Honor and Duty (24 page)

Captain Mac’s essay topics went to the heart, and sometimes the buttocks, of the Academy experience. “Pros and Cons of Hazing: Evaluating the Fourth Class System,” required us to translate our social woes into essay. I wondered: could a heretic critique the Inquisition—and still get a good grade?

I couldn’t believe my own answer. The system that starved, shocked, and shackled me was “a worthy exercise for young men in which the desire to belong is implacably tested. The pride and belief produced by commonly enduring the stresses and toils of such a system may be unique in modern American education. As a consequence of this experience, cadets are prepared to aid each other to an unusual degree, a condition common to few schools. Hardship creates bonds. This truth can only be of benefit to the National Security.”

“I just wrote an essay in support of
hazing.
”

My roommates looked at me. Joey smiled. “Bang yur stupid crot neck in an’ gimme fifty push-ups an’ de Days, smack-head.”

“The Arguments Pro and Con: Submission of Cadet Grades to Parents” drew strong negative responses from the section. “We are either adults, prepared to defend the Nation, or not,” I wrote.

The essay “Should Toleration of Cheating Be the Equal of Cheating Itself?” was the most difficult for me. The Honor Code invoked strict liability; a slight infraction brought the most horrific penalty: expulsion from the Corps under the most painful conditions. A cadet Honor Board took evidence. You would be called into the boardroom in a midnight hearing to face a sword. If the hilt was offered, you were innocent—a grade far above “not guilty.” If you faced the sword point, you were dishonorably separated from the Corps, and cadets could not, ever after, speak of you. If found on honor by the Honor Board but reinstated by a successful officers’ appeal, no cadets
could speak to you during cadetship and for all time, unto death. You would be “silenced,” sentenced to live without relationships—a lifetime curse imposed by the school in the mountains and the clouds.

Uncle Shim had told me that this system existed in China. “The worst punishment on earth,
Hausheng
, is
k’ung hsu
, to be ignored and socially abandoned. A person without
gahng
and
lun
, bonds and relationships to others, is a living ghost, unworthy of life.”

I had been raised under the rules of Draco and was opposed to his culture, but I wrote, “A failure to attack cheating is as reprehensible as the original crime by the first offender.”

Captain Mac wrote: “What if the original offender is your best friend?” Smugly, I wrote above his comment in large capitals, “MY FRIENDS WOULDN’T CHEAT.”

It was the topic “Should Chapel Be Mandatory at West Point?” that taught me that emotions were part of life. I hated chapel but was afraid to give an honest answer; this was about the white Christian God, and his house, and could involve any number of consequences. Superstitious fear tugged at my heart. I wrote a cowardly essay in support of mandatory chapel. I realized that if I turned it in, it could be a breach of the Honor Code. I tried again, savaging the system with a fervor that reminded me of Edna’s antichurch beliefs. It was hysterical. Again I rewrote it, arguing for abolishment with a logical, clinical objectivity appropriate, I thought, to my dignified maturity.

“Mr. Ting?” called Captain Mac in his refined English accent. I stood at attention before his table, where he sat at the head of a U-shaped array of cadet desks and flanked by the chalkboard walls. There we performed individual recitations, for grades, every day, acting out Sylvanus Thayer’s vision of rampant scholasticism.

“Are you in favor of abolishing mandatory chapel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I disagree. You dedicate six pages in support, three against. I am influenced by the fact that you conclude with the argument against, but I found your reasoning for to be more compelling. Please explain the ambiguity.”

“Sir, I—I felt a—conflict in writing this essay.”

“Mr. Ting, it is my statement to that effect that brought you before my desk. I am not asking you to restate my inquiry. Please answer my questions.” Captain Mac’s wide face was wrinkled from brow to chin. His crow’s-footed eyes had
squinted for years, having seen the China that I had not. He slowly rolled his spare, square shoulders—a sign, I thought, of impatience.

“Sir—I—hate mandatory chapel. In my first try, I came out for it, thinking it was the approved solution. Then I realized it could have been an Honor violation. In my second try, I
attacked
mandatory chapel, and got sort of emotional. In my third try, I corrected that, trying to be more—reasonable, sir.”

