The camp is prettily situated in the northeast corner of the Plain along the bluff overlooking the Hudson. In form it is rectangular, laid out for six companies whose streets are centrally cut by an avenue known as the general parade. The streets are parallel to the parade ground proper, from which they are separated and screened by a hedge.
Nor is the cadet camp lacking in the features that make every permanent camp comfortable and convenient for the soldier. For these creature comforts, the cadets have been at times criticised on the ground that soldiers in the field should be content with the bare necessities of life. The cadet camp, however, is intended as a camp of instruction only. In military life there are two kinds of camps, the permanent camp and the temporary camp. In the latter, soldiers live close to nature dispensing with the hundred and one little conveniences that all of us today consider necessary to our physical well-being, but in the former, such as the cadet encampment, the soldier is provided with a maximum of comfort—and why not? The illustrated magazines that help to bring us closer to the Great War in Europe give visual proof that when men remain for any length of time in one place, even in the zone of danger, they build and adorn abodes. It may be that an enemy shell will destroy these shelters the next moment, but the domestic instinct remains unimpaired. Some of the bomb-proof dugouts on the western front are miniature triumphs of architecture and comfort. The occupation year after year of the cadet camp has had the same effect. We therefore see today a camp with graveled company streets that are illuminated at night by electricity. The tents, instead of being pegged, are supported by galvanized iron rails. The dim candle of olden times is replaced by the brilliant electric bulb, and the cadet, instead of reposing his weary bones on the hard wooden floor, slumbers luxuriously on a Gold Medal cot.
A large central tent, like a mother hen watching over her brood, is reserved for the Commandant of Cadets. The tents of the cadet officers are on the opposite edge of the space in front of the Tactical officers’ tents, the next indication of hierarchical authority. Then come the tents of the non-commissioned officers and the privates.
To have a neat-looking camp, strict regulations govern the arrangement of the tents. Twice a day they are aligned. Due to changes in the temperature, the supporting cords lengthen or shorten, so that the front tent-pole gets out of alignment. Then an authoritative voice rings out:
“Turn out, ‘B’ company, and straighten your tent-poles!” Whereupon cadets in all conditions of dress and undress tumble out of the little brown canvas homes. When it rains the cords must be loosened at the first pitter-patter of the raindrops on the tent-fly. The new plebe sitting in his underwear in his tent, probably polishing his breastplate for the twenty-fifth time that day, does not realize that this duty must be performed until a dozen or more yearlings command from the recesses of the canvas bungalows:
“Turn out, you plebes, and loosen those tent-cords!” Out they jump into the “catacombs” (the space between the tents), bumping their heads against the rails, and at once commence tugging at the obstinate, water-soaked tent-cords, while the summer downpour soaks them to the skin.
To each tent two cadets are assigned, one of whom performs for a week at a time the duty of tent orderly. Whenever the cadet detailed for orderly is absent on account of duty or sickness, his tent-mate becomes responsible. In order that the Tactical officer in charge of any company may know which cadet is responsible, there is fastened on the front tent-pole, a revolving octagonal disk of wood, about three inches in diameter. Both cadets’ names, as well as the words “Guard” “Sick,” are printed on the face of the disk, along one of the sides, and the disk revolved to indicate the name of the orderly, or the cause of the occupant’s absence. The orderly is also supposed to keep the water bucket filled, but the occupants of each tent usually have some private treaty whose provisions prescribe which one shall “drag” the water from the hydrant.
Generally speaking the orderly is responsible for the cleanliness and police of the tent, and of the ground adjacent and in front, as far as the middle of the company street where the rubbish is swept into a pile to be removed by the policemen. These men are civilian employees, many of whom have been at the Academy so long that they are intimately identified with the Corps. In time, some of them will fade into legendary characters much the same as Benny Havens. Promptly at police call at five o’clock, the wheelbarrow squad commanded by “Mike,” “Frank,” or “Tony,” moves ceremoniously down the street collecting the sweepings. At this hour the camp presents an animated scene. Cadets are busily dragging the ground around their tents with a broom to give it a “spoony” appearance for inspection, and every few minutes some one man will dart out to the center of the street with a stray match or piece of paper and throw it in the passing wheelbarrow.
The interior of the tent contains a wooden clothes-press and usually a canvas stretcher suspended from the ridge pole. Each cadet has a certain section for his clothes. All articles, belts, gloves, socks must be folded and arranged in a prescribed manner. The cots are folded and kept out of sight during the day. Gray, painted wooden lockers for storing cleaning material and clothing border one side of the tent floor. Many cadets, however, secrete food, known as “Boodle” in these convenient places, and I am sure that an unexpected inspection would reveal many tins of saltines, bottles of olives, and jars of peanut butter. During my cadet days, the officer in charge of my company never, for some reason, looked into the lockers. My tent-mate and I therefore grew more and more bold about filling them with vast supplies of “Boodle,” and we began to think that the “Tac” was inspired by a sort of noblesse oblige where the lockers were concerned, a sort of sympathetic remembrance of his own cadet-gnawing appetite. One Saturday, however, just as he was leaving and I was offering a silent prayer of thanksgiving, he ordered the lockers opened. A gallon jar in which some fifty olives lay submerged and a slovenly looking pineapple cheese met my humiliated gaze. A reprimand that as a cadet officer I should set an example to the rest of the company, and five demerits, were awarded to me forthwith.