The Line

CHAPTER 11

2 DEC Trace felt like she was the only one in the terminal other than the people cleaning the floor. She’d landed two hours ago and she had two and a half hours to go before continuing on the last leg of her journey. The runways outside the large windows were lit and there was activity as an occasional plane made its entrance or departure, from what she could see, mostly UPS and Federal Express cargo planes, but it was only a tenth of the traffic daylight would bring.

Trace had slept on the flight in from Honolulu and she felt marginally refreshed. The departure from the island had been unusual. She felt that she and Boomer were entering new territory. He’d always seemed to be there in her life at important, turbulent junctures, but then he was gone when the sailing was smooth. She didn’t think it was deliberate, but she wondered how it would be if they could spend time together when circumstances were a bit more normal.

She remembered the second time she’d run into him at West Point. It was two months after their first meeting on the ramp leading to New South Barracks. The first weeks of the academic year had passed in a tension-filled blur. As one of five female plebes assigned to I-1, Trace and her gender comrades had indeed been shit magnets as Boomer had predicted. She’d drawn duty as head mail carrier during Reorganization Week, the first week of the academic year.

It was the harshest job a plebe could be assigned.

Contrary to the federal law not allowing a third party to control mail, an interesting attitude for a school funded with federal dollars, cadet mail was delivered by the plebes of each company. The Cadet in Charge of Quarters (CQ) went to the cadet mail room and picked up the mail for all the cadets in the company. Bringing it back, he dumped it in the orderly room and waited for the head mail carrier to come back from class at 11:30 a.m.

That first week Trace quickly learned one of West Point’s unwritten axioms: cooperate and graduate. She’d walked into the barracks, squaring corners and walking along the inside wall as required, to be handed the heavy bag of mail accumulated from a summer of mis routes and girlfriends already missing their boys.

She’d staggered to her room with the precious cargo and dumped it open on her bed. She’d been given a listing of all room assignments by the company first sergeant when he’d briefed her. She began sorting, trying to get it organized as her two roommates scuttled about the company area, grabbing their classmates and corralling them into the room to help deliver. It all had to be dispensed prior to lunch formation and the clock began ticking almost immediately as the plebe minute caller outside her room sounded off:

“Sir, there are ten minutes until lunch formation. The uniform is as for class. For lunch we are having hot dogs, trench fries, iced tea, and Martha Washington sheet cake.

Ten minutes, sir!”

Trace tried to ignore the echoing screams of upperclassmen hazing the minute callers for real or imagined mistakes as she thrust mail into her frightened classmates’ hands and told them which room to deliver it to. The fact that they weren’t supposed to be “gazing about” as they moved out at 120 steps per minute in the hallway made looking for room numbers a perilous proposition. God help the plebe who entered the wrong room or got caught looking around to make sure it was the right room.

Trace wasn’t quite sure how she survived that first week.

Those fifteen minutes each day before lunch twisted her gut and kept her awake at night with worry. She spent her evenings reporting around to upperclassmen rooms to explain every single screw-up in delivery. She also learned a lot about her classmates as she noted who was willing to put their neck on the line to help her in her duties and those who covered their own ass and made it out to formation ahead of the ten-minute bell in order to try and beat the “plebe chasers,” second-year cadets assigned to harass plebes not making it into formation on time.

It was a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.

And it was designed to be that way. Trace later realized once she was on the other side as an upperclassman.

Plebes learned to be amazingly efficient. By the end of the academic year, they could get the mail out in less than two minutes. Also, those classmates who were dicks, heading out to formation trying to escape the hassle of getting hazed delivering mail, were hazed for not helping their classmates out.

Cooperate and graduate was the rule, forged in the flames of verbal and mental abuse. It was such a strong rule, that in many cases the honor code stood a distant second as the occasional cheating scandals that rocked the Academy showed. It was the one thing the Academy didn’t display to the outside world, whenever a newspaper came around and wanted to know why so many cadets would get implicated in a scandal.

And despite the scandals, the loyalty classmates showed each other had the potential to be a valuable trait, or it could be abused.

Trace had survived that first week and the following ones, but there was no doubt that as a woman she was at a disadvantage. The secret to survival as a plebe was to become invisible, an impossibility for five women among thirty-four plebes in the company. And to make it worse, the senior class — called firsties — of 1979, was the last class to graduate West Point all-male and they had a particular hatred for the female gender. There were two women in I-1 from the class of 80, the first year group of women, but they hung low, having already endured an inhuman amount of abuse, simply biding their time for graduation.

They didn’t offer any special solace to their younger comrades, feeling that acceptance among peers was more important than acceptance by gender.

It was during a situation involving a fl? she and one of the females from the class of ‘80, that she ran into Boomer for a second time. It was a Tuesday evening in October and they were attending a lecture in the auditorium at Eisenhower Hall by the Army Chief of Staff, a former super intendant of the Academy.

Seated by company. Trace found herself in the uncomfortable position of being between the company first sergeant, Cadet Frankel, a man with a reputation as a “flame,” and her platoon sergeant. Cadet Jean Woods.

“Neck back, beanhead!” was Frankel’s first words to her as they settled into the seats in Eisenhower auditorium. “I want you back a fist distance away from the rear, of the chair.”

The order wasn’t correct, since there was no requirement for plebes to sit braced at the lecture, but such reasoning was academic due to the reality of Frankel’s position as first sergeant. Trace figured an hour of sitting braced beat a week of hazing so she pressed her chin back, until she could feel the skin fold in on itself. She was disappointed that Woods didn’t say anything, but she also understood Woods’ position. Trace scooted forward in her seat the required distance, the same posture she had to adopt in the mess hall for every meal.

