Duty First (15 page)

Stein told Friesema to pick flowers, and she mispronounced his name so that it sounded like a popular woman’s fragrance. The upper-class cadets thought the jokes funny, but the humor wore thin fast for the plebes.

The hierarchy of leadership they describe is similar to one described by Gus Lee, the author of
Honor and Duty.

“We have three powers to get people to do things they otherwise might not,” Lee said in an interview. “The first power is authority: Do this, or I’ll make you walk funny. The second power is motivation: Do this and I’ll reward you. The third power is inspiration: Follow me.”

This “inspirational leadership,” to use the jargon popular at West Point, is the most difficult. Leadership, in this case, means getting people to do what the leader wants because they, the followers, want to do it.

Grady Jett and Greg Stitt hit this mark. The new cadets “felt bad” when they “messed up” under these first detail leaders. With Stein, they just got yelled at.

A subdued Shannon Stein sits by her pup tent. She has just taken a cold-water shower (the only kind available) and is scrubbed clean; her uniform is clean, her hair still wet. She knows the new cadets are not very happy, and she cares. “It’s hard for them to understand [how difficult the job is] until they’ve been in a position of responsibility,” she says.

Stein just received her military grade for the detail. (Military grades are factored with academic and physical performance to determine class rank, which in turn influences a senior’s choice of post-graduation assignments.) The platoon sergeant and platoon leader she butted heads with all summer gave her a C.

“I could have put myself first, kissed up to the chain of command, but I put [the squad] first and myself last.” She picks a blade of grass and stretches it between her fingers. “They were a great squad, and I had a great time. I told them all in counseling: Don’t compromise your integrity.”

She considers what she might do differently, given another chance. “I needed to pay more attention to them individually. They passed off [recited] knowledge together. Some were better than others; I focused on the team. Re-orgy week will be hard because it’s unfamiliar,” she allows, perhaps thinking of the same table duties that worry her charges.

“You don’t get too much praise in this position,” she says sadly.
But she did learn a lot about her own capabilities, and about the importance of leading by example. “You can’t just talk about leading by example. Like when we were on the Confidence Obstacle Course.”

As the name states clearly this course is all about facing and overcoming fear. Cadets climb over a series of high obstacles: towers and platforms and thirty-foot ladders with rungs made of telephone poles.

“I could do it—with apprehension—but I did it in front of them. I had to get Daveltshin down off one obstacle. He kind of froze up. So I’m up there, all five three of me, talking him down and showing him how to do it.”

Although only two years older than the new cadets, Stein is able to see beyond the surface conditions they gripe about. She has her own analysis for what was going on in the squad.

Of Pete Haglin, whose attitude changed the most—for the worst—over the summer, Stein says, “Haglin was my problem child, always making excuses. He was this high school stud. Teachers loved him; he was popular. Then he gets here and he’s none of that. He’s also trying to live up to his father. He wants his father to be proud of him. He came into my room bawling one night because he thought he was a failure. I had to give him ‘the talk,’ she says. “‘This is West Point; whatever you do, it’s not going to be right.’” She doesn’t smile as she says this.

If her insight on Haglin is on-target, she’s missed the mark with Jacque Messel. Messel, whose performance has been consistently strong throughout the summer, is all but convinced that West Point is not for her. She is still here, a week from the beginning of classes, only because it is her father’s dream.

“She improved tremendously,” Stein says of Messel. That much is true, but Stein has misjudged what it means. “She’s definitely staying.”

Stein sets her cap on her head, pulls it low, and heads down the long row of tents to where she has asked the squad to gather. They sit on an embankment shielded by a little hill as Stein paces the dirt road in front of them. She is taking a risk, and she knows it.

“I was sitting in this exact spot two years ago,” Stein tells them. “And in two years I’ll be out in the Army.”

She pauses, as if thinking how much work there is to do in a short time. “My main goal this summer was this: I want you to walk out of here with self-confidence, with the attitude, ‘I can handle anything they throw at me.’”

She claims that is the point of the squad’s odd motto, “Always the Hard Way.”

