by Ted Russ
I read the newspaper while I waited. Karl, Bill’s roommate this semester, futzed with his computer. After about twenty long minutes, Bill came back. He entered the room without acknowledging either of us and changed into his PT uniform. Karl and I looked at each other as Bill stood with his back to us, slowly hanging his class uniform back in his closet. I motioned to Karl to give us a moment, so he got up and left the room quickly, without saying anything.
Bill, now in regulation shorts and T-shirt, walked over, sat down on his bed, grabbed one of his running shoes, and began to put it on. He didn’t look angry or sad. His face was blank.
“For violating the United States Corps of Cadets Regulations, I have been given three months of room restriction and seventy-five hours on the area,” he announced while he grabbed the other running shoe, still staring straight ahead. “While on room restriction, I must be either in class, in my room, in the mess hall with the rest of the Corps, or engaging in one hour of authorized exercise.”
“Bill—”
He shook his head to shut me up. “I’ve done the math. It’s almost the whole semester. I’ll be off restriction sometime around Thanksgiving and might get off the area in time for the Navy game.”
“Bill—”
He cut me off again. “Colonel Vanson made it clear that a major factor in the severity of my punishment was my refusal to cooperate with the investigating officer, Captain Eifer. Had I been more cooperative, the punishment would have been half as severe, and, he said, in the future, I should spend some time reflecting on the importance of supporting my chain of command.”
“Bill, I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be. I did the crime. Both crimes. I got busted, and I didn’t cooperate with the investigating officer.” He turned his head and looked at me. “This is going to be a long semester, Sam. But I can manage through it. It helps now that I know what I have to get through, and it’s not your fault. I’d handle it the exact same way if I had to do it over again.” He turned back and stared toward the wall. I realized that it wasn’t a blank look; it was one of resolve. He was steeling himself against the months-long task in front of him.
“Well, I’m going to say it one last time.”
Bill held his hand up to stop me, but I ignored it.
“Thanks.”
“Fuck you. Can we go to the gym now? I want to use my hour well.”
THIRTEEN
1625 HOURS, 1 AUGUST 2015
Major Obrien greeted me urgently the moment I walked back into the TOC.
“Good. You’re back, sir. We’ve got a mission tonight. Received it about half an hour ago.”
“What’s the mission?”
“High-value target near Haditha. The flight crews are in the planning cell looking at imagery with the ground element now. Package looks like three Black Hawks and two Chinooks. Air mission brief is at nineteen-thirty hours.”
I cursed our luck. After a couple of days with almost no operations we get hit with this, a mission that would take both Chinooks.
“Who’s the target?”
“Abdul-Ahad,” Obrien said with a smile. Abdul-Ahad had been on our HVT list for a long time. He was one of Baghdadi’s main lieutenants; snagging him would be a big win. I followed Major Obrien to the large map on the other side of the tactical operations center.
“Intel puts Abdul-Ahad in this house north of Haditha tonight. The landing zones are small, so it will be a Black Hawk mission with Chinooks in support. You can see that the distance to the LZs is almost two hundred and fifty kilometers. The ground commander wants to maximize his shooters on the objective so the Black Hawks will carry only just enough fuel to make the insertion and get back to the forward refueling point. The first Chinook will be configured as a fat cow, and the second will be an on-call casualty-evacuation bird.”
A “fat cow” was a Chinook helicopter stuffed full of internal fuel tanks and used as a flying gas station. It could serve up thousands of gallons of jet fuel wherever it landed. A cas-evac bird was basically an empty Chinook with a medic that could stabilize any wounded as it sprinted with them to the hospital in Baghdad, should the need arise.
Other than the terrible timing, it was a straightforward mission. It was a mission profile we had executed thousands of times over the past few years. Ordinarily I would’ve have been fired up for this one, but now I was too concerned about the Guru. I was scared for him. The major could see the conflict on my face.
“You okay, sir?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. It will be good to get the bastard. I’m going to head over to the planning cell.”
“Roger that, sir. You should. They need you to make the final crew assignments.”
I grabbed my flight-planning bag and headed for the door.
“Colonel Avery.”
“What is it, Obrien?”
“Just so you know. When the mission came down, the admiral got pretty irritated that you weren’t here. I told him I was covering the desk for you, but … well, you know how he can get.”
“Thanks.” Just what I need, I thought.
My mind raced as I strode toward the planning cell. Zack had given me a burner phone for coordination; I called him as I walked.
“Go ahead,” Zack said when he picked up.
“We’ve got a problem. A mission just came down. It’s an HVT hit.”
“Damnit. What does that mean for us?”
“Not sure yet. I’m walking to the planning cell now, but I think it will tie up both Chinooks.”
Zack was silent. I could picture his eyes narrowing as he thought the situation through.
“Sam, it has to be tonight, or we’ll lose him. The Guru will be dead.”
“I hear you. I’ll call you when I know more.”
“It has to be tonight, Sam.”
“I know. Give me time to solve the problem.”
FOURTEEN
DECEMBER 1988
The first semester of yearling year passed slowly for E4, particularly for Bill.
