My Share of the Task (4 page)

*   *   *

A
ll three of us were on hand for the historic mess hall rally-turned-riot of November 3, 1972, the night before the Army football team played Air Force at Michie Stadium. Pep rallies in the mess hall, in spite of the slight damage they caused, were an unofficial tradition and one of the few outlets for the cadets. But thus far that year the academy leadership had ordered the celebrations to be subdued—to the frustration of the corps.

That afternoon, however, the commandant, Brigadier General Philip Feir, had filtered a message down through the companies to all cadets:
The Commandant has determined that damage to the mess hall is of secondary importance to the morale of the corps
. The implication could not have been clearer and the effect was electric. We entered the mess hall and took our places as usual.

The mess hall, with hundred-foot ceilings, stone arches, and light filtering through stained-glass windows, normally felt like a church. Portraits of stern soldiers of yore lined the walls, peering down at cadets, who sat with their respective companies. There were eight companies seated during Beast, then thirty-six companies divided into four regiments when we joined the rest of the corps at the start of plebe year. Laid out like an asterisk, with six wings converging in the center, the mess hall was where General MacArthur, near the end of his life, bade adieu to “the corps, the corps, the corps” in his famous 1962 address to cadets. The wall at the end of the northwest wing was a massive mural from 1936, a Bayeux Tapestry–like panorama of twenty decisive battles.

After a few moments the massive wood doors swung open and an army jeep, laden with members of the pep squad yelling into cone megaphones and pumping their fists, crept slowly down the aisle between the tables. Trailing the jeep, the academy's brass band streamed through the door in double file, playing the Army fight song. The hall echoed with the sounds of horns and drums and the loud gurgling of the engine.

The jeep veered left toward my company, the B Company of 1st Regiment, which sat at the foot of the mural. As it passed us, a cadet from my table took the water pitcher, ran up to the jeep, and dumped it on one of the rabble-rousers, soaking him and igniting mayhem. By the time the jeep completed a U-turn at the end of our wing and came rumbling back down the gauntlet toward the center, a huge layer cake had been smeared across its windshield. At that point, it was all over.

Cadets threw opened milk cartons and heaps of mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, butter, handfuls of salt. I hurled cups of ice cream, pulling off the tabs and lobbing them like grenades. Across the hall, through the clouds of projectiles, cadets stacked dining tables into a multistory tower and climbed to the top. The steely marching band played on, a bit like the quartet on the deck of the
Titanic
, providing a booming soundtrack to the whole scene. When the din settled and cadets had launched their last missiles, the walls and the dark oil paintings had been streaked with food.

In the glorious mess, two things were clear. First, the corps had never felt more like a brotherhood. (The next day, we
dramatically upset Air Force.) Second, Feir, normally considered an old-guard martinet, had displayed uncommon leadership. Most would remember that on that day he understood that he led young men, not hollow gray uniforms.

*   *   *

I
f West Point was hard, I made it harder. During Beast, I recorded my first slug, slang for the academy's punishment following an infraction. In that case it was for “disapprobation towards a cadet superior”: After an upperclassman berated a fellow cadet and me, he took a shortcut through a building to cut us off as we walked away, catching us laughing at his reprimand. Depending on severity, slugs earned some combination of demerits, room confinement, or hours marching on the Area. At the end of Beast Barracks I reported to the regular cadet company I would be a part of for the next four years with the uncommon and dubious distinction of a negative disciplinary mark already on my record.

My second slug was more serious. Before spring finals, a girl I had been seeing scored Kenny and me some alcohol, and we drank it in our barracks room, a violation of regulations. What started as surreptitious sips of vodka mixed with White Rock soda evolved into two idiots playing air guitar to increasingly loud music. I'm not sure it was social drinking, but it was fun and I cherish it as a special memory of Kenny.

Of course it ended badly. The next morning, one of our tactical officers, an army captain, found me in the basement showers of our barracks. Friends later told me that I tried, unsuccessfully, to hoist myself up off of the cold tile by grabbing at the stunned officer's pants like a rope. I don't remember. Two weeks later, a commandant's board issued my punishment: forty-one demerits, sixty-six hours walking the Area, and three months of room confinement.