“I love you all the same and I hate you all the same,” she says, capturing in one phrase an essential truth about the cadet experience at West Point: It’s a love-hate relationship.

She promises them a pizza party one Friday evening when they have free time.

“You’ll be hungry by then. I’ve been a candy-ass at the table, and you’re going to catch hell at your new tables. But the stuff I put you through mentally was tougher than all that other stuff.”

The new cadets have been quiet up to this point. They watch her, and they look past her to the ridge they’ll climb in the morning to start their march back to West Point and Re-orgy Week.

“I want feedback too,” she says. “This was my first time in a leadership position.”

Clint Knox says, “On that first day, you were the only one who knew stuff; the platoon sergeant was lost.”

“You guys are like my babies,” Stein says.

Ben Steadman asks, “Were you as scared as we were, ma’am?”

She tugs her hat even lower, posturing. “Whaddya think?”

“It was easier when I knew what you wanted,” Pete Lisowski ventures. She is still an upperclass cadet, still their squad leader.

Haglin, who has become the squad’s malcontent, says, “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

Stein smiles nervously. She asked for this, but she isn’t enjoying it.

Jacque Messel adds quickly, “You were tough when you needed to be, but you let us relax.”

“You’d take us up and down,” Lamb says.

“What’s the purpose of Beast?” Stein asks. Then, in another pronouncement
that is a part of cadet lore but certainly isn’t part of the official Academy position, she adds, “It’s to break you down, then build you back up.”

Daveltshin smiles and says, “I was proud to be in the most popular squad in the company. All our other classmates were afraid of you.”

Stein does have a war face, in spite of the fact that it’s perched on a diminutive frame. Friesema, who has been watching quietly, speaks.

“With all respect, ma’am,” he says, mustering his courage, “We’re usually clueless. You think the questions we ask are stupid, but we really don’t know the answer.”

“Maybe I could have listened better,” Stein says quickly.

“Yelling doesn’t work,” Haglin adds. “I’ve been yelled at so much it has almost no effect.”

Stein glances at Haglin, stands her ground in the dusty road.

“You remind me of my mother,” Tom Lamb says. The squad laughs, releasing some of the tension.

“You’re the same height, have the same color hair. She even yells at me the same way. I’ve been dealing with it for nineteen years, so it wasn’t really effective.”

Knox continues the levity.

“Before we came here, we were all like, ‘I’m the man.’ Before I came here I thought I was God’s gift, you know?” He smiles broadly. “Now I think God made a mistake.”

The new cadets fidget, shift their positions on the grass. Whatever other feedback they may have for their squad leader, they aren’t sharing it.

“OK,” Stein says. “I love you all; I wish you the best. I’ll be checking on you. I’ll write to your parents and tell them how you did.”

Nervous laughter, a few groans.

“There’ll be more good points than bad points,” she says. Then, “Bring it in one last time.”

They huddle for a cheer. “Always the hard way, ma’am.”

Later that afternoon, Deborah Welle and Jacque Messel sit side by side in front of their shared tent. Welle, who has injured her ankle,
wears a plastic brace she calls her “Robo-Cop boot.” She won’t make the final road march.

Messel, who is fair-skinned to begin with, looks pale. In the last two weeks she has missed five days of training and has spent several days hospitalized. She also feels as if Stein has already written her off as a washout.

One day shortly after returning from the hospital and a round of treatment for the virus that has been plaguing her, Messel felt as if she was going to be sick during lunch. The medication made her nauseous. When she asked Stein if she could be excused from the table, Stein asked her, in front of the squad, if she was bulimic. When Messel said no, Stein asked, “Are you lying to me?” The fact that her squad leader had questioned her integrity—a serious thing at West Point—upset Messel quite a bit.

Now, Messel looks tired. There are circles under her eyes, and she moves and speaks slowly. Her rifle lays across her lap, open at the hinge for cleaning. “I have to make up a lot of training,” she says. “But I’m going to do the road march.”

The march is sixteen-plus miles, with a field pack and weapon, helmet, and boots. Although the lead companies will step off long before dawn in the morning, the new cadets will spend hours trudging along in the sun. It’s not much of a prescription for recovering from viral pneumonia.

