Authors: Ed Ruggero
The PA system blasts rock and roll. Above that thunders the voice of this morning’s instructor, Captain Carol Anderson. She wears the black shorts and gray shirt of the Department of Physical Education; a headset microphone is clamped over her short hair.
“Get off the side of my pool!” she calls, her voice absurdly amplified. “Tread water, tread water, tread water!”
The heads visible above the churning water push away from the side. Most of them are smiling; a few of them look frightened. There
are a few flotation vests, visible just below the surface of the water, on the weak swimmers.
Brian Turner is with the other tactical officers. Without his glasses, Turner squints as he looks around. The whole scene shakes with the music as Joan Jett belts out her love for rock and roll.
“Hands up, hands up!” Anderson calls out. “Run in place!”
Hands come out of the water, some higher than others. A lot of these people are outstanding athletes, and they can’t help showing off. The Tacs splash one another like kids at the neighborhood pool.
This is unit physical training. The Commandant calls all of his people together a few times a year, not because they need more exercise than they’re getting, but to reinforce the sense that they belong to a team. There is a danger, as they work in their widely dispersed offices, that they might forget that crucial point. Here, in the pool, all they have to do is look around.
As Garth Brooks twangs, “Ain’t comin home til the sun comes up,” Sergeant First Class Tim Bingham, a broad smile on his face, laughs with his mouth wide open.
In this culture, if it’s supposed to be fun, if it’s supposed to be good for the organization, it’s probably built around physical activity.
All the team-building has immediate results: The academy runs better when everyone has the sense of working toward a single purpose. But running a good school isn’t the ultimate end, and there are reminders of that everywhere.
On the wall of the room overlooking the pool is a large frame with several photographs and a long piece of text. One shot shows Cadet Paul Bucha, ‘65, in his graduation photo. Another shows Bucha, captain of the Army swimming team, kneeling by the pool, all smile and lean muscle. Another picture shows Captain Bucha in dress uniform, the Medal of Honor hanging from a sky-blue ribbon around his neck.
Paul Bucha won the Medal of Honor for combat actions over a three-day battle in 1968, near Phuoc Vinh, Vietnam. The official citation, written in the stilted, artificial style of awards, compresses the events of three remarkable days into a couple of paragraphs.
Captain Bucha distinguished himself while serving as commanding officer, Company D, on a reconnaissance-in-force mission against enemy forces near Phuoc Vinh, Republic of Vietnam. The company was inserted by helicopter into the suspected enemy stronghold to locate and destroy the enemy. During this period Captain Bucha aggressively and courageously led his men in the destruction of enemy fortifications and base areas and eliminated scattered resistance impeding the advance of the company. On 18 March, while advancing to contact, the lead elements of the company became engaged by the heavy automatic weapon, heavy machinegun, rocket-propelled grenade, Claymore mine and small-arms fire of an estimated battalion-size force. Captain Bucha, with complete disregard for his safety, moved to the threatened area to direct the defense and ordered reinforcements to the aid of the lead element. Seeing that his men were pinned down by heavy machinegun fire from a concealed bunker located some 40 meters to the front of the positions, Captain Bucha crawled through the hail of fire to single-handedly destroy the bunker with grenades. During this heroic action Captain Bucha received a painful shrapnel wound. Returning to the perimeter, he observed that his unit could not hold its positions and repel the human wave assaults launched by the determined enemy. Captain Bucha ordered the withdrawal of the unit elements and covered the withdrawal to positions of a company perimeter from which he could direct fire upon the charging enemy. When the friendly element retrieving casualties was ambushed and cut off from the perimeter, Captain Bucha ordered them to feign death and he directed artillery fire around them. During the night Captain Bucha moved throughout the position, distributing ammunition, providing encouragement and insuring the integrity of the defense. He directed artillery, helicopter gunship and Air Force gunship fire on the enemy strong points and attacking
forces, marking the positions with smoke grenades. Using flashlights [while] in complete view of enemy snipers, he directed the medical evacuation of three air-ambulance loads of seriously wounded personnel and the helicopter supply of his company. At daybreak Captain Bucha led a rescue party to recover the dead and wounded members of the ambushed element. During the period of intensive combat, Captain Bucha, by his extraordinary heroism, inspirational example, outstanding leadership and professional competence, led his company in the decimation of a superior enemy force, which left 156 dead on the battlefield. His bravery and gallantry at the risk of his life are in the highest traditions of the military service. Captain Bucha has reflected great credit on himself, his unit, and the United States Army.
