him was like a portrait emerging. I was almost afraid to recognize the face. In it was no self-importance; that had been thrown away, we are beyond that, stripped of it. When I read that among the desired traits of the leader was a sense of humor that marked a balanced and indomitable outlook, when I realized that every quality was one in which I instinctively had faith, I felt an overwhelming happiness, like seeing a card you cannot believe you are lucky enough to have drawn, at this moment, in this game.
I did not dare to believe it but I imagined, I thought, I somehow dreamed, the face was my own.
——
I began to change, not what I was truly but what I seemed to be. Dissatisfied, eager to become better, I shed as if they were old clothes the laziness and rebellion of the first year and began anew.
On the back of the door, which an inspecting officer never saw since it was flung open upon his entrance, I taped a declaration of faith, drawn from recollection of an article I had once read, that the officers who poured into the army during the First and Second World Wars brought to it the great gifts of the American people (I wrote unenthusiastically), but that West Point gave it standards of duty and performance that were as precise as the Hoke measurement blocks in a machine-tool factory. Other officers might sometimes lie or cheat a little, but the whole army knew that a West Pointer was as good as his word, without exceptions or reservations. Other officers might sometimes take a reasonable line of retreat, but a West Pointer always tried to do exactly as told, even though he and his command were wiped out. One morning I watched as the tactical officer, at the end of his inspection, apparently having heard of it, pushed the door closed and stood in silence reading what was on the back. He was a cavalry officer, moustache and uniform perfect. His face was expressionless. There was a regulation against anything on the walls or door, but when he was finished he left without saying a word.
I was undergoing a conversion, from a self divided and consciously inferior, as William James described it, to one that was unified and, to use his word, right. I saw myself as the heir of many strangers, the faces of those who had gone before, my new roommate’s brother, for one, John Eckert, who had graduated two years earlier and was now a medium bomber pilot in England. I had a photograph of him and his wife, which I kept in my desk, the pilot with his rakish hat, the young wife, the clarity of their features, the distinction. Perhaps it was in part because of this snapshotthat I thought of becoming a pilot. At least it was one more branch thrown onto the pyre. When he was killed on a mission not long after, I felt a secret thrill and envy. His life, the scraps I knew of it, seemed worthy, complete. He had left something behind, a woman who could never forget him; I had her picture. Death seemed the purest act. Comfortably distant from it I had no fear.
There were images of the struggle in the air on every side, the fighter pilots back from missions deep into Europe, rendezvous times still written in ink on the backs of their hands, gunners with shawls of bullets over their shoulders, grinning and risky, I saw them, I saw myself, in the rattle and thunder of takeoff, the world of warm cots, cigarettes, stand-downs, everything that had mattered falling away. Then the long hours of nervousness as the formation went farther and farther into enemy skies until suddenly, called out by jittery voices, high above, the first of them appear, floating harmlessly, then turning, falling, firing, plummeting past, untouchable in their speed. The guns are going everywhere; the sky is scrawled with smoke and dark explosions, and then it happens, something great and crucial tearing from the ship, a vast flat of wing, and we begin to roll over, slowly at first and then faster, screaming to one another, going down.
That was death: to leave behind a
I did not dare to believe it but I imagined, I thought, I somehow dreamed, the face was my own.
——
I began to change, not what I was truly but what I seemed to be. Dissatisfied, eager to become better, I shed as if they were old clothes the laziness and rebellion of the first year and began anew.
On the back of the door, which an inspecting officer never saw since it was flung open upon his entrance, I taped a declaration of faith, drawn from recollection of an article I had once read, that the officers who poured into the army during the First and Second World Wars brought to it the great gifts of the American people (I wrote unenthusiastically), but that West Point gave it standards of duty and performance that were as precise as the Hoke measurement blocks in a machine-tool factory. Other officers might sometimes lie or cheat a little, but the whole army knew that a West Pointer was as good as his word, without exceptions or reservations. Other officers might sometimes take a reasonable line of retreat, but a West Pointer always tried to do exactly as told, even though he and his command were wiped out. One morning I watched as the tactical officer, at the end of his inspection, apparently having heard of it, pushed the door closed and stood in silence reading what was on the back. He was a cavalry officer, moustache and uniform perfect. His face was expressionless. There was a regulation against anything on the walls or door, but when he was finished he left without saying a word.
I was undergoing a conversion, from a self divided and consciously inferior, as William James described it, to one that was unified and, to use his word, right. I saw myself as the heir of many strangers, the faces of those who had gone before, my new roommate’s brother, for one, John Eckert, who had graduated two years earlier and was now a medium bomber pilot in England. I had a photograph of him and his wife, which I kept in my desk, the pilot with his rakish hat, the young wife, the clarity of their features, the distinction. Perhaps it was in part because of this snapshotthat I thought of becoming a pilot. At least it was one more branch thrown onto the pyre. When he was killed on a mission not long after, I felt a secret thrill and envy. His life, the scraps I knew of it, seemed worthy, complete. He had left something behind, a woman who could never forget him; I had her picture. Death seemed the purest act. Comfortably distant from it I had no fear.
There were images of the struggle in the air on every side, the fighter pilots back from missions deep into Europe, rendezvous times still written in ink on the backs of their hands, gunners with shawls of bullets over their shoulders, grinning and risky, I saw them, I saw myself, in the rattle and thunder of takeoff, the world of warm cots, cigarettes, stand-downs, everything that had mattered falling away. Then the long hours of nervousness as the formation went farther and farther into enemy skies until suddenly, called out by jittery voices, high above, the first of them appear, floating harmlessly, then turning, falling, firing, plummeting past, untouchable in their speed. The guns are going everywhere; the sky is scrawled with smoke and dark explosions, and then it happens, something great and crucial tearing from the ship, a vast flat of wing, and we begin to roll over, slowly at first and then faster, screaming to one another, going down.
That was death: to leave behind a
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