by David Lipsky
There’s never been a lot of doubt what insignia Ryan Southerland will wear; he’s been aiming for Infantry since the first time he heard Lieutenant Colonel Keirsey speak. “There are just some people you meet,” he says, “you want to measure up to them.” Ryan is among his class’s top thirty cadets, so Branch Night for him is mostly a formality. The high rank has also had its drawbacks. He and Betty finally broke up a couple of months ago. His cow job left him too busy to be more than a telephone boyfriend; regimental command is another ruckful of work, it doesn’t even leave him time to be a friend. And a relationship would muddy the career choices he must make. “I didn’t want to go into branch and post having that affect my decisions,” Ryan tells me, “and I didn’t want to force Betty to make those decisions thinking about me. But it’s been very hard. There are still all these very powerful feelings. I was in love with her—I mean, as much as I know about love.”
Remarks like this—over IM, in person—still irritate Betty. “Of course you know about it,” she’ll declare. Betty is hoping tonight for Military Intelligence; the rumor is that the branch will have a big part in whatever comes next. “At first I was, ‘Oh shit, we’re going to war.’ There’s that big you-can-die factor. But MI is a way for females to be involved with the whole terrorism thing.”
Mark Thompson and Chrissi Cicerelle have called it quits too. They argued so long about regulations that separating turned out to be the one rhetorical position they hadn’t occupied. After the attacks, Chrissi wept, softened, telephoned. “The bombings magnified it,” Chrissi says, “showed me how important he was, fighting wasn’t worth it. I told him I loved him.” She sighs. “And he said, ‘No, we fought for a reason and we broke up for a reason. I didn’t make you happy.’” Mark, like the rest of the Corporation, is aiming for idiot sticks. Chrissi—as if their argument is still going on by force of momentum—is headed as far as possible in the opposite direction. Adjutant General, the Army’s bureaucratic corps, is the one branch where there’s no guarantee you’ll command a unit. “I’m not sure I want to lead a platoon,” Chrissi says. “I’m more into office work and organization, and doing my own thing.”
At 1930, the drum corps arrives, works up its rattle, the firsties march off for Eisenhower Hall. Cows carrying their dinners in white takeout bags watch and give the thumbs-up. The firsties laugh and joke, meeting their careers in good humor, but if you look down, their legs are snapping in perfect unison. They march over the Beat Navy tunnel, clatter down the cement steps, to where they can see the big downsloping hills and the reflections on the water.
Inside Ike Hall, General Eric Olson, the commandant of cadets, takes the stage. Yesterday, the Taliban handed over the city of Jalalabad, setting off a general, messy retreat; military urgency backs the comm’s words. “I’ve seen quite a few Branch Nights,” he begins, “and I detect a certain quality to this one I haven’t seen before. There’s an anticipation, an excitement in the air. You’re all thinking about the choices you’re making, the contribution you’re going to make to the effort that will almost surely be going on when you’re commissioned.”
His gaze sweeps slowly to take in the firstie class. “This is an Army in transformation,” the general says. “Personnel, systems, equipment, doctrine, how we train—all that is being changed again. And you will help the Army make those changes. The Army needs people of your quality. It needs people like you perhaps more than it has in many, many years. I feel a tremendous sense of dependency on the quality of your service. Our nation will depend on you.”
At a moment like this, the wide space inside cadet heads—full of anticipated trials and hopes for achievement—exactly matches the space outside them. Then the comm sneaks in a professional admonishment. “I expect you to celebrate tonight—and I’ll expect you to celebrate responsibly.” The moment condenses into one big laugh. “But as you celebrate, I want to give you something to think about. There’s a message that’s been out there on the e-mail. It’s from an article that appeared in a Romanian newspaper, about the tragedies in America. The editorialist asks, ‘Why are Americans so united? They don’t resemble one another. They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations. Some are nearly extinct, others are incompatible with one another. Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into one hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the Army, the secret services. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place a minister or the president was passing.’”
