by David Lipsky
The plebes and yuks stared back. “Aren’t you him, sir?”
It’s traditional for veterans to fill out team ranks with some been-there confidence. But the Corporation made their point last year; now they stick to the bench. (Major Vermeesch’s response is a one-word shrug of surprise: “Huh.”) The final semester can tag firsties like a tranquilizer dart. Matt Kilgore has a wedding to plan: a young local teacher passed him a note at T.G.I. Friday’s, she’d spotted him and decided she wanted to sit across the table forever. Eliel Pimentel and Rob Anders have basketball and girls in mind (Rob is also acting in the Hundredth Night show); Mark Thompson hears the call of his earpiece. The only Corporation member to turn up is the group’s brainiac—Kenneth Wainwright, a tall, elegant polymath from California, nearly bald, as if he’s run the numbers and determined that hair obstructs a potential solar energy source. (Kenny will spend next year at Oxford through the Marshall Scholars program, exchanging Army greens for tweeds.) Matt Kilgore got the company commander nod from Paredes; he’ll be the Guppy leading G-4 at the graduation parade. The first week, he sits in on a Sandhurst meeting, sizes up the squad. He pauses at the door to nod with Huck: “It looks like you’ve got some black sheep on your hands.” Huck makes it the team name.
For a while it looks as if the team won’t even qualify. A Sandhurst squad must have a representational makeup like Congress’s: you need members from each class, and the Black Sheep don’t have any juniors. Huck and Kenny buttonhole Sam Kim in his room; with a canny, three-pronged assault of shaming, bullying and begging, they get Sam on board. (“Huck kept saying, ‘I know you don’t want to, but bro, I need you,’” Sam says. “I’m thinking, ‘This guy’s just a dirtbag football player.’ Finally I was like, ‘Whatever, dude.’”) Then Huck’s got to come up with a way to get everyone else just as motivated. He stands in front of the team, does first things first. “I’m Huck,” he says, “hello. Not gonna try to hide it from you—Sandhurst, no experience, never been with it, nothing.” He watches the cadets stare at each other: Why is this guy our leader? “Well, all right, I got one goal for this team. Anybody wanna take a guess what that shit is?” Nobody answers. Huck slaps his midsection, where he’s grown his customary postseason gut. “By competition day, I want this motherfucker right here to be gone.” The group laughs. “From then on, everybody got comfortable,” Huck says. “They were like, ‘OK, so what if it’s Sandhurst, at least this guy ain’t such a frickin’ douchebag.’”
The team eats dinner at a separate mess hall table. Other squad leaders ghost by, scouting the competition. They see: a football player, a brain, one cow and a gift-box assortment of nervous plebes and yuks. Last year, G-4 finished in the middle of the pack, and that was with the Corporation and all their professional skills. The Black Sheep quickly become favorites to finish last in the corps.
The firsties pick their posts on a chilly night at the end of February. Their next years in the Army are already acquiring gravity and an address. Ryan Southerland, the Corporation, Huck and Huck’s Louisiana buddy Bryan Hart crowd into Washington Hall to face Infantry selection and the Iron Mikes.
The class of 2002 has responded to wartime by putting 205 cadets in idiot sticks; it’s one of the biggest groups in years. (Huck would have slept a little easier before Branch Night if he’d known higher’s decision to give Infantry to any cadet who picked it first.) But with Keirsey, Adamcyzk and the old supe gone, nobody knows how to put their enthusiasm to good use: there are no speeches to get the blood racing, no reminders of soldiers in the field waiting to be joined and led. “When we’re done tonight,” the branch rep says mildly, from the front of the auditorium, “you can take off from here and enjoy the evening.” Then selection begins, posts in Italy and Hawaii disappearing like seasons.
Ryan’s last semester is shaping up as a trudge. A few nights ago, he sat down with some fellow stripers. “After last semester,” one confessed, “I have no passion left, no emotions for anything. This whole term is mechanical.” Ryan couldn’t believe it. “No,” he said. “Think about it—when you lose that, you lose it all.”
