We reported our action to Captain Chew, and he passed it on to officials up the chain of command. They were impressed that we had taken this problem upon ourselves to resolve. This resulted in a heightened interest by Academy officials and led to the establishment of the brigade executive committee composed of selected first classmen and popularly elected class and company representatives. We were tasked with recommending ways of improving the standard of honor within the brigade.
During the 1950–51 academic year, Jim Sagerholm and I (I had been elected class president for our senior year as well and was chosen the brigade commander, the highest position in the brigade, authorizing six stripes on my uniform sleeves) joined with committee members and the president of the Class of 1953, a nineteen-year-old midshipman of extraordinary intellect and incredible enthusiasm, H. Ross Perot.
Ross and I hit it off right away, beginning one of the most profound and enduring friendships of my life. Ross’s enormous success, in and after his Navy duty, and his unwavering patriotism, have never been a surprise to me. His actions on behalf of me, my family, and the other POWs during our captivity in North Vietnam are the stuff of legend. More on that later.
Ross had a very strong sense of right and wrong and a tell-it-like-it-is brashness about him. He had a Texas drawl to go along with his sound insights. Because we were plowing new ground, his contributions were essential and fundamental to our goals.
The committee laid the foundation that led to the establishment of honor standards. The term “honor code” was not used at Annapolis. That is a West Point term. For a full year, we spent two to three evenings a week developing the standards.
As class president and brigade commander, my plate was really full. This was an enormous plus for me, but it also spelled the end of my athletic career at the Academy. I simply would not have time for varsity sports in light of the responsibilities these two positions required. I had lettered in three sports for three years, and that would have to be enough. I knew I would miss the unparalleled excitement of running through traffic on the gridiron, driving to the hoop in basketball, or lacing a double to right center in baseball, but my other obligations, not to mention studies, had to take precedence. The coaches were, without exception, understanding and endorsed my decision. Had I been a superstar, they might have felt otherwise, but at this point in my life, it was more important to focus on my duties as a leader and on my studies, with varsity athletics set aside.
Early in the semester, Captain Chew began referring class “A” disciplinary reports to the committee for recommendations of punishment. Then, right after the Army-Navy game in December 1950, superintendent Hill, who had relieved Admiral Holloway, presented a challenge to all midshipmen.
In an address to the brigade in Dahlgren Hall, he said, “I will give full support and cooperation to all classes if you unanimously accept the responsibility for maintaining a high degree of personal honor within the brigade. I will not require professors to be in the classroom during examinations.”
He made particular reference to conduct in recitation rooms and to the importance that must be accorded an individual’s signature. If such obligations were accepted by the classes, he vowed that proctors would be removed from examination rooms. The committee enthusiastically viewed the admiral’s proposals, and based on subsequent class and battalion meetings, the entire student body accepted the challenge. As a result, our committee was elevated on campus to a position of increasing prominence.
Admiral Hill was a surface warfare officer and definitely from the traditional, or old school, of the Navy. He was an amphibious commander and during World War II spearheaded the invasion of Okinawa and other Pacific islands. He was an avid baseball fan, he came to our games whenever he could, and I got to know him fairly well. In fact, we had met in the dugout, of all places, during a baseball game before he became superintendent. Now, as brigade commander, I and the brigade staff met with him after parades to be introduced to the dignitaries who were often on hand at such events. As superintendent, though, he managed to infuriate the entire Class of 1951, now seniors.
He reversed the “liberties” Admiral Holloway had extended to first classmen. Civilian clothes were prohibited from dormitory rooms; the off-duty alternate weekends were now limited to two per semester; and only three-stripers (company commanders) and above were excused from marching to class. The only privilege retained was the extension of taps from 2200 to 2300 for seniors.
The gripes these new rules ignited were automatically routed through me. I conveyed them to the hierarchy, but my efforts at getting the privileges restored failed. Consequently, we had some very unhappy campers in the Class of 1951, and it took a good part of the year for their collective anger to subside, if it ever did.
All moral turpitude offenses were to be reported to the executive committee for investigation and consideration, and if found to be well grounded, were to be reported further to Captain Chew, with recommendations. As could be expected, midshipmen took some frivolous actions mixed in with more serious ones. I remember one from my youngster year.
My roommate, John Leahy, and I lived next door to a cocky, mischievous plebe, Ray Bright, Class of 1953, who was an ex-Marine. One day he came into our room obviously dejected.
“What’s wrong,” I asked.
Shaking his head, he said, “Our company officer (an active-duty lieutenant) put me on report and gave me twenty-five demerits.” That’s a considerable hit. When a midshipman reached fifty demerits, he was toying with serious trouble with respect to his longevity at the Academy.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, regretfully, “I put a rather disrespectful, typewritten—but anonymous—note on his desk.”
He’d been mad at something that happened to him and sought satisfaction through the written word.
“How did the lieutenant know it was you who wrote it?” I asked.
The plebe answered, “Apparently, while the company was at morning classes, he went through our rooms and checked everybody’s typewriter. He checked the type with all the typewriters, and mine matched up with the note.”
