“Yes we’ll have a taste of it, and that’s about all!” Tom went on. “We’ll have to drill harder than we do now, and we’ll have to wait on some of the upper classmen like slaves.”
“Oh well, I suppose it’s good for what ails us,” said Sam, with a sigh. “If the others went through with it I guess we can stand it.”
“There’s no getting out of it. We’re here for four years, if we’re lucky enough to stick,” Tom ventured. “After all, we won’t always be in the awkward squad.”
“We were lucky enough not to be put in the ‘goats,’” remarked Sam. “Well, I’m going to take it easy. Listen if you hear any one coming,” and he took a restful position that would not allow him to spring easily to attention in case of the unexpected entrance of a “tac,” but he depended on the sharp ears of his companions to warn him.
The boys, as I have said, had just come in from some hard drilling. This necessary instruction had begun as soon as they had formally been sworn in as subjects of the United States. Four hours a day were devoted to “setting-up” exercises, the drill-masters being cadets from the upper classes, each one of whom was given charge over eight plebes.
And stern drill-masters they were, too, though perhaps not more so than the necessity required. Certainly a plebe is very awkward, compared with the military uprightness, sprightliness and precision of the finished cadet.
Tom never told his mother all he suffered, mentally and physically, during those first few weeks when he was being given the rudiments of a military education. He and his two companions who roomed together were forced to march here and there, back and forth, in all sorts of primary formations. They had to walk with chins drawn in, stomachs pulled up, with shoulders farther back than it seemed possible to force them, and they must never suffer themselves to slump out of this tiresome position. At least it was tiresome then, though later it became a fixed posture, that the trained cadet assumed naturally.
Then they had to march under a hot sun, and before the eyes of such chance visitors and excursionists as came to West Point, and these visitors did not always restrain their smiles or laughter at the antics of the awkward squad.
“I’d like to see how some of them would like it,” complained Tom, after a particularly hard drill, when he and his chums had detected a bevy of pretty girls smiling at them.
“They’ll be glad enough, later, to have us ask ’em to a hop,” said Sam.