Duty First (8 page)

Pete Haglin is buzzing with excitement over the day’s training and already looking forward to mountaineering the next day. The anticipated highlights: a competition to see which squad gets the best time building a one-rope bridge, and a rappel down a seventy-five-foot cliff. Haglin talks happily around bites of food, but his enthusiasm is not infectious.

Jacque Messel, the only woman in the squad, sits next to him, cross-legged, the muzzle of her rifle resting on one knee, a loaded paper plate on the other. She doesn’t look up as Haglin continues his patter, until the cadre on the serving line start yelling at the new cadets to hurry up and finish eating. Messel and the rest of her classmates
have spent most of the last hour standing in some line or other: waiting to move down off the hill, waiting at the bottom of the hill while the cadre figured out which platoons would eat first, waiting in line to wash her hands, waiting in line for food. As soon as she got her food someone was yelling at her to hurry up and eat. There is plenty to eat, she says, and almost no time to eat it.

Haglin finds out that Messel’s father, like his, is a West Point graduate.

“My dad was FA [Field Artillery]”, Haglin reports. “When I was born he put away all the gold stuff [uniform insignia] for me so that I can have it when I’m commissioned.”

Messel, unimpressed, responds by pushing a lock of hair behind her ear.

“I used his cadet saber to cut the cake at my high school graduation party,” Haglin says happily between bites.

“My dad saved his saber for me, too,” Messel says without enthusiasm. She rolls up her paper plate, which has plenty of food still on it, picks up her rifle and stands.

“This place is not for me,” she says.

As they finish eating, the new cadets are herded up a small grassy hill above the clearing where they ate. The entrance to the mountaineering site, where they will train the next day, is nearby.

The squad leaders and platoon sergeants move their charges into a large rectangular formation on the hillside. Their challenge is to get the entire company to set up neat rows and files of pup tents on the grass. Thirteen hours into their day, the cadre are about to be tested.

The new cadets drop their rucksacks on the ground. Many of them also ground their weapons, helmets, canteens, and ammo pouches. Their camouflage shirts are sweat-stained, but they are relaxed and talkative, and soon the occasion turns social.

“Why can’t we have a camp fire?” one of the new cadets asks a classmate.

“Because the enemy will see where you are.”

Each person carries a “shelter half—half a tent. Team up with a buddy, button the two halves together, snap together the tent poles,
run the guy lines, pound in a few stakes, and you have a neat tent with a triangular cross section.

But as they unroll the tents, many new cadets look at the equipment as if seeing it for the first time. Others are not all that interested in getting things set up. Not all of the second class squad leaders, for that matter, seem engaged with the task. There are few instructions from the company leadership. Many of the cadre do not realize just how much guidance the new cadets need; others are just ready for a break, too. They sit on the grass and watch the dusk roll in.

Some of the squad leaders jump to the task. Grady Jett is one of those. He shows his new cadets how to lay out the tent, how to space the rows and line up the tent stakes so that everything will be neat and orderly. Other cadre members use the time to visit friends in other platoons. Another squad leader, visible in the failing light because of her startling blonde hair, is working on her tent when a male cadet appears and—though she doesn’t ask him to—begins to help. His squad of new cadets is not close by.

Many of the cadre members have removed their helmets, substituting the more comfortable camouflage soft cap. The new cadets take their cues from the cadre and begin adjusting their uniforms for comfort.

Another squad leader stands at the end of the row of tents and watches her two prior-service new cadets show their classmates how to set up a tent. Other new cadets from her squad stand and walk by on their way to the latrine at the bottom of the hill. One is wearing a helmet, the other is not; the one with the helmet has his weapon, the other new cadet does not. They pass just a few feet in front of her as they walk happily down the hill, chatting amiably in the dusk, like kids at summer camp.

This is a hazard of using trainers who are themselves just barely removed from basic training. If this had been Army basic training, the cadre would have been a drill sergeant with ten or more years in the service. If this had been army basic, the trainees would have learned a pointed lesson about never, never,
never
leaving your weapon behind.

