Scholar soldiers
IN A TIME OF WAR:
The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point’s Class of 2002
By Bill Murphy, Jr.
361 pp. Henry Holt $27.50
Reviewed by Jack Shakely
Ever since Thomas Jefferson established the United States Military Academy in 1802, Americans have been fascinated by the scholar/soldier that the West Point cadet personifies. There is something comforting in the numerous rock-solid traditions that accompany and shape the cadets, from the Beast Barracks through Hundred Days and the Flirtie Walk to the practice of showering the class “goat” with dollar bills, on the theory that he’s going to need them later. And regardless of how we feel about this war, or that war, or war in general, we are touched by a whiff of tragedy rising off the cadet class pictures, where history has shown us that among those scrubbed, fit and intelligent faces are a number of soon-to-be-dead eyes staring back at us.
This setting for heroism, honor and sacrifice has spawned some wonderful books over the years, including Stephen Ambrose’s Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point and, most notably perhaps, Rick Atkinson’s brilliant and highly-praised The Long Gray Line, an exhaustive twenty-five year study of the West Point Class of 1966.
It is logical that the Academy’s two-hundredth anniversary would spark literary interest in that anniversary class, the “Golden Children” of the West Point Class of 2002. Two of the best of these are Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky’s Absolutely American and Bill Murphy’s In a Time of War. Both books could, in fact, be considered the front and back halves of the same story. Both use the technique of oral histories to chronicle the men and women of this historic class. Lipsky’s book follows one company of cadets from the scary and purposefully discombobulating R-Day (Registration Day) through the four arduous cadet years to graduation and attainment of their “butter bars.” Lipsky’s book might be subtitled “Climbing the Mountain to the Light.”
In a Time of War takes six cadets from different companies in the same 2002 class, moves them quickly through their cadet years, and then devotes the majority of the book to the mandatory five years of active duty each new lieutenant must serve after leaving the Academy. This book, we discover, might be subtitled “Coming Down the Other Side to Darkness.”
Neither Murphy’s nor Lipsky’s book has the patina of time that burnishes The Long Gray Line. There, decades of angst, disappointment and recrimination color the characters’ vision and memory. Those West Pointers look back at a war they did not win, a war where their fallen comrades may, indeed, have died in vain. Twenty years after graduation, some of the balding, bespectacled alums such as Jack Wheeler, Wes Clark (yes, that Wes Clark) and others become obsessed with building the Vietnam Memorial and establishing various Vietnam veterans’ groups, saying in effect, “Forget the Vietnam War if you wish, but please don’t forget its warriors.”
The twenty-something soldiers of In a Time of War are not yet troubled by their place in history. West Point has never put a premium on introspection anyway, and these young men (and one young woman) are far more interested in their first assignment, their first command, getting married and having babies. Without this reflective underpinning, disillusionment sets in fast. Only months into their first assignment , three of the six express their desire to leave after their obligatory tour of duty, and one teeters on the fence.
In at least one way, the conversations of these Golden Children are as interesting for what they don’t mention as what they do. The motto of West Point is, of course, “Duty, Honor, Country.” But the third word in that motto is rarely discussed. The young officers are fervently patriotic, of course, but this is a job to them and they talk about doing their job, doing their duty. They don’t spend any time persuading their buddies or their disgruntled spouses that being placed in harm’s way in Afghanistan or Iraq for stop-loss month after stop-loss month is important to America’s freedom. They know better, and as they laugh ruefully at Dick Cheney on television saying victory in Iraq is imminent, their mood darkens. Ultimately only one of the six decides to stay in the Army beyond the five-year mandatory commitment, and that may owe something to the fact that she is married to another West Pointer, a “lifer.”
Bill Murphy, whose only previous experience was as a research assistant to Bob Woodward on his book State of Denial, isn’t a particularly gifted writer. Some of the moments that ascend to tragedy in The Long Gray Line feel like soap opera in Time of War:
The end of the reception was tough. It almost didn’t feel like a celebration anymore, with everybody sad that Todd and Jen would be separated so soon after their wedding day. As much as she tried to enjoy herself, Jen couldn’t stop thinking that in less than eighteen hours, she would put her husband on a plane back to Fort Riley. Kara Ponds hugged Todd good-bye, tears streaming down her face. “Be careful,” she said.
But Ken Burns has shown us in the letters from soldiers read in his television masterpiece Civil War that the eloquence of honesty doesn’t need wordsmithing. In a Time of War is an honest book, faithfully rendered by a writer who goes out of his way not to interject his own conclusions. The book is also, along with its companion Absolutely American, a thorough examination of how West Point nurtures and develops its scholar soldiers, and the maturation of the Golden Children from peacetime plebes in 1998 to seasoned warriors a decade later.
If you are a fan of West Point, and your number is legion, In a Time of War deserves a place on your bookshelf. But if you only have room for one book, make it The Long Gray Line.
Jack Shakely is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California and author of the historical novel The Confederate War Bonnet. He was a lieutenant in the Army during the Vietnam era.
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