Duty First Read Free

hang exactly over each cadet’s right rear pants pocket.
    This is “the cadet in the red sash,” every West Pointer’s first, unfriendly, welcoming committee.
    A gaggle of new cadets lines up in four haphazard files. Green tape on the ground marks lanes, and they readily comply with the unspoken instruction to stand between the lines. At the top of each lane is the word “Stop,” spelled out in the same green tape. Then a no-man’s-land of a few feet and another line, behind which stands a burly senior wearing the red sash around his waist.
    “New cadet,” the firstie says in a voice meant for command. He raises one gloved hand, fingers extended to a knife-edge and aimed at the new cadet’s nose.
    “Step up to my line.” He points at the line just inches from his gleaming shoes. “Not over my line or on my line but up to my line.”
    The new cadet steps forward, glances down, and aligns the toes of his shoes with the tape. The instructions come rapid-fire from the firstie, who punctuates every sentence with, “Do you understand, new cadet?”
    No one pauses to acknowledge the moment, but something important has just taken place.
    An hour ago most of the youngsters trying so hard to get to theline …
not-on-the-line-or-over-the-line-but-to-the-line
… were civilians, the majority of them just recent high school graduates. And even if they didn’t report to West Point with baggy jeans, exposed boxer shorts, and skateboards, they were a lot closer to the denizens of MTV than they were to soldiers.
    Yet here they are, in the first few minutes of a career that will, for some, last thirty years—and for others thirty hours—and not only are they doing what they’re told, they’re trying to do it right. They are all, to this point at least, willing participants in a long endeavor to turn them into soldiers and leaders of soldiers.
    A few of them may even be aware of the significance of this moment. Many of them have spent months dreaming of the lofty phrases of the admissions literature. They came, as one cadet wrote, “for parades and rifles,” dazzled by the name, by the history, by the knowledge that they stand where many of America’s great captains stood. Others of them (and these will be the most unhappy) are here because their parents want them to be here. For some, this is simply the best school they could attend for free, or the only Division I school to recruit them for sports. Under the gray sky they all look the same: the ones who will become generals, and the ones who will drop out in time to start classes at some other university.
    “New cadet, you are allowed four responses: ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, sir,’ ‘No excuse, sir,’ and ‘Sir, I do not understand.’” Then, with no pause, the red-sash demands, “New cadet, what are your four responses?”
    It takes a couple of tries before the neophytes learn the code. It will take a little while longer for them to stop trying to explain things. In that phrase, “No excuse, sir” (or “ma’am”) is an early, critical lesson. Take responsibility for your actions. Always. No matter what the consequences.
    It is a lesson they will hear repeated for four years. Most of them will get it.
    The new cadets have been warned about the first day; some of them by family members who have gone through this, some through careful attention to the recruiting literature, books, and documentaries.They were even given helpful advice that morning at the official welcoming station, Michie (pronounced mike-ee) Stadium.
    For most of the morning, a long line of candidates and their families stretches out behind the back gate of the football stadium. They enter in small groups, waved through a few hundred at a time by cadet ushers. They file in quietly, as if under some invisible instruction that this is a place of order, and sit in a section of the lower stadium seats. Before them, dressed in green “Class A” uniform of coat and tie, stands an Army colonel and a