My roommate and I held back a chuckle. “You should have printed the note by hand,” I said, trying to sound serious. “But there’s no way the company officer could have checked all two hundred typewriters. He must have had other sources of information.”
The ex-Marine pondered this and said, “OK, next time I write a note to the lieutenant, I’ll do it by hand.” He still wasn’t going to let the matter go. This matter never came before the committee, and I don’t think there were any more clandestine letters to the company officer.
Conversely, a serious case came before the committee involving the behavior of a classmate who had missed a mandatory church party muster. On a board in the battalion officer’s office the muster officer would pencil in your name as you checked in. If you missed muster, an “A,” for absent, was written after your name. This midshipman, who had a considerable number of infractions on his record already, was caught in the act of erasing the A after his name.
Outwardly, this may not seem catastrophic. But because of his past record, the negative trend of his behavior, and the dishonesty of this last act, we recommended expulsion from the Academy. Superintendent Hill agreed, and the man was separated.
We had taken a long look at the honor code at West Point. Instituted by Gen. Douglas MacArthur when he was the superintendent in 1921, this code stated a cadet “would not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate anyone who did.”
The first part of this order was fine, but I took exception to the last phrase, which made it mandatory to “squeal” on a fellow cadet. I had discussed this during exchange visits with Army cadets. The committee agreed the West Point honor code went too far for us at Annapolis. We also thought that non-toleration, or mandatory reporting of an infraction, would lead to grouping together smaller offenses with larger ones.
Cadets at West Point were being separated f
or relatively minor offenses, which we considered a waste of a young person’s life. I knew it would be hard to require midshipmen to report other midshipmen, especially their own classmates, because it was counter to all we did to develop mutual bonds of loyalty, trust, and friendship. And when it comes to combat, those three commodities can be as essential to victory as weapons.
I also knew that some basically honorable midshipmen, particularly during their early years at Annapolis, would mistakenly commit minor honor violations just through inexperience. Why subject them to public embarrassment, demoralization, and possible separation when the matter could be handled by firm counseling by other midshipmen? Finally, I believed a counseling option would send a strong message to others that the Academy officials trusted in the midshipmen’s judgment and reliability. This would enhance the brigade’s sense of ownership, pride, and responsibility for any honor standard.
Moreover, I disliked a codified set of rules or “thou shalt nots,” as existed in the West Point code. These relegated an honor standard into another “conduct” system. We had one of those, and that was enough. We needed an honor standard that became a way of life, a philosophy that midshipmen adhered to because they believed in it, not because they feared punishment if they deviated from it.
The committee was keenly aware of the hefty responsibility that had been placed in its lap. We had a rigid obligation to our classmates. Each case submitted to us had to be investigated and reviewed thoroughly. Utmost fairness was mandatory. Personal feelings had to be set aside completely. Any action taken by the committee had to be in the genuine pursuit of justice.
Near the end of the academic year, we decided the committee must establish a formal procedure for conducting meetings. These would embrace summoning of witnesses, voting for punishments, and so forth. A special committee within the group was designated to work on this project and to have the procedure in readiness for the 1951–52 academic year.
This led to the formation of class and brigade honor boards with the responsibilities and procedures as we know them at the Academy today.
In the last paragraph of my report to the commandant, I wrote, “I feel the codification of the committee’s operations in cases of moral turpitude should be stringently avoided. Honor is a personal quality, and as individuals differ, so do violations of honor. Efforts to standardize punishment recommendations after placing an offense in a specific category would render the committee a useless, mechanical body. Each case should be reviewed and considered on its merits alone. I recommend that the only systemization should be applied to the manner in which we conducted executive committee meetings.”
The superintendent bought on to this, and the honor standard we established in the 1950 is still in effect at this writing.
However you looked at it, we were being trained as warriors and leaders of warriors. It boiled down to a simple question: Can you imagine going into a life and death situation in combat with shipmates who did not share your convictions of trust, loyalty, and friendship?
In my senior year, the relationship between Anne and me had grown, and I asked her to marry me. I was truly elated both by her consent and by being accepted for flight training beginning in September. Her father was now chief of staff of the Naval Air Reserve Training Command at Naval Air Station Glenview, in Chicago. Anne and I decided to marry in December in the chapel at that base.
With Anne at my side much of the time, June Week was delightful. I felt flattered, because the superintendent invited my parents to stay with him at his mansion-like quarters on campus. Obviously, Mom and Dad were honored by the kindness of Admiral and Mrs. Hill and were proud that I finished eighth, academically, in my class. It was a memorable week for all of us.
I was detailed to the commandant’s office for the summer, welcoming on board the new plebes and tending to many administrative matters, one of which was preparing a report on the honor concept.
Admiral Hill had directed the midshipmen to purchase new, full-dress uniforms. These had been deleted from the inventory during the war years as a cost-saving measure. Midshipmen would now have to pony up $150 of their own funds for the uniform. The uniform would be worn for special parades and dances, maybe only two to three times a year. Considerable disgruntlement accompanied this directive.
