Gray Girl (11 page)

12

Q: Where do plebes rank?

A:
Sir, the Superintendent’s dog, the Commandant’s cat, the waiters in the Mess
Hall, the Hell Cats, the Generals in the Air Force, and all the Admirals in the
whole damned Navy.
 

Heritage, Bugle Notes, 81, p.243

They marched back from Lake Frederick
to the gray walls of West Point where the ratio of upperclassmen to new cadets
tripled.
 
With yearlings and cows
back from their summer training, plebes never stopped saluting and shouting,
“Good morning, Sir,” “Good afternoon, Ma’am” or “Good evening, Sir” while
pinging and squaring off, from revile to taps.
 
The new cadets also received their first
promotion—to “cadets.”
 
They
were still plebes, so it was like going from “private” to “private first
class.”
 
They were still the lowest
things around.
  

Another transition from Beast to the
academic year required moving to new companies.
 
Perhaps because the military lifestyle is
one of constant transience, West Point didn’t allow anyone to stay in one place
very long.
 
Plebes were scattered
from the ten Beast companies to the four regiments—called First, Second,
Third and Fourth Regiments respectively.
 
Each regiment had nine companies—Company A through Company I.
 
Jan was assigned to H-Company, Third
Regiment, the
H-3 Hamsters.
 

Angel Trane introduced herself to
Jan.
 
The petite, soft-spoken, black
girl from Queens, New York seemed shy and introverted, not anything like Leslie
Wright.
 
And she looks like she might fall over on a breezy day.
 

“I’m Jan
Wishart
,”
her voice cracked.
 
Saying and
hearing her own first name for the first time in seven weeks choked her
up.
 
She never liked her first
name.
 
It was plain and boring.
 
‘Jan’ wasn’t even short for Janice or
Janet or
Janiqua
.
 
Still, she almost cried when she said it
aloud to Angel.
 

With very little talking, the new
roommates began to put their room in order for inspection.
 
They were fast at work when they were
interrupted by the telltale knock of an upperclassman—two loud thumps—like
he was trying to knock the door down.
 

“ENTER, SIR!” the roommates yelled
simultaneously while popping to attention.
 
The door slammed open.
 
There
stood a familiar
firstie
—the cream of the crop,
the best of the best, a demi-god in their eyes, a perfect specimen—his
gig line absolutely straight, dress-off tight, shoes sparkling, saber
gorgeously at the hip, and white gloves in hand.
 

Stunning
piece of work.
 

“So, I take it you are Trane?”
 
Cadet Trane nodded to Angel.

“I am, Sir,” she replied.

“Oh.”

Silence.
 

“Well, my name is also Trane,” he
said, “and I thought we might be related.”
 

Pause.
 

Jan bit her lip trying not to
laugh.
 

“Guess not, huh?”
 
Trane was probably of Irish or English
descent but certainly not African.
 

“No, Sir,” squeaked Angel.
 

Cadet Trane started laughing.
 
The two women looked at each other and
tried not to laugh, but they started chuckling anyway.
 
They quickly recovered their composure,
unsure how this
firstie
would react to their lapse in
decorum.
 
Cadet Trane kept
laughing.
 
So they smiled with
him.
  

Leslie Wright was sent to I-3 while
Kristi McCarron and Debra
Plowden
became roommates in
H-3.
 
Having Kristi in the same company
almost made up for the presence of someone Jan hoped would NOT be in her new company—
Dogety
.
 
At least Jackson is far, far away from me in
B-1!

Drew went to G-3, but because G and H
companies shared a floor, he ended up in the room next to Jan’s.
 
They became even better friends, winking
to each other when passing and stopping in each other’s rooms for supplies,
questions or advice.
  
If
roommates weren’t available, they gave each other dress-offs and checked gig
lines.
 
They often studied together
in Jan's room because Drew’s roommates didn’t like having females in their
room.
 
The door had to remain open
whenever the opposite sex was present.
 
An open door was also an open invitation for upperclassmen to harass
them from the hallway which most plebes wanted to avoid whenever possible.
 
Jan and Angel didn’t mind that
though.
 
They figured Drew’s
presence trumped any threat of hazing.

Jan arrived at her first class two
days later and sat at a vacant desk in the middle of the classroom—not
too far, not too close.
 
She looked
around the room.
 
No other women.

“CLASS ATTENTION!”
  
The cadets popped out of their
chairs as the professor entered the room.
  
The Army Captain walked to the
“P’s” desk and dropped his three-ring binder and books.
 
Then he went through the room,
inspecting shoes, haircuts, gig lines, dress-offs and any other aspects of the
cadets' appearances.
 

“Cadet Jamison, did you shave this
morning?”
 
Captain
McGinn
asked.

“Yes, Sir,” Jamison said.

“Well, it looks like you missed a few
spots.
 
Make sure you come to my
class with a clean-shaven face next time.”

“Yes, Sir.”
 

The professor found some fault with
each one of them.
 
“Your shoes
haven’t been shined, Mr.
Trawick
.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“They better be sparkling for the
next class.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Captain
McGinn
came to Jan’s desk and walked completely around her.
 
When he faced her again he asked, “Miss
Wishart
, when’s the last time you had a haircut?”