The comm raises his head. “The editorial finishes this way—and I want you to listen to this. ‘What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic power? I tried for hours to find an answer. I thought things over but I reached only one conclusion. Only freedom can work such miracles.’” The comm’s face goes stern and optimistic at once. “It is freedom,” he says, “that works miracles in the United States of America. And it is freedom that is being threatened, that is under attack. It’s freedom that you are sworn to defend. And tonight you take another decision on the path to serve this nation, to protect that freedom. I am filled with confidence, because I know you will accomplish both very well. May I ask the TAC officers to distribute the envelopes, please.”
There’s the rumble of the class of 2002 rising to its feet. Captain Paredes shakes each Guppy’s hand, presents the packet containing their branch insignia. “Hey,” the TAC jokes, “I taped them extra to make it hard for you guys to open.” Cadets squeeze their envelopes, trying to braille the contents.
Huck doesn’t squeeze his. If it isn’t Infantry, he’s not ready to face the binding fact. “All the shit I’ve been through,” he says, “it’d just be way too ironic if I didn’t get stupid sticks.” Someone announces “At this time . . .” from the stage, and there’s a slash of envelope-ripping, followed by yells and backslapping down the aisles of Ike Hall. Josh Rizzo pulls out his king-of-battle pin—two crossed cannons. Jasmine Rose tilts the semaphore flags of Signal between her fingertips. Chrissi Cicerelle doesn’t get AG. Instead, she finds the key-and-sword of the Quartermaster Corps; she’ll be leading a platoon after all. The Corporation—Mark Thompson, Matt Kilgore, Eliel Pimentel, Kenny Wainwright, Rob Anders—is one long cheering row of Infantry. Each mud crawler pin is a plus for George Rash, a minus for Huck Finn. Hands meet for shakes behind Huck’s back and over his shoulders as he sits scowling, palms folded over his envelope. Slogans and nicknames are being shouted, cadets testing how the new branch feels in the mouth. “We clear the way!” (Engineers.) “Queen of battle, baby!” (That’s Infantry; on a chess board, the queen is the only piece that can go in any direction, take any foe.) “Silent war!” (Military Intelligence.) “The combat arm of decision!” (This wide load is Armor.) George splits open his envelope and lets out a big, relieved sigh as he examines a shiny, castlelike fort. If he graduates, he’ll be an Engineer.
The firsties fall out to Ike’s Café—a wide room, bargain-price beers on trays, prom-rock thumping from the speakers. They huddle at tables with their new branches and propose sloshy toasts. Cadets are pinning bright insignia on one another’s lapels, standing up to the blink and flash of disposable cameras. Huck has walked in the opposite direction, to the quiet upper reaches of Eisenhower Hall, to prepare himself. Cadets shout more slogans:
“Spearhead of the Army!”
“First to fire!”
“We’re Infantry, all we need is food, toilet paper and bullets!”
Two big cadets touch glasses, Coors dribbling over their thumbs. “Infantry can’t survive without Armor,” the first begins, and the second guy jumps in, “And Armor can’t survive without Infantry.”
Huck pauses on the staircase. He’s thinking how his parents are worried about him, how his dad fought in Asia and his grandfather flew above Germany, and here Huck is sweating over a branch assignment. He rips open his envelope, shakes the pin
out into his hand: idiot sticks.
The Corrections and the Hours
Cadet leadership is like traveling to a higher altitude; there’s no way to predict the effect. You could get invigorated—wave your hands and talk in a loud voice—it might wear you out, it could make you delusional.
As Third Regiment’s commander, Ryan Southerland acts pretty much the same as Ryan doing anything else. “I don’t know if he’s the best commander I’ve seen around this place,” says cow Mac Davis, “but it’s hard to imagine a much better one. I’ve never seen anyone get to a position like his who didn’t act like a forty-year-old in a twenty-year-old’s body, didn’t mistreat his classmates or become a robot who shoots himself in the foot—didn’t act, for lack of a better word, like a tool. It’s why people get excited about Southerland.”
To his own surprise, Ryan finds his assignment disheartening—“bittersweet,” he explains, “emphasis on the first part.” He has climbed far enough up the rank structure to peer into rooms where navigation is debated and course changes are settled on. But it’s still a tour, just the deluxe version. “In cadet land, I have this position; in reality, I’m in charge of very little. The TACs are there at the company level, and what can I say to a TAC? Absolutely nothing.” He frowns. “It’s fake command.”