A well-known tailor, Jacob Reed, had produced our regular uniforms for years. As I was available, and as the former brigade commander, I was selected to model this new full-dress uniform.
I was summoned to Captain Pirie’s office and told to don a prototype set of the new uniform. I was immediately descended upon by a battery of Jacob Reed tailors, who encircled me and with pins, tape measures, and chalk; they probed and pinched, adjusting the fit.
Finally, I stood alone at the center of the room, embarrassed and uncomfortable at all the attention, with Captain Pirie frowning at me.
“Boy, that doesn’t fit very well,” he said. He put his hand under the buttons of the blouse at chest level. He tugged at the fabric and looking at the dismayed tailors, said, “Look at this. Look how badly this thing fits!”
What seemed like hours later the tailors had satisfied Pirie and I was dismissed. I admired Pirie, cantankerous as he could be, because despite his incendiary style, he was a great leader.
I cherished my time at Annapolis. I loved the discipline, the camaraderie, the challenges, and the unity of purpose. I was ready for new horizons and couldn’t wait for my release in September.
Jet planes were replacing the piston-powered machines, and Navy pilots were flying these planes in combat missions over Korea. Thoughts of gold wings had long since superseded those of a submariner’s dolphins. I wore the single gold stripe of an ensign on my shoulder boards, was fully prepared to enter a huge new lake as a small fish, and had absolutely no doubt flight training in Pensacola was the place I wanted to be.
Chapter Three
TRAINING COMMAND
Without warning and with the dreaded finality every pilot hopes will never happen, the engine quit.
I WAS UNDER THE “BAG” over the raw, flat Texas countryside, blind to the outside world. My attention was totally focused on the attitude gyro, the turn and bank indicator, and the airspeed and altitude gages in the SNJ Texan. The bag was a canvas shield that opened, accordion-like, from behind the rear seat in the Texan two-seater and was pulled like a hood over my head and down to the top edge of my instrument panel. This simulated flying “in the glue,” or bad weather when a pilot had no reference to the ground or his surroundings and had to depend on the information gleaned from the gages to control the aircraft and motor on through to the destination.
I was on an instrument training flight with my instructor in the front seat of the propeller-driven SNJ without a bag over his head. He took off and landed but was otherwise along for the ride. I flew while he graded me on my ability to scan the instruments and “fly the gages,” keeping the trainer on its proscribed path of flight. We had launched from the advanced training base in Kingsville, Texas, about an hour’s drive south of Corpus Christi.
The SNJ was a reliable bird and had been around since the 1930s. The Pratt and Whitney engine, rated at 500 horsepower, had more than enough power for fledgling aviators and was propelling us along smoothly as we cruised at four thousand feet and one hundred and forty knots of airspeed.
Without warning and with the dreaded finality every pilot hopes will never happen, the engine quit. I instinctively popped the hood back out of the way. The instructor called, “I’ve got it!” wresting the controls from me, which I instantly released, raising both hands free of the stick. I was not terrified. We were still flying. But I was unnerved by the unexpected silence, convincing evidence that our SNJ was now a glider.
The instructor made a Mayday call, which we hoped was heard back at Kingsville, and announced over the intercom, “I’m gonna spiral down to that field just ahead. Looks flat enough, and there’s a road nearby.”
“Roger,” I answered.
“Tighten your harness.”
“Wilco,” I said.
We had practiced precautionary emergency landings in the event of engine failure, and my instructor was going by the book, keeping the gear up and locked, using the flaps as necessary, and hitting the downwind and upwind checkpoints in the descent at the right speed and altitude. Powerless, the SNJ creaked and groaned a bit as it glided downward, swiftly but under control. The instructor had secured the fuel pump and closed the fuel mixture lever to help prevent a fire on impact.
We hit the ground in a nearly level attitude and were thrown roughly against our restraints, sending a fine rooster tail of dirt and scrub brush into the air, and came to a stop within several hundred feet. Thankfully, there was no fire. We sat there quietly for a moment as the dust settled and our heartbeats decelerated; then we expeditiously disembarked.
“You OK?” asked the instructor.
“Yes sir,” I said. And I was. I had felt no panic, because I believed the situation was under control, which it was. But that sudden silence was unnerving, and the impact was like tackling a fullback straight on.
We climbed out, and the instructor said, “I’ll stay with the airplane. You go get help.” I reached the road and started walking. He loitered around the yellow, stricken Texan in the quiet Texas wilderness. I was wondering what I would tell Anne when a battered pickup truck came by. I flagged it down and looked into the open driver’s side window. An old-timer with a leathery face and a twinkle in his eye looked curiously at me in my soiled orange coveralls and said, “What’s happened to you, Son?”
“Little trouble with the engine in our SNJ,” I explained. “Had to land wheels up in a field back there.”
“That’s Kennedy Ranch land,” he said, adding that, “You’re one of the Navy boys from Kingsville, I bet.”
“Yes sir,” I said.
“Used to be a balloon pilot myself,” he said, “in World War I. Hop in and we’ll get you to a phone.”
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