Plus, he’s been butting heads with Andy Blickhahn, fighting the command mentality that stripers and corps are separate and the corps is wrong. Ryan is producing this year’s Hundredth Night show—“just for the experience”—and he’s borrowed uniforms from Andy and Mark Thompson. When the two hear they’re being lampooned in some scenes, they demand their gear back. (They don’t offer a reason, except to say it’s a personal matter.) Word gets around, and it’s a shock to the corps. After all, Adamczyk submitted to his annual lumps, and generals did too—two-stars like John Abizaid, who’ve returned to the Army to command whole divisions; General Christman even sent over his class-B trousers the year he was the show’s villain. “It just became a fiasco,” Eliel Pimentel says in his room. Matt Kilgore shakes his head: “Not many people took Andy and Mark’s side at all. Historically, the show makes fun of recognizable personalities. Not joining in made them look a little like hypocrites, like they aren’t supporting the corps.” (Six weeks after Hundredth Night, when the firsties tilt together for their class photo and Mark tries to organize them, cadets will shout, “Where’s your earpiece, man? Don’t forget the piece.” Matt Kilgore will wince at the image. “Everybody was just hating him, saying stuff to his face, ripping him hard. It got so bad I almost felt like crying for Mark.”)
Ryan is the ninth cadet to choose at Post Night, when dream spots like Hawaii, Germany and Colorado are still available. He takes Fort Lewis, near Seattle—a new brigade is being developed there, one that will fight city to city, house to house, which is the direction Ryan understands the terrorism war is likely to go. Once again, cadet real-estate choices are based on a mix of huah and location, with everyone steering clear of buggy Fort Polk. Andy and Mark will take their striper competence to Fort Bragg, The Division. Matt Kilgore signs up for Fort Campbell’s 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles; the assignment is likely to take him to Afghanistan or back to Iraq, a country professors are quietly telling cadets to keep an eye on. Eliel and Rob Anders opt for the pineapples and beaches of Hawaii. Huck and Bryan Hart are talking together as the board clears. “My palms are straight wet,” Huck admits, and Hart whispers, “Stay South, stay in the South.”
When Huck rises, late in the game, almost all the Iron Mikes have been picked clean. For anybody who knows him, it’s a strange moment: the big cadet has nothing to say. If you can’t select under pressure, a choice is made for you; Huck is the only cadet the branch rep has to invoke the ten-second rule on.
“Ten . . . nine . . . eight,” the rep counts.
Oooooh! Take Polk!
“Six . . . five . . .”
A cadet starts to whistle the Jeopardy! theme.
“Three . . . two . . . one . . .”
“Korea,” Huck says.
Yeeeeah! Wooooo!
When the last Iron Mike comes down, the air is charged with competition, support, good humor; but there’s nobody there to shift the excitement toward the missions that await the firsties. “Make sure you sign the sheet before you leave,” the branch rep reminds them. “OK, thank you and good night. This concludes the Post Night.” Ryan remembers the kind of speech Keirsey would have given after post selection—then realizes he’s one of the few cadets who does. “It’s funny,” he says, looking around the room. “He’s passing out of the memory of the corps. People are already starting to lose him, to forget him.”
Over at Thayer Hall, Chrissi Cicerelle runs dry on options and walks out of Quartermaster with Fort Bragg. She knows Mark Thompson is headed there, which is no inducement. “Also, I’ve always been terrified of Bragg,” Chrissi says. The Eighty-second Airborne has “the reputation of being very male-dominated, very cocky, very Infantry—it’s like, please, get over yourself. And look at me”—she holds both hands to her face: manicure, rings, earrings, great hair—“I don’t exactly fit into the whole super-trooper mold.” When she shows up at the Fi
rstie Club, her friends have already heard. They’re laughing before she sits down. “Airborne—hooop!” they call, and “Eighty- deuce!” Chrissi’s face crinkles in exasperation. “You guys think it’s funny, but it’s not.” She starts a letter-writing campaign and gets reassigned to Fort Campbell.
George Rash arrives at Engineer post selection with a loaded book bag. He takes a seat, cracks a book, starts doing homework. “What else am I gonna do for forty-five minutes?” he says. “I’m last.” When 109 other Engineers have picked, George glances up to see what’s left. There’s only one post remaining: George Rash will serve the next three years at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
Huck Finn gets some unanticipated help on hitting his Sandhurst target weight. He becomes fit walking the Area—Captain Paredes is handing out hours for everything.