This citation is one of the few complete versions displayed prominently at West Point, but the cadet area is filled with bronze tablets commemorating other Medal of Honor winners. They are fixed to the barracks walls, to the library, to Eisenhower Hall. They are like the statues of famous men in that they honor heroes, but they are different in a profound way.
The cadets who walk past Eisenhower’s statue, who pass MacArthur and Patton and Thayer, might reasonably expect that their careers will not take them to four or five stars and the command of hundreds of thousands of soldiers engaged in a global war. But any cadet might one day find himself or herself faced with an unforeseen crisis, with the chance to do something courageous. The plaques and the statues tell the cadets what feats others have accomplished in their crucial hours. Like Bucha’s Medal of Honor, which hangs in a shadow box outside the entrance to Crandall Pool, they remind cadets of what they may be called upon to do.
The Superintendent’s office sits high in the stone tower of Taylor Hall, at the top of a staircase of polished stone. Embedded in the walls are trophy cannons from the Mexican War. There is a large foyer
outside the Superintendent’s office: The floors gleam, the leather furniture is sedate, the lighting muted, and the whole area feels more like a cathedral than an administration building.
Just outside the big oak doors sits a colorful display of photographs showing a wide look of cadet life. In one photo, taken at a football game at Michie Stadium, the Superintendent, Lieutenant General Daniel W. Christman, USMA ‘65, leaps into the air to bounce off the chest of A-Man, a caped superhero in black and gold, Army’s unofficial mascot.
The cadets love Christman for this exuberance.
“He’s great at the football games,” Cadet Jacque Messel says. “Running around with A-Man.”
Christman’s energy is on display as he strides into the Cadet Mess amid the crowd of gray pouring in for lunch. He is a big man, six two, two hundred pounds, broad in the chest and shoulders. He has white hair and a healthy, florid complexion; he is almost always smiling.
“Hello, hello,” he greets the cadets, many of whom he knows by name. They move to get out of his way, but they aren’t scattering. They move because he’s the Supe, a three-star general, and military courtesy demands that they make way. But they don’t move far; they linger in his line of sight, meet his eyes, smile when they greet him. They like being around him. He gives them hearty, two-handed handshakes, pats them on the shoulder, leans close when they talk to him.
Christman has just come from three long hours trapped in his office: meetings with his staff and speechwriters, telephone calls and letters, strategic planning, and community relations. He’s come to the Mess Hall specifically to congratulate the women’s basketball team on the weekend’s victory over archrival Navy. Here among the troops, Christman is like a kid let out of school.
Around him, hundreds of tables are crammed in tight quarters, and there is a din of noise as the cadets jostle each other, shout to friends, give commands to plebes. Christman attracts attention, and the cadets at nearby tables crane their necks to catch a glimpse. In the short wing of the old mess hall, which dates from the twenties (and where Cadet Christman ate many of his meals) he finds the
women’s basketball tables. He greets the firsties, who have played their last game against Navy. The seniors introduce the underclass players to him.
“Don’t get up,” he tells the underclass cadets, who push their chairs back at his approach. The team captains stand deferentially, happy to be singled out for the honor of a visit. When the cadet adjutant calls the corps to attention, Christman snaps to, straight as any plebe, until the command, “Take seats.”
“I’m going to say hello to the hockey team,” Christman tells his aide as he heads to another wing of the Mess Hall.
Under a twenty-foot stained-glass window depicting Washington, Christman greets a headwaiter in the same way he does his favorite athletes. He finds the hockey team in the corner, shakes hands with the cadets at the head of the table and chats them up amid the deafening roar of the Mess Hall. They are all smiles and good cheer because the leader has come to see them, has walked over on his way home to say a few words to the troops.
