Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(64)
MacArthur, who was raised in the Army, had difficulty getting an appointment. So did Grant. But the system today is more open. There are still only small numbers of blacks, nothing near the 10 percent target. The main difficulty is poor academic preparation, and the attrition rate of blacks is higher than average. Minority applicants are selected out of order of merit to try to fill quotas, but despite this they are not available.
This year the first captain, highest ranking and most visible man in the corps, is black. He is Vincent Brooks, the tall, confident son of a brigadier general and the successor to such former first captains as Pershing, MacArthur, Wainwright, and Westmoreland.
West Point is still known as the Factory. It stamps out a certain kind of man, proud, competent, not given to nice distinctions. On Trophy Point the cannon goes off at six in the morning. The sky over the eastern hills is barely streaked. Lights are on in the barracks. Shadowy figures hurry on the way to the huge dining hall. The first formation will be at 0715, bells ringing, plebes calling the minutes in the hallways. In four separate areas the corps will begin to form.
The first year is the hardest. The list of things a plebe must know is endless: the menu, Schofield’s definition, the heads of academic departments, coaches and team captains, Worth’s Battalion Orders. (But an officer on duty knows no one—to be partial is to dishonor both himself and the object of his ill-advised favor . . .) The pace is intense. Gone are the days when cadets studied by flashlight after taps with blankets over their heads. Now they jog in the dark with reflecting plastic collars around their necks. Late at night the lighted windows look like endless blocks of city flats.
No horse, no mustache, no woman was the ancient proscription. Essentially it still applies. Cadets live mostly in two-man rooms, the walls pastel color, two chairs, two desks, two beds neatly made, two closets, two footlockers, one stereo. Nothing on the walls and the door must be fully open during all visits between cadets of the opposite sex. No television, that’s in the company dayroom. Nautilus exercise machines in the basement. Only first classmen may have cars. The New York Times is delivered to each room daily. On Saturday night in Eisenhower Hall there are hordes of cadets all in their identical blazers, gray trousers, white shirts. On Sunday the chaplain proclaims, “Strengthen, we pray, the instructors, the staff, the students, that we may be inspired to grow, that we may do more than follow the regulations . . .”
“Cadets are very nice people,” Dr. Francine Hall, a visiting professor of psychology, says, “but a lot of them are very immature socially.”
Captain Teresa Rhone, a clinical psychologist, agrees. “They’re not as far advanced in getting along with other people. There aren’t enough chances for it—they’re in such structured situations all the time.”
“I don’t see them as comfortable with emotions.” Dr. Hall says. “They’re certainly not comfortable with women. The only roles in which most of them have seen women are as mother and dates—they come up here and it’s very unreal, they have to walk on the guy’s arm and so forth. I don’t see the social development of the males as moving along.”
Many of his classmates have marital problems, a captain and West Pointer says. “Their wives complain that they don’t talk to them. The fact is, they’re taught not to admit weakness or communicate doubt or insecurity, and that’s what their wives want to hear.”
“One should not be weak, one should not show weakness,” Captain Rhone says. “We see about one cadet a year who’s breaking down, maybe one suicide attempt in a year and a half. These kids are so well-adjusted that I believe those who can’t handle the stress and the problems self-select out.”
“They don’t have time for intellectual development,” Dr. Hall notes. “They don’t have time to read. The norms of what you do or what you don’t do are very fixed. If you’re seen lying around reading a lot—it’s not the thing to do.”
“There’s peer pressure,” Robin Fennessy says. “You lose cool points. You don’t wear your calculator on your belt. You don’t run to class no matter how late you are. You don’t wear socks with slippers. You don’t date cadets.”
As a college, West Point is unquestionably demanding. It requires more courses than Harvard—mathematics, physics, chemistry, history, economics, law, all are in the core curriculum. Classes are small and the once-sacred formula of a cadet reciting in every subject every day has been abandoned. The singular and narrow aspect, however, is that the faculty is almost entirely military, and of these, 56 percent are West Point graduates on a tour of duty. It is not a school where one finds famous names. This pertains to other things as well.
“You don’t get so many geniuses or near-geniuses,” a visiting professor of history says, “but on the other hand you don’t get the very poor students.”
Not the sort of place to look for a great tight end. For a long time Army did not recruit football players: they walked in. That changed with Earl Blaik in the 1940s. Even so, Blaik had to count on outconditioning and outcoaching other schools, but the level of competition has risen.
“We can’t do it anymore,” a member of the athletic staff says. “Once we could utilize our two hours a day better. Now, when the other team goes on six hours a week of weight work, we don’t know where to look for it. And the kids we’re looking for—‘Do I have to cut my hair that short?’ they want to know.”