Frankel leaned over.

“Do you know what my class’s motto is, smack?”

“Yes sir”

“Well?” Frankel waited.

“Top of the line, ‘seventy-nine, sir.” Trace said, sensing Woods’ uncomfortable shifting to her right.

“Yeah, that’s the official one,” Frankel said, “but do you know what every member of my class is putting on the inside of our rings?”

“No, sir.”

He pulled off his ring and waved it in front of her nose.

“LCWB,” Frankel said.

“Know what that stands for?”

Woods turned the other way, and Trace gave the only answer she was allowed.

“No, sir.”

“Officially it stands for Loyalty, Courage, Wisdom, and Bravery,” Frankel said.

“But in reality it stands for Last Class With Balls.”

“Hey, Frankel, that’s enough,” Woods protested.

“I don’t want any shit from you, you—” Frankel’s retort was interrupted by a familiar, deep voice cutting in behind her, as the next company took its seats.

“Hey, smackhead, chill out.”

Trace didn’t move, aware of the attention of Frankel, and also aware that Boomer was just a yearling, well below Frankel in the chain of command.

“I said relax, chill out, sit back, take it easy,” Boomer said with a laugh, leaning forward from his place behind her.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Frankel snapped, twisting in his seat.

“This is my company, yearling, so butt out.”

Boomer laughed.

“Hey, hero, you want the Army Chief of Staff to see a plebe sitting here in the fourth row braced?

How come none of the other bean heads in your company are braced? You wanna be stupid, be my guest.”

“Watch it, Watson,” Frankel growled.

“Hey, Frankel, I know you’re an asshole, you know you’re an asshole, but do you have to show the whole world that you’re an asshole?” Boomer replied.

“That’s it, Watson! I’m writing you up for insubordination!”

Frankel cried out, reaching into his pocket and producing a pen and paper.

“Fine,” Boomer replied hotly.

“And write yourself up for hazing at the Chief of Staff’s address while you’re at it.”

Trace was surprised when Woods interceded again.

“He’s right, Frankel. She shouldn’t be braced here.”

Frankel’s face turned several shades of red as he tried to control his temper.

“All right. Trace. At ease.” He turned to Boomer.

“But I’m going to have your ass, Watson.”

Trace later found out from talking to Boomer that Frankel had been Boomer’s second detail Beast Squad Leader and Boomer detested him. The incident in Eisenhower Hall had cost Boomer four hours walking the area for insubordination, but Boomer said it was worth it.

Trace also remembered the content of the Chief of Staff speech. The speech had been about the Academy’s role and if Trace had not been so concerned about surviving the hell flying on around her, she might have paid more attention at the time. The most interesting thing about the speech was that it clearly laid out where the Academy was heading, yet the cadets were so young and simply wanted to survive that they really didn’t give a damn what they were being changed into.

Trace had looked the speech up a few weeks ago as part of her research for her manuscript. A transcript had been printed in the Assembly, the publication of the West Point Association of Graduates (AOG). Reading it had chilled her.

With over 4,000 cadets in attendance, the Army Chief of Staff had talked about the Academy from a perspective the cadets had only begun to glimpse.

“West Point has been in existence for 176 years. In that time we have graduated over 36,000 men. From the war of 1812 through the recent conflict in Southeast Asia, we have provided the moral spirit for our country’s Army.

Never has this spirit been more important than in today’s society.

“Just down the river in New York City — less than fifty miles from here — you can see a vision of the depths our society has sunk to. Drugs are rampant on the street.

Crime is at an alltime high.

“Even further down the East Coast, in our nation’s capital in Washington, our leaders are caught in a malaise of inaction. But is that so surprising? One can not act unless one has the moral base to act from. That is what you are being exposed to in your four-year journey through the Academy. It is a journey that, upon graduation, will lead you through the wilderness of modern society with the moral tenets of discipline, loyalty, and honor to carry you when times seem bleak.

“It is our duty to give back to our country that which West Point teaches us. In a world that sorely lacks those moral tenets, it is our responsibility to stand up to the rest of the country as a guiding light, a way out of the troubled forest of moral decay.

“Duty, honor, country,” the Chief of Staff intoned the Academy motto, evoking in all the cadets present the speech by Douglas MacArthur in front of the Corps in 1962 that every cadet had to memorize as plebes.

“Never has our country needed our sense of duty and honor more.

“In the upcoming years, as you spread out around the world to serve in the active Army, I call upon each of you to remember your duty to your country. I call upon you to pursue a more active role in our society — even beyond that demanded by your role as officers. That is no longer sufficient, as the recent debacle in Southeast Asia clearly shows. Men who walked the long gray line before you served honorably there, but they were let down by a lack of moral fiber in our very society. We cannot keep our heads in the sand and simply look outward for our enemies. We must also search within the borders of our country and fight them in the way the Academy has taught you: with perseverance and courage in what you have been taught here!”

Trace remembered that the Corps had given the Chief of Staff a standing ovation” more for not taking up the full hour allocated, allowing them to get back to the barracks earlier for study or rack time, than for the content. But if one considered the existence of The Line, Trace began to understand how such speeches were allowed at an institution funded by the very society it so often lambasted. She had done some research and learned that the Chief of Staff’s comments were by no means isolated. West Point existed in a timeless vacuum that only occasionally noted the changes of the outside world, and then only to contemplate what effect West Point could have on the outside world, rather than the more natural opposite.

As the airport slowly came alive. Trace wondered what experience, if any. Colonel Rison had had with The Line, and what a man who had been relieved of his command in a combat zone would have to say about West Point and The Line. She had a feeling it would be very different from the Chief of Staff’s speech.