Punishment of cadets had been artfully crafted. In the early nineteenth century, West Point officials deemed manual labor an inappropriate punishment for a cadet: It would have been an ungentlemanly task for a future officer. But they could make him do something that was tiring, embarrassing, and, most excruciating, accomplished nothing. So cadets ever since have been awarded “Area tours,” each representing an hour—two hours on Friday afternoon, and then three on Saturday—walking in our dress gray uniforms with rifles across the Area. As my bemused father explained to me, the Area does not make you smarter, braver, or more expert; even trench digging would offer some tangible benefit. At the academy, where we hoarded free minutes, walking the yard meant wasted hours.

While I ran afoul of certain academy rules, I had respect for the tradition of honor embedded in the institution. My slugs were for infractions of West Point regulations, the same rules that governed how much rust was acceptable on a rifle (none) or how our
rooms were to be kept (immaculate). The cadet honor code was entirely different, and there was a clear, bright line dividing shenanigans from transgressions against integrity. Failing to clean your barracks sink was a violation of the regulations and earned demerits. Lying to anyone about whether you had cleaned your sink was a violation of your honor and meant expulsion.

When it was chartered in 1802, the academy adopted the unofficial code of honor that covered all levels of officer conduct in the regular Army. Infractions of the code were settled between cadets,
usually in a formal fistfight. Eventually, the
scope of the code narrowed, but the underlying aim remained the same: The code existed to ensure that the words of cadets and officers alike could always, in all situations, be taken as truth. Lies, even small ones, threatened that system of trust.

The discussion about military honor was particularly fraught when I was a cadet. In the twilight of the Vietnam War, the Army was broken and sought to heal itself. The scandals of that war—particularly falsified body counts—had sent fissures through the officer corps, and West Point was severely shaken. Although I was probably more aware of these issues because of my father, it was obvious, even to cadets at West Point, that the Army had wounds that would take a long time to heal.

The massacre of South Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1968, and the subsequent cover-up, had exemplified the challenge and had reached into the academy a few years before I arrived, when then–Major General Samuel Koster was superintendent. A West Point veteran of World War II and Korea, Koster had commanded the 23rd Infantry Division, troops from which had perpetrated My Lai. In March 1970, the Peers Commission recommended he be criminally charged for his part in the cover-up and he was forced to leave the academy. Before he left, he famously warned the assembled corps of cadets, “
Don't let the bastards grind you down.”

Beyond Koster, other graduates were implicated in the myriad scandals of Vietnam. Although accounting for only one tenth of the officer corps in 1976, West Pointers were meant to catalyze honor and discipline in the rest of the Army. But in the eyes of many, they had fallen short in that mission. During my time there, it struggled to repair the damage. Progress was made there and across the Army, but shortly before I graduated in June 1976, the academy was rocked by the largest cheating scandal in its history. More than a hundred cadets in the cow, or junior, class one year behind mine, including members of the honor committee, faced expulsion for colluding on
an electrical engineering exam. The scandal spurred national media attention and congressional hearings. If honor could not be safe at West Point, what chance did it stand in the nation as a whole?

When I arrived, the code had been distilled to a simple directive: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do.” Cadet leadership added the last part, the “toleration clause,” only in 1970, but it had existed for many years in the self-policing spirit of the corps. If the code's basic wording became simpler over time, its enforcement did not. In the late nineteenth century, cadets elected a “vigilance committee” to police honor violations and field accusations. When a cadet was found guilty of an honor violation, the committee made sure that he left the academy. Eventually, the committee became an advisory body without explicit punitive powers, although the
commandant almost always expelled a cadet whom the committee found to have violated the code.

In the rare case when the committee's recommendation was not followed, the corps' summary justice took over. A year before I arrived, the honor committee had found Cadet James Pelosi guilty of cheating. Pelosi's lawyer got him reinstated on a technicality, so the corps began to treat him as if he did not exist by “silencing” him. No one spoke to him; he had no roommates and ate alone at a separate table; reportedly, plebes in charge of delivering laundry threw his in the dumpster. Being in a different company, I never knew Pelosi, but I recognized how precarious it was to allow vigilantism among eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds. The corps saw that as well, and banned silencing in 1973.

