Duty First (16 page)

“I think I should look like I did before, then I look in the mirror and see this stranger, with this haircut and these glasses,” Barry DeGrazio says as he runs his hands over his buzz cut. He wears the strap-on military-issue glasses that the upperclass cadets call “BCGs,” for “birth control glasses.” As in, “Those glasses are so ugly you could never get laid.”

“When we got here we didn’t know anything. There was so much expected of us and it was all new. Some of the mistakes I made just made me feel stupid.”

Friesema tells a story about trying to find a way to carry his retainer to meals. “When we wear white over gray, there aren’t any pockets,” he says. “And I’m supposed to wear this stupid retainer. So I put it in the side of my garrison cap.”

The garrison cap, also called a fore-and-aft cap, fits on top of the head like a gray envelope.

“By the time I got down to formation, it had worked itself out and was just hanging on my hat. Cadet Jett got a look at it and couldn’t believe it. I had about ten upperclassmen around me laughing at me and yelling at me at the same time.”

Friesema smiles, and his classmates laugh with him. They are all amazed at the changes they’ve gone through.

“I used to be pretty undisclipined,” Friesema says. “I liked to just sit and watch TV. In my whole senior year I bet I did one hour of homework. I never cleaned my room, either.” His surprise is not that he gave all that up, but that he used to live that way in the first place.

“If someone told me to do something, I’d work hard to get out of it,” he continues. “Now I do what I’m told and do it as well as I can.”

Pete Lisowski notices another change. “The other day I said ‘Hoo-ah’ on the phone with my mom,” he says in his slight North Carolina drawl. His squadmates laugh.

“They said they were bringing up Bojangles chicken [on the upcoming weekend visit] and I said ‘Hoo-ah!’ They live near a Marine
base and have heard this stuff. She asked if that’s like ‘U-rah,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I guess so.’ She said, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ But my biggest change is that I used to take charge of everything. It had to be my way … or everyone would know that I didn’t agree. Now I’m more of a team player.”

“I appreciate the small things,” Friesema says. “I would kill to be able to walk up to a refrigerator and grab what I wanted.”

“My first phone call, I was all choked up,” DeGrazio adds. Then, not wanting to explore that area too deeply, “The big change for me is that I used to be a musician. I play bass, tuba, any kind of guitar. Now I’m someone with no music, except cadence calls, I guess.”

“I miss music, too,” Friesema says. The new cadets are not allowed radios or CD players. To the list of depravations, Friesema adds the great American icon of independence.

“I miss driving. If you got bored you could just hop in a car and go to the mall, to a friend’s house, to the gym.” Except for leave periods, that privilege is far away. Cadets are not allowed to have cars until near the end of junior year.

Daveltshin, who is four years older than his squadmates and twelve thousand miles from home, says simply, “I miss my girlfriend.”

The sun is gone, though it is still light enough to see figures moving through the tightly packed rows of tents. The bagpiper plays somewhere nearby, and the air is wet with threatened rain. Many of the new cadets are expecting their first visitors over the coming weekend. Friesema’s father, two grandfathers, and two younger brothers are coming from Wisconsin. Lisowski’s family is driving up from North Carolina, with the promised bucket of Bojangles chicken.

The new cadets consider what their parents will see different in them. They are quiet for a few moments, and in the darkness it’s hard to see if they’re considering their answers or just daydreaming about home.

“I think we’re all a lot more mature,” Friesema says. “I’ve grown up more in the last six weeks than in the first eighteen years of my life. … I’m amazed at the total authority the upper class have. I
mean, your parents had a lot of control, but at least you had an opinion. Not here.”

“I didn’t have any problem with that,” Daveltshin says. “This is the only way to train soldiers. It develops immediate discipline so you can handle pressure. It doesn’t offend me that cadre is younger than me; they know more than I do.”

Shortly after dawn, Alpha Company pulls into a rest stop. Their morning started at 0330; they are already sweat-soaked, though the weather is mercifully cool for a Hudson Valley August. The march is orchestrated to the tiniest detail, with down-to-the-minute timetables for rest halts, road-crossings, checkpoints. The purpose is to keep the new cadet companies from piling up on one another, especially as they cross the busy roads that run along the valley floor.

