Free Burning the Days by James Salter

The various uniforms were described item by item in the regulations book and in addition to everything, amid the confusion, had to be looked up. “Drill D!” was the desperate cry, racing up the last stairs, thirty seconds gone already.
    In the hallway, seated on a banister in an undershirt, doubly forbidden, was Nash with the Blue Book of regulations in his hand. He was smoking a cigar and calmly reading out the particulars, repeating them on demand while we flung clothes wildly off and on. Good luck, he called, as we ran down the stairs. It was his farewell performance.
    Had Nash repented and borne the consequences, he might that year or the next have trotted onto the field to become famous, but there are men born to be impetuous, to live by a gesture and keep their pride.
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    You were never alone. Above all, it was this that marked the life. As a boy I had had my own room, and though familiar enough withteeming hallways and schoolboy games, these existed only temporarily. Afterwards there was home with its quiet, lights in the evening, the rich smell of dinner.
    There was nothing of that at West Point. We brushed shoulders everywhere, as if it were a troopship, and waited a turn to wash and shave. In the earliest morning, in the great summer kiln of the Hudson Valley, we stood for long periods at strict attention, dangerous upperclassmen drifting behind us sullenly, the whole of the day ahead. Over and over to make the minutes pass I recited lines to myself, sometimes to the bullet-hard beat of drums, The time you won your town the race … Buried and lost, but for the moment by myself, wrapped in words.
    I was an unpromising cadet, not the worst but a laggard. Among the youngest, and more immature than my years, I had neither the wisdom of country boys, who knew beasts and the axioms of hardware stores, nor the real toughness of the city. I had been forced to learn a new vocabulary and new meanings, what was meant by “polished,” for instance, or “neatly folded.” For parade and inspection we wore eighteenth-century accessories, crossed white belts and dummy cartridge box, with breastplate and belt buckle shined to a mirrorlike finish. In the doorway of the room at night, before taps, we sat feverishly polishing them. Pencil erasers and jeweler’s rouge were used to painstakingly rub away small imperfections, and the rest was done with a continually refolded polishing cloth. It took hours. The terrible ring of metal hitting the floor—a breastplate that had slipped from someone’s hand—was a sound like the dropping of an heirloom.
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    At the end of the summer, assignment to regular companies was made. There were sixteen companies, each made up of men who were approximately the same height. Drawn up in a long front before parade, the tallest companies were at each end, grading downto the shortest in the middle. The laws of perspective made the entire Corps seem of uniform size, and as it passed in review, bayonets at the same angle, legs flashing as one, it looked as if every particle of the whole were well formed and bright. The tall companies were known to be easygoing and unmilitary in barracks, but among the runts it was the opposite. To even pass by their barracks was perilous. This was not only fable but fact.
    The stone barracks were arranged around large quadrangles called Areas. Central Area was the oldest, and on opposite sides of it were South and North Areas, and a small appendix near the gym called New North. They were distinct, like provinces, though you walked through several of them every day. Beyond and unseen were the leafy arrondissements where West Point seemed like a serene river town. In mild September with classes about to begin, it settled into routine. There was autumn sun on the playing fields but the real tone was Wagnerian. We passed by the large houses, all in a long row, of the colonels, heads of academic departments, some of them classmates or friends of my father’s,