Duty First (3 page)

The Haglin family—Pete, his parents, and two sisters—traveled together from Kansas City for R-Day. At the end of the briefing at Michie Stadium, when the ninety-second warning was given, his mother and sister dissolved into tears. But Pete was completely focused on what lay ahead.

Jacque Messel showed up at Michie Stadium by herself. She and her family had gotten the crying out at home.

“My parents said that it didn’t make much sense for them to come along, that they couldn’t really spend any time with me … but I think they were trying to make it easier on me,” she says.

Messel is tall at five nine, with light brown hair and a résumé of clubs, honors, and athletics behind her. Her father is also a West Point graduate, class of 1968. On the night before R-Day, she stayed with the family of her father’s classmate, a retired colonel who works at West Point. Jacque spent the evening watching television and trying to relax in someone else’s home.

“He had to go to work early that day, so he drove me to the stadium. He stayed with me for a while, but then he left. Everyone around me was with their families.”

Messel’s father also tried to give her advice, but she wasn’t as receptive as Pete Haglin. There were no practice reporting sessions or shoe-shining clinics.

“He did tell me it was all a big mental game,” she says. “He was always big on teaching me responsibility and discipline. He’d make me get up in the morning and go running with him. This was in the summer, when all my friends were still sleeping in. And I always had jobs around the house, stuff I was responsible for.”

Unlike Pete Haglin, who is headed into Beast willingly, Messel is reluctant, her commitment to West Point is not as strong. But once the acceptance letter came, and the family started talking it up and everyone started congratulating her, she felt like she couldn’t back out.

On the morning of R-Day Jacque Messel spent an hour and a half waiting in line at Michie Stadium, plenty of time for the anxiety to sink in. And it will never quite leave her, at least during basic training.

Bob Friesema remembers sleeping most of the way as he drove, with his parents and two younger brothers, from Wisconsin. The family spent part of the weekend before R-Day hiking at Bear Mountain State Park, which is just south of West Point. On Sunday, they went to church in the Cadet Chapel.

“It’s this huge church, really impressive,” says Friesema. “And it was good to know there was a nice church I could go to.”

Church life has always been important to Friesema and his family, but the service wasn’t exactly comforting. “The chaplain asked all the incoming new cadets to stand up, and everyone was looking at us. There were lots of cadre members there; I tried not to make eye contact with any of them.”

Friesema spent his first hours of R-Day waiting in line outside the stadium.

“There were officers, admissions officers, I guess, going up and down and talking to families and candidates. They were being real nice, I guess so we’d know there were nice people in the Army.”

Then came the shock of the ninety-second warning. “Mom started weeping right away. Then my little brothers started crying. I knew I had to get out of there before I lost it, too. I gave them a quick hug and left.”

Friesema lined up quietly near the entrance to the field.

“I had my bag in my left hand,” he says later, “because that’s what everyone else was doing. We stepped out onto the field and there were these cadets walking along beside us. They started whispering under their breath, with their teeth clenched, saying things like ‘Don’t look around! Keep your head and eyes to the front! No talking!’

“And I thought, ‘If they’re doing this right out here on the field, where all the parents can still see us, I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when we’re out of sight.’”

By 11:00 in the morning the last new cadets have arrived from Michie Stadium. The large quadrangle of Central Area echoes with commands and martial music. Junior and senior cadets in white shirts and hats move about like border collies, shepherding new cadets here and there. Hundreds of new cadets are led in hurrying files back and forth to issue points in invisible basement rooms. They are issued big blue nylon bags full of supplies for their new life: underwear and socks and towels and shoe-shine equipment and boots and shoes and hats and gloves and belts and gym shorts. They are hurriedly fitted for gray trousers and white shirts. They are sent for quick haircuts and to drill stations to learn to march, to salute, to do facing movements. They are shepherded to lunch in waves; meals are measured in minutes. As the day wears on the big Alpha Company tote board (with the company motto “Aces Are Wild” across the top) fills up. The little white boxes beside the names of new cadets fill with check marks as they make their way through the stations and toward the parade. In between these stations, the new cadets check in with the cadet in the red sash.

“Sir, New Cadet Paley reports to the cadet in the red sash for the second time as ordered.”

Paley needs three tries to get this right. She stumbles over the order of the words and is told to do it again because her voice has too much inflection.

“This isn’t a conversation, this is a report,” the red sash says.

Beside Paley, another new cadet renders a passable salute; his fingers tremble beside his eye. Behind her, other classmates move their lips silently as they practice the new language. All around them cadre members in white shirts bark orders. There is no yelling, but there is nothing pleasant about the sound or the experience. It is meant to be jarring, and it is.

The instructions come rapid-fire from the upperclass cadets, who end every sentence with, “Do you understand, new cadet?” No one speaks up or claims to not understand.

A large young man, his shirt soaked in sweat, moves his body with every word he speaks, as if he’s using all the muscles of his chest to squeeze them out. “Hold still,” a white shirt says. An upperclassman stands behind another new cadet and gives instructions. No inflection, no hint of human concern, just a rapid-fire string of words that is meant to impart information, but only to someone who can process things quickly. The new cadet keeps his head and eyes locked straight ahead. A tiny, nervous smile comes to his lips.

“Did I say something funny, new cadet?” the red sash snaps.

One new cadet is so tall that when he steps up to the line, he can’t see the eyes of the cadet in the red sash, which are hidden beneath the black hat brim. He lets his eyes wander just as the red sash looks up.

“Is there a set of instructions for you on that wall behind me? Is there someone holding up a billboard to tell you what to say?”