There’s frustration on both sides of G-4. Firsties believe they’ve earned the shy privilege of being left alone, and the TAC is spoiling their last months at West Point. This isn’t an attitude Captain Paredes can support; he’s developing them for the rigors of the Army. “What’s gonna change in the next sixty days,” he asks, “except the color of their uniform? They have the idea of’It’s almost over.’ No, it’s not, bro—it’s just beginning.”
From the captain’s standpoint, punishment tours make perfect sense. “It’s about expectations. We tell them West Point is going to be tough; if we don’t meet that, they just become cynics. So hey, West Point is hard, motherfuckers. And I make it hard. Reach down, grab your balls, prove to me you can do this.” With Scott Mellon gone, the captain looms in cadet minds like a movie crime boss, right after the scene where he proves he’s serious by bumping off one of his own guys. When the Hours Boys aren’t apprehensive on their own behalf, they’re worrying about George Rash. Paredes now has a clear field of fire; George stands alone in the TAC’s sights. “The TAC is just waiting,” Cal Smith says, “and he wants to get Rash out of here so bad.” But the others have plenty to worry about. The TAC comes to Huck’s room to hash out some piddly violation, Huck raises his eyebrows, it sends the TAC over the top. “He told me, ‘One more time, you and Cal Smith are both done—you’re out of this school, you will not graduate.’” Huck is wrapped in a post-shower towel, but he marches straight for Cal’s room. “I said, ‘Look, dude, Paredes may be around the bend, but I’m definitely taking the man serious—he’s seriously capable of screwing up my world. It’s February, I’m gonna be good.’” It spooks Cal, too. “What he did to Scott,” Cal believes, “he’d like to do the same to us. That’s his deal, to ride you for everything until you snap.”
Huck walks for poor shaving, lateness to class, sloppily executed parking jobs. Some tours run ten hours at a shot. “Doin’ what I do best,” Huck says, “walking the Area.” Marching pitches him deep into himself. “I notice I’m singing songs in my head or looking if people I know are walking by. That’s true West Point punishment, right there. I mean, if they wanted to devise a plan that would fuckin’ teach cadets not to screw up anymore, they did a good job by bringin’ back the walking tours. ’Cause that shit’s brutal, man. It hurts physically and mentally, ’cause you get so frickin’ bored—I mean, it’s boring, dude. You can’t talk. You’ve got that rifle on your shoulder, you got to switch it every five minutes. And I mean, hell, those damn shoes, bro.” March a hundred hours at West Point, you’ve walked your way into what’s known as the Century Club. Huck is already a Bicentennial Man—two hundred hours plus. And every Saturday he’s on the Area, it makes the Black Sheep look sillier; they’re the team being led by the ate-up firstie.
Huck is dead serious about Sandhurst—it’s his best chance to get ready for next year. There’s leadership practice: if he can motivate the squad to even a semi-respectable showing, that’s way more than anybody expects. And there’s mud crawler preparation: rappelling, rope-climbing, shooting and grenade-lobbing are the skills you’d list in an Infantry want ad. Huck pulls two weeks’ worth of all-nighters to study up on each event. He works till streaks in the clouds tell him it’s quitting time, Rizzo peeling back an eyelid every so often to murmur, “Huck’s doing Sand-huah.” Huck translates Sandhurst into his second language, the X’s, O’s and dotted lines of football. When he’s done, he’s cooked up ten separate playbooks, one for each Black Sheep and a master for the squad. “When he handed us the playbooks,” Sam Kim says, “that’s when I thought, ‘Hey, this might amount to something.’”
Training in North Area on a damp April Thursday—wind stretching and flattening the oily puddles—Huck understands he’s also competing against his former image, the old Huck. He assumed command would mean acting more professional, but the too-bigness in his personality is finally paying off. He prefaces instruction with things like, “Another damn thing I forgot is” or “All right, I know you all hate the boat.” Leadership, he thinks, is also a matter of spillover vitality—maintaining your enthusiasm at communicable levels—though that’s just what the Academy has tried to drill and hour out of him. The Black Sheep are all spitting and all cursing, a squad of Hucks. When they ace a gas mask drill, they call, “Damn! We’re frickin’ money!” (Huck counsels them on the importance of gas masks: “OK—if you don’t get your gas mask on in nine seconds, whoop-dee-fucking-doo, guys. Don’t feel like we just lost the competition just because shit happens.”) Every time the team says, “sir,” spectators glance over their shoulders to see if an officer is passing, but the Black Sheep mean Huck. He tells them, “No one is taking us seriously, not even our own company. We’re the squad that’s been picked to finish dead last. But we’re ready, and at 1420 on Saturday, we’re winning this shit.”