As a punishment, the area is effective. Cadets dread it and work hard to ensure that they don’t end up on it. Punishment tours on the area are awarded in multiples of hours and accompanied by the revocation of all privileges until the tours are walked off. Since punishment tours are served primarily on the weekends, and because of the way the process is structured, it’s not possible to walk off more than eight hours a week. So a twenty-hour slug usually meant a monthlong sentence. It is a powerful behavior-modification tool.
As a way to spend one’s time, it is a mind-numbing, Sisyphean torture. It begins with a thorough inspection, inspiring the cadet maxim that “area breeds area.” Then cadets walk back and forth under arms from one end of the Central Area to the other. For hours. In the summer, the heat is oppressive. Cadets march in their gray, woolen, full dress uniforms on a black asphalt surface as sweat soaks through their clothes and white gloves and pools in their shoes. In the winter, it’s cold. The wind hurtles down the ice-covered Hudson, scrapes over the frozen Plain, and then shrieks as it squeezes and accelerates through the sally ports of Eisenhower Barracks into Central Area. Strangely, uniforms that are ovens in the summer are frigid wind sieves in the winter.
The area is another of the powerful, unintended mental workshops in which cadets master the art of escape. Back and forth. Back and forth. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left. Stop. Order arms. About-face. Right shoulder arms. Left, right, left, right, left. The body suffers. The mind escapes. The hours pass. The punishment is served. Same as it ever was.
I had already logged thirty hours on the area at that point—not a lot relative to some, but enough for me. Turtle had racked up twice my tally and was well over halfway to becoming a century man.
I was not on the area with Bill, but the semester was tough. As a yearling, I had only a few more privileges than a plebe, amounting to just one forty-eight-hour pass for the entire semester. It was plebe year without pinging. Worse, it was plebe year without mail.
When a cadet first starts his journey at West Point, he is on everyone’s mind back home. There is an open seat at the family dinner table, a vacancy on the buddies’ road trip, an absent sweetheart, and everyone knows that plebe year is a trial. They write letters regularly and send care packages.
There is no better feeling than going to the cadet mailroom under the mess hall, turning the key in your assigned metal mailbox, and finding a handful of letters. This is not just for plebes. Even firsties cry for joy at the sight. But after plebe year, the novelty of one’s absence wears off. The concern expires. The letters cease.
For yearlings, however, the taunting daily trip to the mailroom is not only a sign that the full weight of West Point’s social isolation has descended; it also reminds them that romantic relationships are hopeless.
Zack and I fought hard against the dynamic but failed. When a girl I’d met over the summer break dumped me, I was despondent. I made the mistake of seeking comfort from Creighton.
“Tell me, Sam, what does her father do for a living?”
“He’s some kind of banker something, I think.”
“And his father?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I’m just trying to figure out why you expected her to understand you at all. From what you’ve told me, I’d say her family has not known a day of geopolitical fear in a couple of generations. I bet they don’t personally know anyone in the military.”
I was irritated and just stared back at him as he continued.
“Combine that pervasive ignorance of the military with the accelerating deterioration of civilian colleges into vacations from responsibility rather than a course of preparation for life, and it’s ridiculous of you to expect to have a ‘relationship’ with any of them.”
“Are you done yet?”
“You are like a brother to me, Sam, so I say this with love: get used to it. The public, for the most part, does not care. Why should any of your parade of pretty civilian girlfriends be any different? The public will never really care unless we go back to the draft. They think they do, but they don’t really, and we will never, ever go back to the draft.”
“Creighton, only you would try to comfort a friend through a breakup with a discussion of the draft,” I said, shaking my head. “Besides, they’ll care next time there is a war.”
“You are not hearing me. They will care even less when we are at war. The next conflicts will last for decades, for generations, because there is no real immediate cost for the citizens of this country anymore. We have the population and resources to sustain limited conflicts indefinitely. We could fight forever, and the public won’t care. That’s the funny thing. The scales will never fall from their eyes. They are never going to suddenly stop funding or supporting us. They always will. They will be fine with us fighting and dying forever.”
“You can’t fight forever in the time of nukes.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We won’t get nuked by another country. A terrorist maybe, but not another country.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Nor do I care. That is what the air force trains for. Even if that did happen, they would just throw more resources at us.”
“So what you are saying makes you happy.”
“Yes. Other than the pain it causes you, my friend, it does. I understand where I fit in all this. You will continue to get hurt and feel depressed until you do the same. Just accept it. You are studying to be an army officer and are stuck here for another two years. The vast majority of your civilian contemporaries don’t understand and don’t care, and you should not expect them to. Once you graduate and go to flight school, you will be able to chase women to your heart’s content. So, for now, you need to get over it.”
“I can’t decide if revulsion at you has simply displaced my loneliness and hurt feelings or if I actually feel better.”
“Regardless, I’m glad to have been some help.”
As the semester wore on, the isolation and reindeer games of the cadet area weighed on me. What made my persistent yearling gloom nearly intolerable, however, was the constant unfavorable comparison I made to Bill in my mind. He was a rock. After a week of sharp irritability, he snapped vigorously back into frame. He was on the area every weekend and could leave his room for only an hour each day to exercise, but I never saw him down. I was amazed and shamed all at once.