“Just yesterday, Sir.”

“Well, they didn’t take enough
off.
 
Your hair is below the bottom
edge of the collar of your shirt.”

Jan didn’t comment because he hadn’t
asked her a question.
 
Captain
McGinn
moved his eyes down her body until he reached her
shoes.
  
After a longer than
normal pause, he said, “Miss
Wishart
, don't expect
special treatment from me.
 
I don't
play favorites with female cadets like some of my colleagues do.”

She decided she didn’t need to
respond to that either.
 
But then he
asked, “Do I make myself clear, Miss
Wishart
?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Captain
McGinn
finished examining his new students and said, “Take seats!”
 
The cadets sat down behind their
desks which
had been arranged in rows and columns.
 
The professor walked to his desk and
picked up the binder.
 
“Now,
everyone stand back up,” he said.
 
“When I call your name, I want you to pick up your desk and move it to
form a line starting on my right, your left.
 
Andress
!”
 
Cadet
Andress
picked up his desk and placed it down on one side of Captain
McGinn’s
desk.
 
“
Clarbonne
!
 
Ferguson!
 
Juten
!
 
Laramore
!”
 
He continued to name cadets.
  
Each one lifted his desk and
placed it in the line.
 
The desks
turned at the corner of the room, forming an open rectangle.

The entire class had been called
except for Jan.
 
She continued
standing behind her desk, now enveloped on three sides by her classmates.
 
Captain
McGinn
closed his binder, placing it back on his desk.
 
Jan was not about to move without being
told.

“Miss
Wishart
,
take your desk and move it to my left, your right,” he said.
 
She lifted her desk and placed it in the
very last spot in the three-sided rectangle.
 

Captain
McGinn
put down his binder and picked up the teacher’s edition of the history
textbook.
 
He walked to the left of
his desk and sat down on top of Jan’s desk.
 
Facing everyone else in the class, he
said, “Open your textbooks to the table of contents.”
 
Jan opened her book and laid it on her
lap because Captain
McGinn’s
ass took up her entire
desktop.
 
“I expect you to read
three to four chapters for every class,” he said.
 
“And sometimes more.
 
There will be pop quizzes whenever I
feel like it and weekly exams on the reading every Friday.”

Jan could hear Captain
McGinn
quite clearly although she could only see his
back.
 
He stood up and wrote the
homework assignment on the chalkboard,
then
he walked fully
around his desk before sitting back down on top of Jan’s desk.
 

This was just part of the game.
 
Jan learned a thing or two from Beast
and her strategy for this professor would be the same.
 
Keeping a blank facial expression, she
would not belie her thoughts.
 
Other
than the customary “yes, Sir” or “no, Sir” during the inspection, she would not
speak in class.
 
She resolved to
keep her head down and never show emotion.
 
I am a stone.

West Point required all cadets to
participate in athletics, either on a Corps (
Varisty
)
team, a Club team or an intramural team.
 
One could never just hang out, go for a walk, meditate, or—
God forbid—
take
a nap.
 
Down time was frowned upon.

Angel Trane made the rowing team as
the coxswain because she weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet.
 
Debra
Plowden
had
been recruited for the swim team.
 
That left Jan and Kristi as the only plebe women on the H-3 intramural
soccer team.
 
It was either that or
intramural lacrosse which involved a stick.
 
After the
pugil
boxing experience, Jan never wanted to touch anything resembling a stick.

Neither woman had ever played soccer
and it showed.
 
They couldn’t kick
the ball worth a damn.
 
The team
soon learned to keep the activity away from them, and they soon learned to stay
out of the way.
 
It was a good
understanding.
 

All through September and most of
October, after classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Jan and Kristi
marched to the soccer field for an intramural match which Jan renamed
“intra-murder.”
 
While everyone else
played soccer, Jan and Kristi talked.
 
She was not sure why she started calling Kristi, “Kissy,” but since
Kristi didn’t object, the name stuck.

Jan learned that Kristi's real father
died in Vietnam when she was five years old.
 
Her mother announced, “Your father is
dead,” and that's all she was told.
 
No one in the family ever mentioned his name again.
 
In high school, she finally researched
how he died.

“Helicopter crash.
 
He was the pilot.
 
Most likely shot down.
 
Never saw it coming.
 
Four other men on board.”
 
Kristi rattled off the facts like she
was reading a list of ingredients.
 

Jan could not imagine losing a parent.
 
Her family completely intact, both
parents still married, all siblings alive and accounted for.
 
She remembered the Vietnam War, of
course, and the body counts each night on the news.
 
The
Wishart
parents tried to shelter their children from the coverage, but Jan heard it
anyway.
 
Yet, she never actually
knew anyone who went to Vietnam, never mind anyone who died there.
 
Kristi seemed to have lived through the
war, while Jan just lived through the news of the war.

Every Wednesday evening at 1900 hours,
the H-3 plebes assembled in the Company dayroom.
 
The 1976 cheating scandal, still an open
wound for the Academy, resulted in weekly honor classes for plebes.
 
Using scenarios, role-playing and
hypotheticals, they dissected the Honor Code’s succinct statement:
 
“A Cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal,
nor tolerate those who do.”