BACK FROM BASIC TRAINING
'Beast Barracks' beat cadets into future
officers
By Alexa James
August 14, 2007
West
Point — They marched off six weeks ago as valedictorians, Eagle
Scouts, prom queens and quarterbacks.
They
marched back yesterday, no fancier than the mud on their shoes.
It's all
part of a centuries-old system designed to turn a mass of 1,310 fresh-faced
cadet candidates into the United States Military Academy's Class of 2011. Maj. Tom
Bryant calls it the "baptism of fire," a rigorous basic training
program that tears teenagers apart so the Army can piece them back together.
Cadets
call it "Beast Barracks," a miserable process that teaches new
recruits how to take orders, shoot guns, set up camp and march.
Roughly four dozen dropped out during the ordeal, but the rest set out
yesterday at dawn, marching 12 miles from Camp Buckner back to West Point. Once
there, on the superintendent's front lawn, the Class of 2011 would reintroduce
itself, sweaty and sunburned and squared away, to teary parents and
fine-pressed Army brass.
Ten miles into the trek, the grubby parade stops at the base of a grassy
ski slope to grab chow and change socks.
A recruit
from Alabama named Economy was dubbed the worst blister case in Hotel
Company. He plops down on the bank, counts to three, then tears off the duct
tape wrapped around moleskin wrapped around Band-Aids wrapped around the oozing
sores on his pale, wrinkled heels.
"They've
been infected twice," says Jacob Bosshardt
Economy, referring to toes that look like they've soaked in a tub for days.
"That's OK," he says, "because I never fell out." This, he
insists — blisters and warfare and a warm turkey sandwich — is the higher
education he signed up for.
"Everybody
else in my high school is going off to college and doing the party thing,"
he says. "I wanted to make a difference." Men and
women who endure West Point's four-year training regiment graduate with both military and academic
prestige. The Academy runs one of the nation's best engineering programs.
Graduates earn bachelor of science degrees on par with
the Ivy League and also graduate as commissioned Army officers.
As second
lieutenants,
West
Point grads
owe a minimum of five years' active duty service. The Class of 2007, officials
say, should face their first deployments within a year. That's the
primary purpose of West Point: to churn out fresh leaders to command new wars.
To remind
the new recruits, a cadre of Academy alums flank them
on their march back from basic training. There are worn soldiers marching from
the Class of '45 and dozens from '61, back for their 50th reunion. "Sixty-one
is second to none," the old officers chant.
The new
class has a motto, too. "For freedom we fight: 2011." Andrew Uhorchak, 18, of
Cornwall, marches beside his father, retired
Col. John Uhorchak, Class of '75; his brother Nick,
22, a senior at the Academy; and his sister Jackie, 20, now a junior at
West Point. Andy, for
his part, looks ragged and sore. "He
seems pretty beat," his dad says, "but he'll survive. Like thousands
of cadets before him, he'll survive."