While honor was sacrosanct to me, other academy regulations were not. On the afternoon of Saturday, October 27, 1973, one day after I finished the sentence from my May slug, I screwed up again, this time drinking in my room with classmate and friend Rick Bowman. Rick and I would go on to serve together in the 82nd Airborne as lieutenants and then for many years in special operations, where he flew in, and ultimately commanded, the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. But that was later, and for now we were fools in trouble—again.

When I appeared before the commandant's board two weeks later, the colonel in charge, after hearing the details of my infraction, took off his glasses, paused, and shook his head. “Okay, you have
got
to explain this to me. You
just
finished a slug,” he said, tapping my files, “and here you are about to eat another one. Explain that to me.” I had no explanation, but I was glad to hear him asking for one: It meant that I wasn't going to be thrown out. The colonel could do the math and knew that if he wanted to, he could make the slug big enough to put me over the limit in demerits. I did not offer any excuses and simply explained that I had shown poor judgment. He agreed. Forty-four hours on the Area.

Despite all of my behavioral nonsense, my peers evaluated me well. My tactical officer expressed disappointment in my poor decision making but never wrote me off. Some classmates jokingly compared me to Captain Virgil Hilts, the character played by Steve McQueen in
The Great Escape
, the 1963 film about Allied soldiers in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. An irreverent, carefree inmate, Hilts is known as the “Cooler King” because he spends his time either trying to escape or being punished for it in the cooler, solitary confinement, where he plans the next attempt. The comparison was a good-natured honor. Sort of.

My fourth and final slug solidified this reputation. After dinner one evening near the end of our yearling year, I joined Kenny Liepold, Rick Bifulco, Rick Bowman, and a few others in barracks horseplay with unloaded vintage weapons from West Point's museum. Being yearlings with more energy than sense, we were soon chasing one another down the hallway, clicking the triggers and yelling “bang,” taking cover behind corners, and feigning being hit by rolled-up-sock “grenades.” It was literally sophomoric.

We soon spilled out the back door and ran to the entrance of Grant Hall, a few yards behind our barracks. At the time, Grant Hall served as a place where upperclassmen were allowed to congregate and meet dates. Inside is a long, very West Point–like lounge: dimly lit and filled with overstuffed leather furniture. We achieved complete surprise, running through the door, mimicking the
rat-a-tat
of guns, tossing socks at perturbed upperclassmen and their dates, doing combat rolls at their feet, laughing wildly. Then we withdrew to our barracks rooms.

As we caught our breath, flashing lights lit up the walls and ceiling of our room from the street below. We looked out the window to see a military police car. Suddenly our door opened and a tactical officer entered, the hallway behind him full of faces trying to catch a glimpse of the fugitives. “Was it you?” he asked. “Yes, sir,” we responded. “You got the weapons?” We handed them over. Disappointed, the crowd in the hallway dispersed. He closed the door behind him and turned to us, only barely concealing his amusement. “What were you knuckleheads
thinking
?”

In the end, he wrote up the event conservatively and we received a light punishment. But I finished the year having walked 127 hours on the Area.

*   *   *

W
hen I entered West Point, some Americans still believed the Vietnam War might end honorably. By the time I graduated, South Vietnam did not exist. As cadets, we watched the war teeter and implode, and the historical sweep was not lost on us.

My interest in Indochina began when my father first deployed to Vietnam in 1965, as part of President Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war that summer. Then a lieutenant colonel, my father commanded the 2nd Battalion of the 18th Infantry Regiment, part of General William DePuy's 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One. Their battalion ran search-and-destroy missions in the Bien Hoa area in South Vietnam,
near the Cambodian border. Curious about where my dad was going, I read
The Two Viet-Nams
by Bernard Fall, the war correspondent and historian who chronicled the French and later American experiences in Indochina. Only eleven at the time, I struggled through parts of it, but from then on I was captivated by Indochina, and I eventually read all of Fall's books.