Plebe Life at West Point Chapter 2

      Plebe cadets stand guard duty in the barracks on Friday and Saturday nights, their turn coming up about every two months. You might wonder who we’re guarding against. We were guarding ourselves: it was another way to maintain discipline. Cadets sometimes tried to sneak out to Highland Falls, and would have had girls in their rooms if not for the guards. (And did in spite of guards, if the cadet lore can be believed.)

     The old barracks where I stayed were four story stone buildings divided into blocks with four rooms per floor, one room per class. Each cadet had a six-by-eight inch metal card on the mantle (yes, these barracks were built in the 1800s when fireplaces were the only heat. A plebe’s life must have been brutal then.) with a sliding marker in a horizontal slot. On evenings and weekends, whenever a cadet was out of his room, he was supposed to mark his card by sliding the pointer to the proper position, indicating his whereabouts. There were positions for “hospital”, “weekend leave”, “authorized absence” and “unmarked”. By “marking” the card, the cadet was giving his word that he was where the card indicated, and to intentionally mis-mark was the same as lying - an honor violation that meant expulsion. If a cadet were absent with the card “unmarked” the punishment was several demerits. Demerits accumulated, and for every one over a specified maximum, the cadet had to walk an hour on Saturday afternoon in the barracks square with full parade uniform and rifle.

      On Friday and Saturday nights, plebe guards walked the hallway, checking the cards in each room at specified intervals. The officer of the guard, a first classman (senior), checked occasionally with the plebe, who had to report any violations – cadet absent with card unmarked, or “unauthorized person” (girlfriend) in a room.

      On a Saturday night in late spring, 1964, I was on guard duty. It was raining and I was pretty miserable. The cadet officer was from my company, but was the brigade commander, a very high leadership position. As such, he lived in a special barracks apart from the rest of us, and I hardly ever saw him. He came in to get the report, and must have been miserable too, because he took time to ask where I was from and how things were going. The normal exchange was the officer sticking his head in the door, shouting, “Report!” and moving on to the next barracks, so this was unusual. Probably because we were so close to the end of the year, he ended up “recognizing” me – shaking my hand and exchanging first names. Unless a plebe has been formally recognized this way, he must remain at attention, and call the upperclassman “Mister xx”.

      That was the last time I saw Barry McCaffery until 1998. He was on TV, a retired four star general and President Clinton’s “drug czar”.

      Wesley Clark, however, was another story. He was in my company, a sophomore or “yearling,” in the class of 1966. He was a very intense guy, and although he looked sixteen, he was tough on us plebes. Yearlings approached plebes in one of two ways. Some remembered how it was for them as plebes just a few months previously, and treated us OK, just growling once in a while. Others seemed to say, “Now it’s my turn,” and gave us hell. They’d go out of their way to inspect our uniform for any little imperfection, or run us through the list of crap we had to memorize and be ready to spout whenever asked. They’d get nose-to-nose and shout at us, just because they could.

      I first met Wes Clark (or rather, he encountered me) in a meal formation just after the start of the academic year. 

      “Who am I, Mister?”

      My eyes refocused from the middle distance onto imposing black eyebrows that met over the nose of a very young-looking cadet. Without moving my head, I glanced down at his nametag. Anticipating the glance, his hand covered his nametag.

      “Eyes straight ahead, Mister!” he snapped. “Brace that chin in, Mister! Now, who am I?”

      “Sir, I do not know.”

      “Well, you’d better find out by the next formation, Smack Head, understand?”

      “Yes, Sir!” 

      Clark was always in some plebe’s face, but with a difference. He’d ask questions about the history of West Point or military history. His favorite harassment, and he was the only one I knew who did this, was to ask a plebe something about current events. Plebes were busy from reveille to taps. Rooms had to be spotless, clothes folded just so, beds made exactly right, shoes spit shined. They had to know the menu for each meal that day, and some upper classman was always sending them off on some fool’s errand. There was barely time for studying, never mind reading a newspaper, though every room got one daily.

      Clark would approach a plebe during the formation before a meal and ask something like, “What was the President’s big announcement today?”

      Invariably the reply was, “Sir, I do not know.”

      “Well, why not, Mister?” And he’d go on harassing for a minute. “I’m going to ask you at the next formation, Smackhead, and you’d better know the answer, got that?”

And the plebe had better find a newspaper or some other plebe who knew, because Wes would be in his face again at the next formation, and if he still didn’t know, the kid’s life would be misery for days. Clark might order him up to his room before reveille and make him stand at attention against the wall in the dark until time to go to formation. And he’d have a meticulous look at his uniform and shoes, and any infraction would be a write-up for demerits. Every plebe in Company E-2 considered him a hardass, but in retrospect, I think he had the right priorities.