Darkness is falling, bleeding the color from the scene; soon everything is gray going to black. Olson and Turner, the Tacs, sit on a low concrete wall, a remnant of some long-gone storage shed. Olson calls Cadet Josh Gilliam, a junior and the harried First Sergeant of Alpha Company. “What’s your most precious resource right now?” Olson asks in his patient way.

Gilliam pauses before answering. He is in a complete uniform, rifle slung over his shoulder, helmet on, chin-strap buttoned. This is as much because he hasn’t stopped moving as because he wants to set an example. “Daylight,” he answers.

“Good. And what’s your most important mission right now?”

Beside Gilliam about half the company is gathered in clusters on the slope. There are lots of people, including cadre members, standing around doing nothing more than enjoying a break. The other half of the company is still at the bottom of the hill, finishing supper.

“My most important mission is to get everyone fed,” Gilliam says.

“OK,” Olson answers. He doesn’t indicate whether or not he agrees.

“You’ve got to prioritize, allocate resources, backwards-plan,” Olson says, ticking off on his fingers. He does not give Gilliam any more specific instructions than that; it’s up to Gilliam to figure out what to do. This is a learning environment, not a combat situation.

“We’re not going to Bosnia tomorrow,” Olson says.

Olson’s plan: It is more important for Gilliam and his cadet NCOs to learn their business than it is for the new cadets to have a perfectly laid-out bivouac. There are some things, however, that are not negotiable. Anyone involved in leader development must know where to draw that line. All the new cadets must eat, for one thing. And the cadre must know where every new cadet and all the company’s equipment is. The most sensitive items are the weapons.

Ten minutes go by, and not much changes in the scene, nothing more gets done. Turner sighs, looks up at the sky; it is dark enough now so that facial features are beginning to disappear. Turner gets up and finds Gilliam, who is still running around. Turner points out that, in a very short while, rucksacks and tent poles and weapons will
become invisible in the darkness, blending into the background of tall grass. Nothing will derail a training exercise faster than a lost weapon. Like safety issues, weapons accountability is a showstopper; a lost weapon can end the career of the commander or NCO who didn’t take proper precautions.

This is an area in which the officers will make pointed suggestions, will give direct orders.

“Why don’t you set up your own tent?” Turner says. “That way the platoon sergeants know where to find you. Tell them you want a report on weapons accountability; have them come to you.”

“I’m not comfortable asking the platoon sergeants to come to me,” Gilliam says.

This is another way West Point is not like the Army, another challenge to the Commandant’s plan to have cadets act in the capacity of NCOs and officers. In the Army, the First Sergeant would be senior to the platoon sergeants and would not hesitate to have them jump for such an important issue. More than that, the platoon sergeants would be experienced enough to know that the first sergeant carried heavy responsibilities; they would do everything they could to help. But Gilliam and the platoon sergeants and squad leaders, all the cadet NCOs, are classmates, all of them second class cadets. Olson is fond of saying that leading peers is one of the toughest leadership challenges. And so it is. Gilliam’s feet are being held to the fire, with this captain breathing down his neck, with darkness coming on, with new cadets and some cadre members wandering around the bivouac, some with weapons, some without.

Turner says later that he came closest to losing his temper at that moment, when Gilliam started balancing his own “comfort” with something as important as weapons accountability. But he didn’t. Instead, he reminded Gilliam about the chain of command, about who works for whom and what the priorities are.

“If you’re not sure of the technique to use, ask Sergeant Bingham or Sergeant Mercier,” Turner says, naming the two regular Army NCOs who are on board to train the cadet sergeants.

“But get accountability,” he adds firmly.

In a few minutes, Gilliam has his report: All the new cadets and all the weapons are accounted for. Olson and Turner, whose reputations and careers were most at risk as darkness fell and the weapons remained uncounted, had been remarkably patient as they let Gilliam figure out how to do his job.

At the bottom of the hill, Master Sergeant Don MacLean, the senior Regular Army NCO in cadet basic training, watches as the last cadets pack up the chow line. MacLean, who is put together like one of the Abrams tanks he has commanded, is concerned that CBT isn’t difficult enough, that the cadre are too close to being new cadets themselves. The cadre can get too buddy-buddy in the interest of being an “inspirational leader.”