It demoralizes him to watch Andy Blickhahn, because as some members of the corps anticipated, he proves to be higher’s first captain more than the cadets’. “He really tries hard to please the officers,” Betty Simbert explains; she and Andy have been close since the prep school. “Then he tries to explain it to the cadets, and the cadets are like, ‘Yeah, bull.’ I don’t think they love him the way they did the first captain last year, Dave Uthlaut.” Uthlaut expressed the ways of cadets to the administration—he was the firm, presentable cousin who steps upstairs at Thanksgiving to ask if the teenagers can all go see a movie. As cadets see it, with Andy it’s the reverse: he’s the cousin who comes downstairs to patiently explain why hitting the multiplex would be disrespectful to aunts and grandparents who’ve traveled long distances. Other cadets offer a balanced assessment. “Sometimes he seems great,” they say, “and sometimes he’s a butt-boy for higher.”
But the most groused-about striper isn’t the first captain; it’s Chrissi Cicerelle’s old boyfriend, Mark Thompson. Though he’s not a regimental commander, Mark lands a glory position that’s one of the most potent in the corps. As the operations officer, the S-3, Mark coordinates major events, arranging transpo and, this year, evacuation plans. S-3s also get tasking authority—meaning duties and punishments. “He’s become a hated man,” Huck Finn says. “Which isn’t fair. I’ve known him since R-Day and he’s a good guy.”
The first signal is when Mark stops keeping time with the Corporation—no more Saturday afternoon basketball games, no more group dinners, no contact. It’s not just Chrissi: much of his pre-leadership life he seems to see as weights, ties that must be snipped. “It’s all changed,” Eliel Pimentel says, shaking his head. “Last year, he talked about getting the cool office and stripes. This year, he made a decision to cut us off.” When he gets engaged to a fellow firstie, he doesn’t pass his old friends the news; instead, they hear about it through the fishbowl, which leaves scraped feelings.
At Academy events, he presses a white Secret Service-style earpiece into one ear; cadets can’t remember seeing anything like it. They figure he’s plugged into a constant stream of West Point logistical data, but as Huck says, “It’s a mystery, man—nobody knows.” To mock Mark, when they bump into him around post, cadets will press two government-agent fingers against their own ears.
What winds cadets up most about Mark Thompson has to do with the hours. In early fall, word comes down that all punishments will be served Old Corps style—on the Area. Walking tours, five-hour stretches of silent, back-and-forth marching across the hundred cement yards of Central Area. If you get quill, the TAC promises G-4, you will walk. To Captain Paredes’s eye, the payoff will be measured in what’s called situational awareness, a soldier’s trained sense of where you are and what you’re doing. If a cadet checks into a G-4 bathroom stall with an untucked shirt, that’s an automatic five hours. A yuk attends Sunday chapel in her civvies, waves hello to Captain Paredes, spends a minute catching up—Monday morning the paper’s waiting on her desk, five hours. Mark Thompson’s hard innovation is what’s called the three-gig rule. A gig is a mistake: unpolished brass, patchy shave, even misaligned chin-strap buttons on your hat. If you have three gigs, you’ve got another punishment. Now, before cadets can begin walking, they gather for a gig inspection. It becomes like one of those tricky Greek mathematical paradoxes: you could walk away from hours with more hours.
Then, what puts Mark over the top—cadets call it “the biggest ‘holy shit’”—is when he shows up at hours formation and begins handing out extra hours to cadets for holding their rifles improperly, for marching bunched up. “He’s not very well liked in the corps right now,” Eliel says. You hear the concern for his old friend. “I think it’s going to be rough for him next year in the Army, because he’s made some serious enemies. But hey—decisions.” Officers who’ve followed Mark’s West Point career can’t decide what to make of it. “I’m not sure what was up with Thompson,” one says, shrugging. “If that’s what he was always like, or if the job went to his head.”