Most of the sixteen-plus miles are done on dirt roads that wind through the woods. It is humid under the trees, and the new cadets walk in silence, one file on each side of the trail. General Reimer, the Army Chief of Staff, moves up in the space between the files, greeting the new cadets he passes. He is tall, six four or so, and trim, and his long legs eat up the distance. He is working his way from the rear of the column, so most of the new cadets don’t see him coming, and although they are polite and respectful, the ones who do speak to him are hardly in awe.

The trail winds down the eastern side of a ridge, the sun poking through the trees; it’s less than half a mile to Round Pond and a rest stop. Jacque Messel, rucksack square on her shoulders, weapon at sling-arms, moves along at a good clip, keeping pace with her squad. Suddenly her breathing becomes labored. She slows, stumbles a bit, then steps off to the side and bends over to put her hands on her knees. Her breath comes in short, loud gasps. Her squad calls some encouragement to her and a cadre member points to the top of the next hill—so close—but no one slows down. When the company medic catches up with her, he loads her on a vehicle to drive the few hundred yards to the rest stop. She is suddenly faced with the prospect that she won’t get credit for completing the whole march,
and she’ll wind up with an “incomplete.” As the medic walks her to the vehicle, she wears a look somewhere between disgust and fear.

Round Pond is one of the recreation areas that dot the reservation at West Point. A ring of campsites encircles the lake, and there is a stone- and wood-building that’s used for parties. Strong morning light comes in at a low angle. A half dozen new cadets who are injured and can’t make the march hand out apples, bagels, and Gatorade as the squads come in off the hillside trail. Alpha Company moves in as the company ahead prepares to move out. There is a great deal of shouting as the arriving new cadets are shuffled into the shade and the departing platoons are moved onto the road.

“You got ten minutes to rest,” Alpha Company’s first sergeant shouts. “Make sure you fill up your canteens and use the latrine.”

Shannon Stein’s squad sits in a tight clump. There is plenty of room, but no one has told them to spread out. Some of them pull their boots off; they wear black dress socks beneath their green GI socks to reduce the friction. The cadre shout instructions about filling canteens and checking for blisters, but none of the squad leaders circulate and check that their instructions are carried out.

DeGrazio isn’t worried about his feet; he’s worried about his shirt, which has a small hole in the back, right between his shoulder blades. He does not want to go into his new company with a hole in his uniform. He has packed an extra shirt inside his rucksack and wonders if he’ll have time to change at the last rest stop.

Daveltshin shuffles as he walks. He has a painful heat rash between his legs, and every step rubs his already raw skin. Someone points out that GI footpowder might help; a cadre member from another platoon finds some for him. Messel rejoins the squad before they finish their Gatorade. She has missed only three hundred meters of the march and wants to go at it again. Stein calls to her from where she’s sitting. “Are you marching?”

Messel isn’t sure how to answer; no one has told her what to do either way. Maybe Stein is asking for her opinion. “I guess so, ma’am,” she says.

“Get up at the front of the squad when we start out, then,” Stein says. “DeGrazio, push her if you have to.”

Messel has pulled her weight all summer, so she is not ostracized; but she has been talking about resigning since the first detail, so she is not completely a part of the group. In these last hours of Beast, she is drifting away, like a relation who hasn’t called in a while.

As they get closer to West Point, yesterday’s exuberant new cadets become quieter. The cadre members, who are about to be relieved of their responsibilities, are happier with each passing mile. Shannon Stein is a little apprehensive about the start of soccer practice. She faces two hours of running that very afternoon. But she is looking forward to the academic year because she gets to “sleep in until 5:45.”

“Saddle up!”

The command brings some groans, and a cadre member reminds them of one of Greg Stitt’s favorite expressions: “Pain is just weakness leaving the body!”

The platoons form up on the unpaved road, then wind uphill, one file on each side, ten meters between new cadets. Friesema marches holding his rifle in one hand and a sweaty, tightly folded piece of paper in the other. “I’m memorizing ‘The Days,’” he says.

