want to retaliate—which we know we have to do—we have to declare an all-out war on terrorism. And not just on Arab terrorists or on Islamic fundamentalists. On terrorism everywhere, Hezbollah, the Palestinians, even those who operate within our allies, like the IRA.”
“That’s excellent,” the professor says. (As it turns out, this cadet has anticipated President Bush’s formal strategy by several days.)
In another class, a cadet asks, “Sir, is there any information we shouldn’t be . . .”
“Yeah. Let me talk about that right now. Who saw Senator Hatch on the news? He really screwed up. Did you see him actually tell the reporters that we had transmissions saying Osama bin Laden was responsible for this? Basically, he was releasing extremely sensitive”—the class chuckles—“intelligence information. What potential impact do you think that had on our collection apparatus?”
“Probably got shut down.”
“Probably lost contact.”
“Somebody probably got killed.”
“Yeah,” the professor nods, “the guy who was placing all those phone calls. For you future Intelligence people, it’s very important to understand that.” As he dismisses the class, he says, “I hope I’ll see you at the Taps Vigil.” At the ceremony tonight, the corps will honor the missing and dead.