David Lipsky

"I came to love, really love, road marching. It's called a suck or a haze at West Point, but I think the cadets aren't being fair to it. There's something wonderful about being in a column of marching people: the gravel popping under soles, the leather flexing in boots, the kind of saddle-top sounds as the ruck (what a backpack gets called in the Army) frames settle. Occasionally someone, out of sheer misery, sighing Oooh, or just blowing out air, which in the general silence is like a whale breaching and then slipping back under the surface. You can watch a leaf float down from a tree or stare at the guy's rifle in front of you. The boiling of life down to its basic questions: Can you do this? Can you hang with the rest of us? Those questions don't get asked much, in the civilian world."

"Applying to West Point is a clerical road march. Fifty thousand high school juniors step off together, filling out the official request-for-information form. From there it's a test of stamina, a battle of attrition. Twelve thousand candidates complete the application. Six thousand make it to the physical aptitude examination stage, a fitness pop quiz- push-ups, pull-ups, standing long jump, three-hundred-yard dash. Service academies are the only institutions in the country that will measure how far you can toss a basketball from a kneeling position. (A little under seventy feet is the minimum.) Four thousand candidates are nominated by their senators or congressmen. The congressional nomination is a round-robin event, ten candidates competing for each slot, elected officials taking a turn as admissions officers, sifting through transcripts, recommendations, and clean-cut photographs. (Especially ambitious parents will snag jobs at a congressman's in-town headquarters, hoping to gain their kids an inside track.) If your parents are career military, you can jump the line and apply directly to the president. If one of them happens to be disabled, deceased, POW or MIA- or a recipient of the Medal of Honor- your file skips all the way to the superintendent's desk at West Point. Then the folks at admissions get down to the elimination round, stacking valedictorians against team captains, yearbook editors against debaters. Two thousand hardy candidates are pronounced qualified for admission, but only about twelve hundred get offered actual West Point places. They receive a plaque in the mail. In many small towns, friends and neighbors stop in for viewings."

"For ten minutes there's nothing. Because this is a way to commemorate loss: with an absence, with stillness, with nothing. A steady sprinkler noise of insects rises off the grass, treetops rustle like the sound of approaching water. A truck bumps down a distant road, dragging a hole through the quiet. The cadets stare out to where they sky ends behind the dark, bulky hills. The drill team fires a twenty-one-gun salute. Seven rifles, three shots apiece, each volley followed by a fluffy spreading echo. Then there's the night with its chilly smells of granite and grass and powder. The first slow notes of a bugle, a mournful taps: up the scale, over the scale, down the scale. Then the cadet bagpipe team begins. Matthew MacSweeney is with them, playing "Amazing Grace," with its frills and edges. Faraway music, crimped by sadness, to escort the week's losses over the Plain. After a moment, the cadets sing the alma mater. The sound is close to breathing, the faintest way four thousand people can sing one song. Then the cadets file out- the snap and click of shoes, a rush of gray and white, faces going visible in the light from doorways- and the night is left alone with itself. A quarter hour later, Josh Rizzo is back in his room, staring at his hand. "I didn't know if I was ready," he says, "until this shit happened. I mean, I came here originally to play baseball. But I know now, I'm here to defend this nation. I have no fears, no qualms about going." He runs his fingers over his ring. "It's weird. When I first got this ring, I thought, 'Look at this cool ring. I can get any job I want.' Now I look at it and I think, 'We are called.' I've got a job to do. I've got to defend my home.""

"The graduates return to barracks for the final uniform change, then spread out across the post for their swearing-in ceremonies. George is sworn in by the rabbi. Captain Parades swears in a bunch of Guppies on the Plain. At a tent by the water, before his parents, Huck is sworn in by Major Vermeesch. His mother and father thank the officer for what he's practiced on their son. It's a long march to bring Vermeesch and Huck to this spot together. Before he leaves, the major hands Huck a gift, a copy of the military novel Once an Eagle. "Next to the Bible," Vermeesch says, "this is probably the best book ever written. Just read it, OK?" A couple months later, when Huck actually starts the novel, a memo on official West Point stationary falls from between the pages. He's not going to read it- he assumes the major stuck it there as a bookmark and then forgot about it. Then he glances at the subject line: it's the official record of their counseling session, from February 2000. There were all the TAC's warnings about "discipline" and "separation" and "questioning your desire to be an Army officer." In the upper right corner, beside the date 6/1/02, Vermeesch has scribbled in, "What a transformation. Continue to make us proud.""