“It takes a great deal of talent to be a good Superintendent,” Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Weart, of the Commandant’s staff, says. “There aren’t many guys out there who have what it takes. You’ve got to have the intellectual ability and the academic credentials to head up a major college. Christman has that.”
Daniel W. Christman was first in his class of 1965, a singular honor the Academy mentions in every press release and official introduction.
“The guy earned a law degree in his spare time while he was working at the Pentagon,” Weart says, shaking his head in disbelief, not at Christman’s considerable intellectual ability, but at the fact that someone could find free time while working at the Pentagon.
In addition to the Doctor of Jurisprudence from George Washington University, Christman holds two master’s degrees from Princeton (in Systems Engineering and Public Administration). He can hold his own with any college president.
“A Supe also has to have all the Army credentials. He has to have done the general thing.”
In order to be respected among his colleagues who wear stars and run the Army, in order to be a voice among the other major commands, whoever occupies the big office in Taylor Hall must have commanded at the highest levels. Christman led an engineer company in Vietnam, a battalion in Germany, and several directorates in Washington before becoming the commanding general of Fort Leonard Wood and the U.S. Army Engineer School, responsible for training all the Army’s combat engineers.
“And even all that isn’t good enough,” Weart says. “The guy has to connect with the cadets if this place is going to run well. And not everyone can do that.”
Weart mentions a few names. Howard Graves, Christman’s predecessor, “acted like he was afraid of cadets.”
Dave Palmer, who was Superintendent from 1987–1992, was also incapable of connecting with the cadets, staff, or faculty.
“No personality,” Weart says. “Christman has it all. The cadets love him.”
Christman needs all this influence because of the paradox of leadership at his level: He has very little direct control over what happens at West Point. He leads by keeping focused on the mission, by providing opportunities for his subordinate leaders to make things happen, by setting the course. This hands-off approach takes imagination and energy. It also takes more than one man’s share of self-confidence, and no small amount of courage.
Outside the administration building, Thayer Road is awash in gray uniforms as hundreds of cadets head back from class. General Christman steps outside, then makes a little clicking noise. He is doing exactly what the most junior instructors do: he tries not to be outside when the street is full of cadets, because they all salute and they all want him to salute back, one at a time.
An academy van is parked by the curb in front of Taylor Hall, and two NCOs stand by the open door. Christman greets them by first name; they call him “general.” One of the NCOs gets the two-handed shake.
The van crawls slowly through the area. Most traffic is banned here, so the cadets walk in the street. They also salute—there is a license plate with three stars on the front—and Christman waves back, like a popular mayor. He says aloud the names and sports of a half dozen cadets he sees, and every cadet he names is a Corps Squad athlete.
The only criticism of Christman commonly voiced among the faculty and staff is that he focuses too much on Army sports and Corps Squad athletes.
His visit to the Mess Hall earlier that day was for the express purpose of congratulating the women’s basketball team. On the way through the crowd, Christman stopped to chat with two huge cadets, both football players. After greeting the basketball players he waded through the crowd to a far corner of the huge room to say hello to the hockey team.
Asked if the Superintendent knows any cadets who aren’t athletes, his aide, Major John Moellering, hesitates before answering. It could be that the question has not occurred to him before.
“Well, he knows the chain of command,” Moellering says. “The brigade staff. And the Honor Committee.”
Much of this criticism of Christman comes from the academic side of the house. According to one professor, at every briefing of the staff and faculty, the Superintendent trots out various Corps Squad captains and sports stars. “But I couldn’t tell you what the top-ranked academic cadet looks like, or who the scholarship winners are.”
In a meeting with the presidents of West Point’s alumni organizations, who gathered at the Academy in August, Christman spent nearly forty minutes of his hour talking about sports facilities. To dramatize the need for new locker rooms in the football stadium, he used orange traffic cones, set up on stage, to show the size of the shower room used by the football team.