“Yes, Mr. Ting. By all means let us not be
emotional.
Emotion might spring from passion, and passion from conviction. And we cannot have that, can we?” He looked at me.

I thought of the Academy motto: “Duty, Honor, Country.”

“Sir, we operate from conviction.”

“Good. Take your seat, Mr. Ting.” He stood.

“Gentlemen. I expect you to push the outer edge of the envelopes of your
beings.
I have stated that thinking may not be enough in this section room. The question is clear: What else is there, besides thinking, for future officers of the United States Army?” He looked around the U.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Ting. I believe you did not have your hand up. Give us your thoughts about what else there might be.”

“Sir,” I said. “There’s conviction, and passion, and—uh—emotion. I think, sir, under all that is belief.”

“Good, Mr. Ting. Thank you. Let me pose another question. Why, in weapons train-fire, are you not provided competition ear covers to block out sound to permit better aiming? Mr. Ziegler.”

“Sir,” said Rocket Scientist, “we have to aim during combat. You want us to feel our emotions, and operate on our beliefs—our values—not just our intellects.”

“Splendid and three-oh, Mr. Ziegler. Thank you. Who here knows something of his classmates in this section?”

All hands went up.

“And who knows something of my background?”

I was surprised to be the only one with my hand up. I liked to research my teachers. I thought everyone did.

“Gentlemen, herein begins the lecture.

“You may find me in the
Register of Graduates and Former Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy
and
Howitzer.
You can study my ribbons, wonder about the sources of all those wrinkles in my old, beat-up face, and surmise at the forces of nature that forced my ears from my head in flaps-up, air-brakes-out fashion.” We laughed.

“But that is a small part of the story. Let me tell you about who I am.” He sat on his desk.

“I am the son of a crowned regent, taught the ways of war by Sir James, a man of iron. I am a millionaire’s son who fell into the sea, where I was rescued by a Portuguese fisherman with a great heart. I know of the time that men must spend with boys,” he said, nodding, “if boys are to be men. I rode the Mississippi with Big Jim and sailed the Mediterranean as a Jewish prince condemned to the galleys. I ventured into the heart of darkness to define courage, wielded a musketeer’s rapier in countless duels of shallow honor for my vain queen, fled in blind fear from a screaming Rebel charge, and watched Achilles the Achaean indecently drag the slain body of Hector around the walls of Priam’s Troy.

“As Cordelia, I yearned for my father’s lost love. I was a fifth Chinese daughter; I was Portia, honorable in restraint and sympathetic to the suffering; I was Desdemona, slain by my husband’s blindness. I tramped the sewers of Paris with the police hot on my trail. I was Boo Radley’s faithful neighbor, but left Maycomb County to travel to Colonus to see the god-blessed monster. In 1984, I resided in room 101, and I was the Savage in a brave new world. I cry for the innocents, shout for the merciful. I experience the pleasures and aches of love, and separation, and loyalty refused, of life given, and patriotism expressed.

“That’s who Captain MacPellsin is. I am a reader of books, a fool for libraries, and a sorry, sniveling patsy for Book-of-the-Month Club salesmen. I absorb the instruction in books and retain them for my own use. Someday, on some battlefield, in some crisis, in the stewardship of my children or in my marriage, I will need the lessons of some of their lives to solve the problems in mine.”

He stood and circled the U, peering at us. “Gentlemen! This is not merely English 101B. This is
life.
Do not view this as the weak and vague side of your West Point education. All of you in the top sections are excellent students, superior cadet engineers, enamored of numbers and approved solutions.” I squirmed in my seat.

“
Feel
, gentlemen! Let passion beat within you! Do you
truly
think the great captains of West Point were just
engineers?
Negative, gentlemen. Any fool with a sword can risk his life for his regent, for his commander-in-chief. No, these were men who sweated, stank, dug maggots out of hardtack, cursed, and
struggled—
to protect their men.
Well, perhaps Robert E. Lee did not curse.

“They were great leaders,” he said crisply, “because
they loved their men
by acting in their interests. They were morally committed not only to Country but to the honor of dutiful service and to the survival of their people. Cicero said: ‘In the observance of duty lies all that is honorable, and in the neglect of it is all that is dishonorable.’

“A leader who does not know the passions of history, or the morality of literature, or the emotions of his soldiers, marches away from the observance of duty and compromises his nation.

