Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(21)

I made a straight-in approach to K14 that day, rounded out a little above the runway, and at the last moment extended the gear. The stick froze and the plane settled in to a smooth landing.

My knees didn’t shake afterwards. It had all been too quick for that. Fear is more likely, more distinct when you see the enemy turning towards you from far off, many of them. They see you and are coming to kill you. Anyone can feel fear. There were jolts of it when the MIGs were firing and getting in behind you, and sometimes between missions, I felt a simmering fear for no apparent reason, but it would soon give way to normal concerns. The point is to go on. We had pilots—a few—who were unable to do that, but I never asked them why. They were, in a way, outcasts. They lived with their own nightmares, sleeplessness, concealed shame.

Afterwards, back in the states, I carried a feeling of superiority. I’d been a flight leader in combat, I had a victory, I’d been in the thick of it. Slowly all that faded. In the years of ordinary life that followed I worried, felt anxiety, sometimes lost heart, but the facing of fear in the raw sense never came up. The lessons I had learned didn’t translate. I was living in a different hierarchy with different values. Deep inside however there still exists that ethic, long drummed in and well-remembered: don’t lose your nerve and, more important, don’t appear to be losing it. As the beach boys in Hawaii used to say, “Cool head main ting.”

Joe





1999





An Army Mule Named Sid Berry Takes Command at the Point


Douglas MacArthur sat in this room. Through the windows, the Hudson is visible, the great gray river that American revolutionary forces at West Point once guarded. It is a large room, somber, paneled in oak. At one end a fireplace, in pale, gothic stone. On all four walls, high up, a solid band of portraits, each exactly the same size, of the men who have been superintendents of West Point.

This is the heart room a cadet never sees. The only way to see it, they say, is if you’re the first captain or getting kicked out of school. There’s one other way: you become Supe.

The new Supe is Sidney Berry, who at age forty-eight is one of the youngest major generals in the army. Behind him lies a brilliant record as a field commander. His hair is gray, going to white and cut exceedingly short. His face radiates intelligence, a cold face, proud, unyielding. On his finger is a heavy gold wedding band; on his wrist a chronometer that gleams like a surgical instrument. His arms are revealed by short khaki sleeves. They are sinewy. The word “Ranger” is on the point of one shoulder. Maxwell Taylor was forty-four when he became superintendent—four years younger than Berry. Robert E. Lee was forty-five; Westmoreland, forty-six. Douglas MacArthur was thirty-nine.

Numbers do not prove everything, but this year over 11,000 young men applied for admission to West Point—a record. Something like 6,100 were nominated by their congressmen, and 1,435 were finally admitted, one of the largest classes ever.

“The country, the army, and West Point have emerged from Vietnam,” Berry says. “We are looking ahead.” But since he recently took over as superintendent, Berry must look as much to the present as to the future. He is, in a sense, still in training—just like the new cadets in their first summer, whose faint sounds can be heard from the far-off parade grounds. These roaring hot days of July and August have long been known as Beast Barracks, “beast” being cadet slang for an incoming fourth classman. They are the crucible months. The ancient tradition was for them to be filled with unending humiliation and debasement, as if a man had to be reduced to nothing before he could be recreated. Over the years this has gradually changed. The hazing, like many things from a time now past, was once far more fierce.

And it was impractical. The task here is to produce the best possible soldier leader. It is approached somewhat like breeding cattle. The good points are preserved, the bad are gotten rid of. The day of highhanded authority is over. The emphasis now will be on building upon the natural dignity of the young men. There is no longer a place at West Point for learning what cannot be of later use in the army. This does not mean things academic, for the curriculum has been broadened and enriched considerably and a cadet has more freedom to choose among courses than ever before. It is the technique and attitudes of leadership, things that have always been the academy’s special interest, that now demand fresh definition and attention.

They call West Point “The Factory,” both in admiration and scorn; it is dedicating itself to making certain that everything learned there is transferable to the career which follows. “Career” is a word Berry hates. He is a man of ideals. His conscience is written all over him, like that of a fine Southern lawyer. “‘Service’ is the key word,” he says quietly, “something other than personal gain.” But Berry, as he well knows, must address himself to a new army that has emerged from Vietnam. A chastened army. A volunteer army. An army with a radically new racial composition, nearly 20 percent black.

When Berry was a first classman in 1948, there was hardly a black face in the Corps. Between 1900 and 1969, only seventy black men graduated. Today 268 out of some 4,300 cadets, about 6 percent, are black—including 82 in the incoming class. Berry would like to see the proportion of blacks and other minority groups become at least as great as in the population at large. “We are encouraging all minority groups in every way to enter.”