Everyone tried to keep him buoyant in the beginning. Zack, Turtle, Creighton, and I would be sure to all check on him at different times, stopping by to hang out or to study for a class. After a few weeks, however, it became apparent that he didn’t need special help. That he had emerged. Bill was one of those blessed people who could say, “It is what it is” and really mean it. When his mind threw the mental switch of acceptance, it was done. He resisted only those things that he determined both could and needed to be resisted. He did not recycle decisions or second-guess beliefs. Ever. He was not crushed by the massive slug, plus room restriction. It was merely an obstacle. It was a task, like shining shoes, and it would pass.
One of the few things I derived pleasure from was working with my plebes. It felt good to find that I had a knack for individual leadership. Also, despite my mood and my yearling cynicism, I was glad to be engaged in something timeless. I felt a connection to the long gray line. I made sure to teach my plebes not only by the official book but also in the spirit of E4. I took them on numerous spirit missions, with Zack often tagging along. Several times I even asked the Guru to participate. He loved it, of course, and played the devious visiting professor well. I pushed them hard and burnished them under constant pressure. By the end of the semester, they were the best of their class—Mike Morris, in particular. He had become a better cadet than I would ever be.
* * *
The week after the Army-Navy game passed quickly. It was the final week of class. The weather was cold and gray, and exams loomed over the Corps. On Thursday, Colonel Krieger invited me up for a pre-exams dinner, and I brought Bill along. Now that he was off room restriction, we were all trying to integrate him back into our activities.
It was nice to relax at the colonel’s. Bill and I tried to sneak into his study to get a closer look at his photos and the mounted tail rotor blade, but he again busted us. “Halt!” he said when he spied us in the hallway. “No cadets allowed in there.” We went back to eating.
The next day I was the midnight cowboy.
The CQ, or cadet in charge of quarters, is always a yearling. In addition to mail runs, weapons checks, and inspections, the CQ does the final taps accountability check at midnight and renders the report to the brigade’s Central Guard Room. It is a twenty-four-hour duty, and the CQ has to man the desk and phone all night—thus the cadet nickname “midnight cowboy.”
The daytime and evening duty hours were usually not so bad. There was a lot of interaction with company mates and other folks as one went about their duties. It was the graveyard shift that dragged. Despite housing more than four thousand young men and women in their late teens and early twenties, the cadet barracks were quiet and boring after taps. The Corps, forever exhausted, slept soundly. The fact that I was pulling duty on Friday meant that I’d have an easy recovery day on Saturday. It could be worse.
The day passed easily. With less than a week until exams, cadets were quiet and focused. Usually a Friday night CQ duty involved dealing with a couple of drunk firsties staggering back to the company area just before taps and not wanting to hear any shit from a “damn yuk.” Tonight there was none of that. Even the first classmen were buckled in and studying.
Around 1145, I stood up to stretch my legs and prepared for the final taps accountability check. I grabbed the clipboard with the inspection checklists and hit the latrine. It was a little early, but it seemed like most everyone was already in their rooms, so I started my check. The first couple of rooms I hit were good, and then I got to Karl and Bill’s room. Empty.
I glanced at my watch: 1155.
Five minutes. I quickly looked up and down the hallway. No one. I remembered something about another Math Team trip for Karl and checked his card. It was marked “Off post for authorized absence.” Bill’s card was unmarked, of course. A knot formed in my stomach.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered as I continued to check off the rest of the company rooms. I remembered that Bill had a girl visiting him from somewhere this weekend. Earlier in the week he’d told Zack and me how eager he was for the weekend to get here. I had an idea why. I hoped he wasn’t doing anything stupid.
As I finished the rounds and approached Bill’s room, I was certain he had come back while I had been gone. I was relieved. I opened the door to the room and stepped inside.
No one. Shit.
A wave of panic swept over me. I was going to have to hammer Bill. He wasn’t going to make it. I would have to render a report that would earn him at least twenty-five hours on the area, maybe worse. It would be at least a second-class board following quickly on the heels of his big slug from the summer. He would be kicked out.
I didn’t want to do it. I was torn. Why the hell did I have to be the guy who was on CQ for this? And what the hell was Bill thinking? How stupid can you be? I started to get angry. Realizing that I was pacing around his room, I left and headed for the company orderly room.
I looked at my watch again. It was 0008 hours. After taps, he still wasn’t there. I suddenly remembered a brief conversation Bill and I had had on the way back from the colonel’s.
“So, you got the midnight cowboy on Friday, huh?”
“Yeah. Sucks.”
He had consoled me for a few minutes and then laughed about Karl being gone this weekend for the Math Team trip. The knot in my stomach grew larger. Had he planned this? If so, what had he thought I would do?
I got to the orderly room and sat down at the desk, then looked at the accountability report I had yet to fill it out. The clock on the wall said 0009. At that moment every company across the Corps was calling in their reports. I had a couple of minutes but not more than that. I stood up and walked back toward Bill’s room, even though I knew he still wasn’t there.