Sandhurst is a two-and-a-half-hour, greatest-hits version of four years of military training. It starts by testing the most basic housekeeping skill from Beast: at 1420, the Black Sheep muster for inspection. Huck employed an old Hours Boy trick, instructed the team to suit up last night in BDUs with all their kit, then spend ten minutes under the showerhead. At Sandhurst, you don’t compete head-to-head against other teams. You fight mistakes—flubs cost points—and time, clock hands nipping at your heels. About forty cadets from G-4 turn out to run the nine-kilometer course alongside Huck’s squad. And even though Bryan Hart has already run it with his own company, he comes back to support his hometown boy. “I wouldn’t want to miss this crazy-ass football player trying to be a Sandhurst officer,” Bryan says.
And then they’re galloping off down the rocky orange path. Canteens flap, packs rattle, boots clack. At the boat site, Huck’s plebe-year roommate, Kevin Hadley, cheers their paddling: “Way to go, Gups.” He’s headed for Korea, same as Huck, and frowns at the prospect; it’s not the ideal post for a Christian. “I’ve heard there’s a lot of drinking and prostitution,” Kevin says. The Black Sheep change uniforms on the sand; as they’re hustling down the trail, Major Vermeesch steps into view, one of his kids in his arms. “Go get some, G-4,” he says, and the team thumps past.
When the squad fires too fast at the rifle site—a dusty spot where G-4 got cut points last year; the Black Sheep are already kicking up dirt with misses—Huck shouts them calm. “Yo, yo, stop.” Then they squeeze off five quick shots in a row, sounding the carnival doink of hits. A cadet from another squad nods at Huck. “Hey, how many hours has that guy walked, anyway?” Then they clatter downhill to the grenade area, drop into the prone, blow the hell out of some plaster Ivan figurines. Then they’re winding uphill again, the Guppies spreading out behind them like a big human wake. This stretch, to the one-rope bridge, is the longest run of the course. Boots catch on vines, puddles soak boots, fatigue starts clamping muscles. “Let’s hear it,” Huck calls to G-4, “we need some help back there.” Shouts go mouth to mouth among the Guppies.
Keep moving.
Doin great.
Let’s move it, keep pushing.
Never stop pushing.
Good job, don’t stop.
Don’t stop moving now.
Keep pushing.
Guppies never quit! (This is from Captain Paredes.)
The words sweep under the team’s boots like a breeze, giving legs some lift and play. The team shimmies across the rope bridge, backs sagging down close to the stream. Then the Black Sheep squeeze onto hands and knees for a crawl through a long culvert, water muddy and buttery under their palms. They pull each other over the twelve-foot-high Ranger wall, earn the highest possible score.
Every Sandhurst team includes at least one female member. Christina Cattley—a short-haired yuk with the nickname Cat—is crumpling under her ruck, eyebrows going fixed in the upright, pained position. Huck shoulders the pack, shouts, “Push Cat! One guy in front of her, two guys behind!” The team completes its rappel down the jumbled cliff face in big looping bounds, then the Black Sheep scramble over crunching leaves and molar-shaped rocks until they’re back on post.
They catch their breath before the Gothic arches and casement windows of Arvin Gym, waiting on the team ahead to finish. The final event, the Commandant’s Challenge, is always Sandhurst’s worst haze. Last year, squads had to hoist a huge log on their shoulders, shuffling and grunting it back and forth. This year, the one big weight has been diced into thirty-seven smaller ones. The Black Sheep will have to lug five-gallon water jugs—the sloshing equivalent of forty pounds—two streets, from Thayer’s statue to MacArthur’s statue and back again, covering the distance between the old and modern Academies. The Black Sheep limp into the holding area, uniforms muddy, muscles stiffening. (Cat turns her camoed face to Huck. “Hey,” she says. “Someone should snap a picture of me, we can post it on Hotornot.com.” Huck rests his hand proudly on her helmet.)