“Gentlemen, without Homer, the Trojan War was a domestic spat with boats and some discordant dialogue in Asia Minor. But an old, blind poet, a storyteller of moral tales, has given us a fable for the ages. As soldiers, we can identify with the wise Nestor, the vain and gifted prima donna Achilles, the steady Ajax, the intrepid Diomedes, the loyal Hector, the handsome, frivolous Paris.

“Gentlemen, heed this: passion in the defense of a moral position is consistent with the moral man. It is also linked to your grade in this course. It is no accident that passion contributed to the formation of this country, and of this school, and of well-thought solutions for all human endeavor.

“Lads, you will not learn the ethics of leadership from psychology. Nor can you grasp the wisdom of military leaders who preceded you by studying their movements on bloodless maps and tactics sand tables. You cannot learn about the leading of men without grasping the tapestry of the entire human experience.

“You get that here, in the study of English. English embodies the human condition. You will need this, because outside these walls, you will lead
people
, not
equations.
” He stood, straightened his tunic, and grinned at us.

“End of lecture. Questions?… Very good. Stagger desks. For a three-point writ, explain ‘The Pros and Cons of Emotion in the Military Leader.’ Begin work.”

“Captain Mac teaches us to think,” I said to Clint Bestier.

“This is West Point,” he said. “If they wanted you to think, they wouldn’t have given you a slide rule.”

“He’s that old guy, right?” asked Joey Rensler.

“Watch who you call old,” said Bob Lorbus, age twenty-two.

“He must be forty. Why’s he only a captain?” asked Clint.

“Flew P-5Is in World War Two,” I said. “Three DFCs, Air Medals, Purple Heart, and now is Infantry. Must’ve been hurt bad to lose flight status. He was in the same unit my father was.”

That ended it. It was funny how my roommates gibed each other about everything—girlfriends, buddies, brothers, sisters, sex, politics, private organs, religion, and even mothers. But there was no ribaldry, sarcasm, or ribbing about dads. It was as if everyone were a Chinese son. It had been exactly the opposite in the ’hood, where it was open season on badmouthing fathers, and cursing someone’s mother was an invitation to a fight to the finish.

The next essay addressed West Point’s academic policy of expelling a cadet for failure in a single course. Joey, Clint, and I were holding on to the Academy with our teeth. They were at risk in English, and I in math, for legend had it that math, the great cadet slayer, would flush all of the lower math sections, where I resided. Major Yerks, our Tac, informed us that another two hundred classmates would be “found”—separated—this year. Plebe athletics, first semester math, and English already had flunked scores of us. We felt the cold breath of failure, seeking victims.

“I miss Stew,” I said as I began typing. Stew Mersey and his cursing, his bad moods, his quick mind, his abiding sense of unfair treatment. He showed the feelings I tried to control.

“Anyone could tell Stew was going to quit,” said Clint.

“He was always so quick on his feet. He would’ve done well.”

“Nope,” said Clint. He licked his lips and coughed. “Stew was only here for his dad. Can’t make it here on that alone.”

“Who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961?” asked Captain Mac. “Mr. Rodgers.”

“Sir, it was Miss Harper Lee,” said Matthew McBall “Meatball” Rodgers in his distinguished Southern accent.

“Who is Boo Radley?” asked Captain Mac.

“Sir,” said Curve Wrecker Davey Glick, “Mr. Radley’s your next-door neighbor in Maycomb County, before you left for Colonus.”

“Good memory, Mr. Glick. It is my pleasure to inform you that the next assignment is
To Kill a Mockingbird.
You will answer the question, ‘Who Is Boo Radley?’

“We will have the rare pleasure of the author’s presence next week. She will address us, and may answer the question herself. This is an honor for West Point. Miss Lee is an exceptional author who has categorically declined all college speaking invitations.

“Gentlemen, this is a coup. A female Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction is coming to West Point. Enjoy this experience to the hilt.” He beamed at us, his dark eyes afire. I twitched in my chair under his bright gaze. I had no interest in white Southern authors.

“Mr. Mankoff.”

“Sir,” said Ravine Mankoff, “what if my answer differs from hers? She has to be the undisputed master of the correct solution. Can I max the writ if I write something different?”