“It was right to stay for Beast,” she says, “but I’m still pretty convinced that this place isn’t for me.”

Messel pulls the bolt from her rifle and wipes it with a rag, turning it over in her hand. Then she snaps it sharply so that it will seat when she puts it back in the weapon; she handles it as if she’s been cleaning M16s all her life. “I talked to my dad about wanting to leave. He’s coming out to see me this weekend so we can talk about it.”

Although it will be her first visitor from home, she is not looking forward to it.

“It was always his dream that I come here,” she says. And suddenly her eyes sparkle silver with tears. She slaps her weapon shut
and, in a steady voice, says, “I’m just ready to get on with my life, start making other plans.”

On the last evening of Beast Barracks, the new cadets put on a talent show. Lieutenant General Dan Christman, ‘65, the Superintendent, brings the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Dennis Reimer, ‘62, as his guest. Reimer has made the last three shows here, and has marched back to West Point with each class.

“You may have heard that I always start with the last company,” Reimer says to the fifteen hundred cadets and guests gathered on the hillside. “And I try to catch up with the lead company by the time we reach West Point. Last year, I didn’t quite make it.”

He pauses. “The fellow carrying me just couldn’t make those last few yards. This year, though, I’ve been assured that the cadre will do better.”

Everyone laughs at the general’s joke and the show gets under way. The night is comfortably warm, the setting spectacular: The stage is downhill from the encampment, and the audience can look beyond it to wooded ridges in the blue distance. Above the hills, backlit clouds stand like God’s watchtowers. The cadets sit cross-legged on the ground, grouped around the little company flags called guidons. They are fed and relaxed and able, for a few minutes, to forget about what will unfold for them long before dawn the next day. This is one of those times when the West Point experience sits somewhere between Army basic training and freshman orientation at some mid-sized college.

As the show begins, the first sounds don’t come from the stage at all, but from the field behind the crowd. Everyone turns to see a bagpiper, a new cadet in BDUs, his rifle slung diagonally across his back. He marches down the aisles formed by his classmates, and the weird skirl floats over the heads of the crowd and rolls around the valley. The cadets applaud wildly.

The first act is a group of new cadets singing gospel. Any practice time they’ve had was stolen from a packed training schedule, but they
choose simple arrangements and pull it off beautifully. Next, three men in BDU pants and green T-shirts do an elaborate dance of robotic hip-hop and foot-stomping. Then a young woman takes the microphone and dedicates her song to the “2 percent club,” that tiny group of cadets who keep the same boyfriend or girlfriend back home over four years. Her face is hidden by the BDU cap, but she has a pretty voice and people in the crowd sing along.

Fourth squad’s Clint Knox, who graduated from a military high school, takes the stage with a drill team from Alpha Company. They spin rifles in an elaborate ballet onstage; in a solo performance, Knox spins a rifle in each hand. The final act is also from Alpha Company. A chorus that includes Jacque Messel takes the stage and sings Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”

West Point has something of a love affair with this treacly song. A former Superintendent, Dave Palmer, played it during assemblies with cadets, staff, and faculty. Its lyrics can be heard at meetings, sports events, and rallies.

Yet here, amid all these young faces and earnest singing, it seems appropriate. They have plenty of time to become jaded and cynical. Tonight it is enough that they are with friends, that they are at the end of basic training, their first major test. The hillside is a great, green sprawl of possibility and youthful enthusiasm. And if any of them bother to look up, they can see that they have taken on a thousand allies, that they have become a part of something larger than just themselves. Some of them will revel in that new identity, while some will be consumed by it.

Later, the new cadets gather near their tents as dusk drops around them. Flashlights bounce through the tent streets.

“I get a sick feeling when I think about Re-orgy week,” Friesema admits.

They worry about small things that will loom large tomorrow when they are faced with a company full of unfamiliar upperclass cadets. Is their hat brass shiny enough? Their shoes? Do they really know all the songs, cheers, West Point history, Army history and factoids
well enough to make it through the next few days without gaining a reputation as a screwup? Even as they worry about what they don’t know, they’re amazed at how far they’ve come.