“The Days” is a bit of plebe trivia the new cadets are responsible for, a list of a dozen or so events for the coming year and the number of days remaining until each. Each sentence must be recited exactly as it is spelled out in the plebe knowledge booklet. No contractions, no word substitutions, no missteps or mispronunciations, nothing left out.

“Sir, there are fifty-seven and a butt days until Army beats the hell out of Navy in football at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia!”

Because the list is long—it includes major sporting events, Ring Weekend for the first class, Christmas leave, spring leave, Graduation Week—and because the numbers change every day, it is difficult to keep straight. That makes it one of the more popular pieces of plebe knowledge the upperclass cadets will demand. And Friesema knows that those upperclass cadets—all of them strangers—wait by the hundreds
back at West Point. As he has done all summer, he turns his anxiety into action, memorizing the numbers as he marches.

The new cadets have been told that the first impression they make today, their first day in the new company, will likely stay with them for the rest of plebe year. A new cadet who gets a reputation as a screwup in the first few hours after the march back from Lake Frederick is simply going to have a tougher year than one who does well. Part of the elusive “doing well” means knowing fourth class knowledge, and knowing it cold. As part of that store of knowledge and skills, the new cadets are supposed to know how to perform the intricate plebe table duties. Stein’s squad does not feel prepared for that test. Friesema isn’t going to get caught short on anything else. He looks around, notices he is the only one studying. “I guess I’m pretty nervous,” he says.

Just ahead of Friesema, Stein marches at the head of her squad, dark eyes fixed straight ahead. She is a small woman, and the frame of the rucksack extends from above her shoulders to below her waist. Her legs work like pistons as she tears at the uphill slope; she has trouble on the down slope because the rucksack, which weighs nearly half what she does, threatens to send her flying downhill. She keeps her eyes on the ground a steady three feet in front of her as she considers this leadership lab that’s about to come to an end. “You have to be confident and intelligent,” she says between deep breaths. “You have to set the example so people will want to emulate you.”
Pant, pant.
“You have to work as a team.”

Suddenly Stein is passing a new cadet who is falling behind a squad farther up the line. Her helmet is sideways on her head, and she looks as if she’s about to cry.

“Let’s go, Reece!” a cadre member shouts from somewhere ahead. But Reece is downshifting on the big hill; her squad is pulling away from her. Suddenly her platoon sergeant comes jogging back. It is Lisa Landreth, the second class who spent part of yesterday afternoon reading
Mademoiselle
outside her tent. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Landreth yells. “One more hill until the ski slope!”

Reece makes an effort, manages to keep it going. Landreth runs forward again for forty or fifty yards, the length of the platoon, to check on the lead squads. She is not much bigger than Stein, and as she runs, her helmet and rucksack bang up and down.

Two minutes later and Landreth is back, still running, still being pummeled by her equipment. She carries her rifle at port-arms, holding it diagonally across her chest. Winded, she still manages to shout encouragement. “Let’s go, Reece! Let’s go!”

Colonel Joe Adamczyk, the Brigade Tactical Officer, catches up to Stein. He is unfailingly polite and even friendly, but he has a reputation among the cadets as something of a martinet, a nit-picker who is fond of rules and regulations. He is thin, like an overworked longdistance runner. Adamczyk also served as a company tactical officer in the early 1990s. He has a lot of experience on the ground at West Point, and has also commanded an infantry battalion and served in a variety of other jobs around the world.

“When I came back here as a Tac and realized all the things we used to do wrong, especially to plebes, I was embarrassed,” he says. “All that yelling and hazing; you just can’t treat people like that. And we weren’t teaching good lessons to the upperclass cadets, either.”

When Adamczyk leaves, Stein says, “What a bunch of bullshit. He’s always yelling at cadets.”

At mid-morning the Class of 2002 starts assembling on West Point’s ski slope, just outside Washington Gate. They sit in the bright sunlight and congratulate themselves. There are only two miles to the cadet area and the end of Beast.

Barry DeGrazio pulls his clean BDU shirt from his rucksack and puts it on; the one with the hole in the back goes into the ruck. He doesn’t look relieved. Bob Friesema and a few others frantically study their plebe knowledge. They take turns reciting the “General Orders” for guards. A few cadets have brushes and shoe polish, which they use to clean their boots.