Newman pointed across Stewart’s chest and out the window.
“That’s it right there,” he said. Stewart looked out.
He could see gray ships riding at anchor and a white building just off an island.
“That’s the memorial. The whole installation is a secure area. I’ll give you the name of the Navy guy in charge.” Newman laughed.
“Hell, we’re on a damn island. Security’s been a piece of cake so far.
Enjoy yourself.”
Stewart leaned back in the seat and tried to do just that, but Maxwell’s words stayed in his head. He cursed to himself.
So much for having a good time. Stewart knew he wouldn’t be able to relax until this whole trip was over.
Trace didn’t think about needing a ticket to get into the stadium until she’d parked the rental car twelve blocks away and walked to Veterans Stadium. The game was sold out and the ticket booth locked and closed.
It was a nice day for early December in Philadelphia. The weather was in the low forties and the sun was shining brightly.
Between the stadium and the Spectrum, she could see the Corps of Cadets lining up, 4,000 strong. To their left, the Brigade of Midshipmen was already beginning its march-on, entering the stadium.
Trace mingled in the civilian crowd near the stadium, searching for someone hawking tickets. She ended up paying fifty dollars in cash for an upper-level seat, a rather deep investment for a game between two non-nationally ranked teams. But, as Trace well knew, the Army-Navy game was much more than a simple football game. It was an event.
When Trace had entered West Point in July of 1978, the game in early December had been the first time she’d been allowed off-campus in the six months since entering Beast Barracks. At that time, the Academy had bussed all the plebes down to the game Saturday morning and back on the “vomit comet” that evening. In the few hours the plebes had between the end of the game and the mandatory bus formation to return, most tried to imbibe as much alcohol as possible at tailgate parties and local hotels, leading to a grim scene on the four-hour ride back up to New York.
From talking to more recent graduates. Trace had heard that the Academy had modernized slightly, allowing all cadets — even plebes! — the weekend off as long as they showed up for the march-on and game and weren’t on disciplinary restriction.
The new freedoms being allowed cadets were bitterly protested by old grads of which Trace assumed she now was one. She didn’t follow the old grad “make it as hard for them as it was for. me” theory. After graduation, she had seen several of her classmates, unused to responsibility, since almost every of aspect of their lives as cadets had been dictated, fail miserably when given the authority and responsibility of being platoon leaders in the Army. Trace had often wondered where and how the Academy thought the magical maturation from being a cadet to being an officer occurred. In her time they certainly had never treated her and her classmates as responsible, thinking adults prior to sending them forth into the Army.
Trace made her way into the stadium and began heading for the section Colonel Rison had indicated. The midshipmen had finished their march-on, done a few traditional cheers, and were now beginning to file off into their place in the stands. Trace noted that many of the naval academy students were drunk, unable to march in step.
Trace remembered carrying a bottle of Jack Daniels on the inside pocket of her dress gray overcoat’to the game in 1981 and mixing the liquor with Coke in a can during the fourth quarter and sharing it with her roommate in the stands. The alcohol fuel helped explain the enthusiastic cheers of the Corps of Cadets in that game as time ran out and their side was being pounded by the Navy 33-6. Alcohol was one of the ways cadets dealt with living in a high-stress environment. And from intimate experience Trace knew that the stress was very real. In her first six months at the Academy, she had not had a period. Finally gathering her courage, she had gone on sick call to get checked. The doctor at the hospital had told her that such a thing was not uncommon among female cadets and advised her not to worry.
“The Corps of Cadets!” the speakers in the stadium blared as the announcer welcomed the Corps.
“Duty, honor, country. The long gray line. From the United States Military Academy on the Hudson River at West Point. Distinguished cadets include Ulysses S. Grant. Robert E. Lee.
Douglas MacArthur. George S. Patton. Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
Trace wondered why they never mentioned Custer or Edgar Alien Poe who had managed a little time at the Academy.
One of the pieces of knowledge she’d been required to memorize as a plebe was the answer to the question “Who commanded the major battles of the Civil War?”
The answer, according to the Bugle Notes issued to every cadet was: “There were sixty important battles of the war.
In fifty-five of them, graduates commanded on both sides; in the remaining five, a graduate commanded one of the opposing sides.”
Boomer had once half-jokingly told her that that helped explain why that war lasted so long.
Trace paused on the second level of the stadium and watched as the thirty-six companies that compromised the Corps of Cadets marched onto the field in large gray blocks.
The announcer called out the brigade commander and his home town, then each regimental commander, every battalion commander, and every company commander as the designated unit took its place.
The midshipmen were still filing into the seats as the cadets began their rote cheers, something the entire Corps had spent three late afternoons the previous week practicing.
One thing Trace had always found a bit amazing about West Point was the way enthusiasm was dictated.
“Spontaneous pep rallies” prior to games were planned, which sort of defeated the entire purpose of the event. The last meal that the football team ate in the mess hall before a game was called “Joe College” night, where, in the mighty leniency of the powers-that-be, cadets could wear a civilian shirt with their uniform pants to the dinner meal. In some convoluted thinking, that small taste of normalcy was supposed to increase morale rather than increase awareness of the differences of Academy life from mainstream America.
It was a tribute to the desperation of the Corps, that it did increase morale.
Trace listened as the 4,000 members of the Corps dutifully shouted out a less-than-spontaneous cheer written decades earlier, led by gold-and-gray clad rabble rousers:
“Away, away, away we go, “What care we for any foe?
“Up and down the field we go! “Just to beat the Navy.
“A-R-M-Y! TEAM!”
Trace looked down and caught the guidon for Company I-1, her home for her first two years at the Academy. She’d survived the inferno, and after two years, during the scramble, where all third year cadets were reassigned to new companies, she’d been assigned to the last company in the Corps — I-4. She’d found life in 4th Regiment to be a bit more laid back, the only major problem being that as the last company to pass in review during a cadet parade, cadets from A-l were already back in their barracks, showered, changed, and up in the parking lots two miles away departing on leave while I-4 was still saluting the flag while passing in review.
She continued to make her way around the stadium. The seat that Rison had indicated was right beside where the Corps of Cadets was to be seated, and when the cadets finished their cheers, they flowed into the stands, making her going slow. She halted, hand over heart, when the national anthem was played. As soon as it was over, she was caught in the reverse tide as cadets poured back onto the field to form a welcoming cordon for the team to come onto the field. Most of the cordon was made up of plebes who felt obligated to be out there, while savvy upperclassmen took the best seats in the stands during their absence.