By this time all the new cadets have been processed through a brief medical screening (one of many they have endured to get to this point). They have been issued a basic uniform of black socks, black gym shorts with gold letters that spell “ARMY,” a gray T-shirt with the Academy crest, a plastic ID tag on a chain (worn around the neck),
and a long paper tag with a list of in-processing stations to be checked off that day.

The new cadets don’t look down at their own cards. The upper-class cadets check the list, mark the appropriate boxes (“HAIRCUT” or “UNIFORM ISSUE 1”) and record each new cadet’s progress on a large board that sits beside this barracks entrance. These new cadets are to join Alpha Company, but none of them know that yet. It’s on the card, of course, but no one has given them permission to look down. With their paper tags dangling from white string, they look like a group of second-graders preparing for a class field trip.

“New cadet, are you wearing sunscreen?” a red sash asks in a tone that suggests there is some moral failure involved in being unprotected from the sun. The new cadet is sent to one of the green wooden tables nearby; a dozen bottles of Army-issue sunscreen and a stack of paper towels are piled there. He slops the cream on, rubbing it in with both hands on his freshly shaved head. Every few minutes the new cadets are sent to another table that holds metal canisters of cold water. During basic training the new cadets are constantly being told to drink water. Dehydration and heat injuries are preventable, and the chain of command is determined to ward off preventable injuries.

Other new cadets are sent to stand inside a rectangle taped on the pavement, where they wait in line. A thin second class—junior-cadet in white over gray strands nearby, collecting new cadets who haven’t yet been to the barber shop. For the remainder of the summer, the new cadets will be escorted or travel in a group nearly everywhere they go. There is no sight-seeing, no strolling about the campus, no taking in the historical markers, no time to slow down and think.

“I will be moving very fast,” the cadre member tells them. “You will keep up with me. You will keep your eyes on the back of the head in front of you.”

These sentences could be placed alongside the Academy’s official motto of Duty, Honor, Country. Everything here happens at the double-quick; there are always too many requirements and not enough time.

The new cadets stand in a tight file, feet spread shoulder-width apart, hands clasped in the small of the back. They do not talk, look around, or reach up to wipe sweat from their eyes. In the space of a few minutes, three different upperclass cadets ask, “Does anyone need to use the latrine?” They’ve been drinking ice-cold water by the cupful, yet no one raises a hand. It’s unclear whether the new cadets know what a latrine is.

Twenty yards from the entrance to Bradley Barracks a young woman, a junior, teaches ten new cadets the fundamentals of drill. The woman wears her hair pulled up tight onto the back of her head. Firm voice, complete control of her material—she is all business. The young woman’s mentor watches from twenty yards away. “She’s ready to pass Drill Sergeant School right now,” he says.

Sergeant First Class Tim Bingham, a combat engineer in the Army, is the tactical Non-Commissioned Officer—Tac NCO—for Alpha Company. Bingham, a stocky thirty-two-year-old, has thirteen years in the Army, including a three-year stint as a drill sergeant at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. His job is to teach the cadre—the upperclass cadets—about sergeants’ work. In the Army, noncommissioned officers such as Bingham are the doers. Everything that gets done—from teaching a soldier to shoot to making sure a combat vehicle is ready to roll—gets done because some sergeant makes sure it gets done.

Bingham delights in bringing a healthy dose of Army-issue common sense to the intellectual development of cadets.

“Joe [a typical Army private] doesn’t care if you’ve got a civil engineering degree,” Bingham says. “He wants to know if you can take care of him … on a six-month deployment.”

Looking around the crowded and noisy area with some delight, he notes how the cadre greet the new cadets. He summarizes it neatly as “Welcome to the team. This is how we do business.”

Cadet basic training is run by cadets, juniors and seniors operating under the supervision of U.S. Army officers and non-commissioned officers. Alpha Company has two officers, two NCOs, and thirty-some cadet cadre. Their R-Day mission: turn the 158 civilians
about to join Alpha Company into New Cadets—uniformed and marching in some semblance of order—in time for the Oath Ceremony scheduled for 4:00 that afternoon.

Cadet Kevin Bradley a senior, is Alpha Company’s twenty-year-old cadet commander. He got this job—a choice assignment—by demonstrating his leadership potential and earning high grades in military aptitude through his first three years. Bradley has the fit, scrubbed, and earnest look of many cadets: five nine, light brown hair cut close to his head, blue eyes. He tends to the quiet side.

“When he talks,” an officer says of him, “the other cadets listen.”

Bradley describes himself as “pretty much the standard West Point candidate,” meaning he was no stranger to leadership positions even before he came to West Point. In his case that means captain of his high school football and baseball teams, student council president, and member of the National Honor Society. While the admissions office has no checklist of minimum achievements for a candidate, the academy does look for young men and women with “demonstrated leadership potential.” Bradley was a good candidate for success on the day he walked in. In his three years at West Point he has worked his way up through positions of increasing responsibility, supervising anywhere from one to a handful of cadets. This summer is his biggest challenge.

Bradley will work most closely with Major Rob Olson, Alpha Company’s Tactical Officer, or simply, “the Tac.” Olson, West Point ‘87, has already spent ten years in the Army as an artillery officer. He is tall, loose-limbed, and talkative, given to jokes, Army aphorisms and the occasional profanity. He has an aw-shucks way of talking, as if what he’s saying has just occurred to him and it might not be that important, but, gosh, since we’re standing here …

Olson and Bradley spend much of the day watching. Their work, the preparation before R-Day gives way to NCO work, which will be handled mostly by juniors. As he stands with the taller Olson, Bradley is learning an important lesson: how to stay out of his subordinates’ way and let them do their jobs.