“Cadets aren’t used to thinking in terms of ‘I outrank this person,’ and so can’t keep that distance,” MacLean says.

This is not peculiar to West Point. Many soldiers experience this same conflict when they first pin on sergeant’s stripes.
Yesterday I was one of the boys; today I’m in charge.

A few days earlier MacLean came upon a cadet squad leader sitting on the floor with his new cadets, chatting as they shined shoes together. “I pulled him aside and said, ‘They don’t need your war stories right now. Tomorrow you’re going to have to inspect, and if those shoes are screwed up—you’re not going to be able to say anything about it.’”

A new cadet comes out of the nearby latrine, just visible in the fading light; he is not carrying his weapon. MacLean takes hold of the new cadet’s suspender.

“Get your weapon and don’t ever leave it behind again. Understand?”

The new cadet sputters his understanding. This is an epiphany. No yelling, no threats, no histrionics, just a big man stepping out of the darkness with a fixed idea that a soldier needs to keep his weapon at arm’s reach.

Josh Gilliam’s lecture from the Tac NCOs about weapons
accountability probably sounded a lot like what MacLean said to the new cadet he encountered. The Regular Army officers and NCOs assigned to Alpha Company know the score; the challenge is that the experienced leaders have to give the inexperienced leaders time to catch on. They have to say it, let it sink in, reinforce it when necessary, and stay out of the way.

Like a lot of Army training, the next day’s mountaineering begins with a demonstration of how these skills might be used in combat.

The new cadets sit on huge boulders near the bottom of a sheer rock face, turning the open space into an amphitheater. Four soldiers—men from the 10th Mountain Division, a regular-Army unit that has been sent to help with this summer’s training—sit on the rocks directly beneath the cliff. They wear their BDU shirts inside out and keep a sloppy watch on what’s going on in front of them, thus playing the role of enemy soldiers who believe their rear is protected by the cliff.

The lieutenant in charge of the training site climbs high on a rock above the new cadets.

“To an untrained soldier a rock face such as the one you see before you would be an obstacle.”

Four GIs appear at the top of the cliff, behind and above the enemy. Suspended from climbing ropes, they lower themselves headfirst over the edge of the cliff. They hold their weapons in one free hand. When they are just above the “enemy,” they open fire; in the confined space made by the cliff and the boulders, the blanks sound like explosions. Two of the guards “die” outright; the other two return fire. One of the attackers is hit. A few new cadets jump as he falls a foot or two, then stops and dangles head-down from the climbing rope, held only by gravity and by a loop of nylon line through the metal D-ring at his waist. After dispatching the remaining defenders, his buddies climb back up, unhook the wounded man, tie him to the back of one of the others, then rappel to the bottom. The young men scuttle about the rock face as easily as if it were flat ground.

On the deck, one soldier checks the enemy casualties, removing their weapons; another is on the radio, reporting the friendly casualty, the enemy dead, the successful completion of the mission.

“Hoo-ah!” the new cadets yell at the end of the little drama.

Before Alpha Company gets out on the high cliff, there are more basic skills to learn: how to tie the knots that will hold them up; how to fashion a “Swiss seat,” the rope brace that wraps around the back and through the legs and from which their weight will hang.

Grady Jett’s squad marches to a corral made up of a thick nylon rope stretched around some trees to make a forty-by-sixty-foot rectangle. Two cadet squad leaders demonstrate the knots; then, along with soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, they move around inside the corral, checking, correcting, coaching.

Jett knows the importance of drills; his squad has been practicing their knots for two days. They each carry an eight-foot length of rope with them, and at every opportunity Jett puts them through their paces with the unfamiliar knots. When the cadet in charge of the training site asks, “Who knows what a square knot is for?,” Jett immediately shoots up his hand. His new cadets follow instantly, proud that their squad is prepared.

Staff Sergeant Bielefeld, the NCO in charge of the training site, sits on a large rock some twenty feet above the new cadets. Bielefeld served with the army’s elite Ranger Battalions before his stint with the 10th Mountain Division.