Cadet Days: A Story of West Point

by Charles King

But no term or title is so calculated to convey with it so much of exasperation in the case of the plebe, strange as it may seem, as one which is exclusively military. Just why this should be so it is difficult to explain. The end and aim of West Point existence is the winning of a commission that opens the way to a series, perhaps, of military titles; yet let a plebe be saddled with some such appendage to his name, and all the explanations in the world cannot save him from misconception and annoyance.

From the time a new cadet is fairly in uniform and a member of the battalion, he has perhaps no higher ambition than that of being made a corporal at the end of his year of probation. It is indeed a case where "many are called but few chosen." Four out of five are doomed to disappointment, but the head of the class in scholarship stands not so high in cadet esteem as he who heads the list of officers. To be made senior corporal at the end of the first year, and, as such, acting sergeant-major, or first sergeant throughout camp, in the absence of the Second Class or furlough men, is to be the envied of almost every other yearling; but to have conferred upon one in his plebe camp by common consent the title of "Corporal" carries with it a weight of annoyance little appreciated outside of the gray battalion; and it was Geordie Graham's luck to begin his very first tour of guard duty with this luckless handle—that, too, coupled with the diminutive of "Pops."

Even as he paced up and down the shaded path of Number Three, he could hear the mischievous delight with which the old cadets pointed him out as the new corporal, and could not but hear the somewhat malicious allusions made by his own classmates, some of whom (for there is a heap of human nature in every plebe class that has to be hammered out of it in course of time) were not very sorry to see a cloud of worry gathering over the first of their number to win praise for soldierly excellence, and none were more ready—hard as it may be to say so—than his tent-mate Frazier.

Geordie swallowed it all in silence, vigilantly walking the post assigned him, paying strict attention to the instructions given him every few moments by the officers of the guard. Time and again, as a boy, he had played at walking post in front of the doctor's quarters, punctiliously saluting officers in the daytime, and sternly challenging after dark before being hustled off to bed. All this stood him in good stead now. He had studied the cool, professional way of the regulars on sentry duty, and looked far more at home on post this bright July day than any of his class-mates. Both Lieutenant Allen, who was officer in charge, and Cadet Captain Leonard, who was officer of the day, said, "Very well indeed, sir!" as he repeated the long list of his instructions.

It galled him to think that when gentlemen of their standing should treat him with such respect, and when the general regulations of the army provided that all persons of whatsoever rank in the service should observe respect towards sentries, so many old cadets, lolling in the shade of their tent-flies in Company A, so many class-mates skipping along inside his post on the path leading to the shoeblack's or the water-tank, should make audible comments about the "corporal on post."

His life had been spent on the frontier, where the safety of the camp depended on the vigilance of the sentry, and where no man, high or low, behaved towards a soldier on such duty except with the utmost respect. He remembered what McCrea had told him, that even as a sentry on post—indeed, more so at such times than at any other, so long as he was green and unaccustomed to the duty—it was the habit of the old cadets in the old days to "devil" and torment the plebe in every conceivable way. But Geordie argued that he was not green. He knew the main points of sentry duty as well as any cadet, though nowhere are the finer points, the more intricate tests, so taught as they are at the Military Academy.

It was actually his misfortune that he knew so much. Geordie Graham might have been spared many an hour of trouble and injustice and misrepresentation had he not been imbued with the soldier idea of the sacred character of the sentinel. It was one thing to submit to the unwritten laws and customs of the corps of cadets, so long as they were applied to him in his personal capacity. It was a very different matter, however, in his judgment, to be interfered with or molested as a member of the guard.

His first "two hours on" in the morning passed without material annoyance, for most of the corps were out of camp at drill. At dinner-time, after marching down with the guard, he found his class-mates at the B Company table, to which he had been assigned, awaiting his coming with no little eagerness; but as the yearlings began their quizzing the instant he took his seat and unfolded his napkin, Frazier and Burns were forced to be silent. Connell had remained with the relief posted at camp during the absence of the battalion, so Pops had his fire to undergo all alone. The Third Class men hailed him, of course, by his recently discovered title.