Even at the company level, leadership is what military planners would call a change agent. George Rash and Scott Mellon have been platoon-leading for a couple months when one of them springs a leak. It’s not George. “George has done a great job,” Captain Paredes admits. Disciplined and conscientious, George Rash is a standard-bearer; he’s proved that he can do the job. It’s Scott who catches Paredes’s eye. A year ago, TAC-NCO Sergeant Tierney spoke about the cadet as if he were describing an unmemorable walk across a parking lot. “There’s nothing great, there’s nothing terrible; he’s there. I would say Scott Mellon is a middle-of-the-road cadet.” Scott has faced physical challenges. His shoulder was operated on last summer, so he’s been on profile at fitness tests; plebe-year concussions—in barracks and in the boxing ring—have left him with complicated sleep patterns. (On the other hand, he did a fine job last summer with an Army tank unit.) The physical isn’t what’s getting under Paredes’s skin; it’s what’s upstairs, the motivation, heart and head. He doesn’t see Scott leading by example. A platoon is broken up into four ten-person squads. “Give them a vision and guidance,” Paredes urges Scott. “Right now you’ve got four squads going in four different directions. When you’ve got them moving in the same direction, then you’ve got a platoon.” Scott is doing the minimum needed to graduate. When Paredes visits his room to give more advice, he learns that Scott’s formula even extends to the level of tidiness. “I told him to get his room clean,” Paredes says. “Then I started taking privileges away from him.”
The TAC puts Scott’s room on SAMI—Saturday A.M. inspection—the maximum dust-free, white-gloved standard. “Before, he was initially very mild-mannered,” Paredes says. “Always been, ‘OK sir, yes sir.’ But then he mouthed off to me. And that was it.” Scott has fought back with the bright kid’s strategy—going for cover in the rule book, shielding himself with fine print. When the captain returns and asks, “By the way, why isn’t your room up to standard?” Scott replies, “As a matter of fact, sir, I’ve been meaning to talk with you about that. You can’t put me in SAMI unless I see some paperwork.”
It’s the last thing a TAC wants to hear. “That pissed me off,” Captain Paredes says. He told Scott’s roommate to leave the room. Then he began a correction. “I yelled at him,” the TAC says. “It was funny, I totally changed. I said, ‘Lemme tell you something, monorail. Let me tell you something. We fuckin’ own you. Listen, I have the power, we have so much power—why are you doing this?’”
The TAC casts around for other strategies. Paredes has been counseling Scott about his C average. The captain wants to talk the matter over with the Aca
demy psychologists at the Center for Personal Development. “And Scott said, ‘Hey, let them talk to me, they can tell me what’s going on,’” the captain remembers. So Scott goes round to the building the cadets call the Center for Personal Destruction. Paredes monitors his progress. By midsemester, Paredes has an idea: to ask the CPD to perform a Scott Mellon fitness-for-duty evaluation. “When I saw him totally not meeting the—not succeeding,” the TAC says, “I mean, do I want this cadet to be a lieutenant? Hell no! Hell no.” Paredes shakes his head. “And Mellon could have graduated. He could’ve met the standard, he would’ve had a two-point-oh GPA, and he would’ve had a C military—he wasn’t failing. Mellon could’ve squeaked by, and they would have graduated him. But I could not graduate him in good conscience.” So Paredes got on the phone with the CPD. “And I’m not gonna turn around and rat out people. I mean, I’m the standard-bearer. So the only way you’re gonna get him out is, I said, ‘Hey, from a medical perspective, there’s no way this guy—he’s out there, right?’”
Personal Destruction
Before the attacks, cadet TV cards usually piped in The Simpsons or Friends or Seinfeld, light comedy recalling the contours of the old life like a postcard. The Grant Hall restaurant—it’s called the Weapons Room and offers jam-packed sandwiches like “The Stinger Missile”—is where cadets line up for snacks and pizzas. Two big-screen TVs broadcast ESPN, guys lifting their eyes between swallows. Some nights, at 1930, a cadet will stand, switch stations, bring in pop news from Access Hollywood. For months, the Weapons Room TVs have been pinned to CNN, showing caves, hills, helmets, aircraft, a weather report of their future.