Psssst...wanna go to West Point? It may cost you your life......

February 9, 2005
ON EDUCATION
For Cadets, Iraq Doubts Bow to Duty
By MICHAEL WINERIP

WEST POINT, N.Y.

FOR most Americans, Iraq is very far away. But for the cadets at the United States Military Academy, particularly the seniors who will soon be officers over there, the war intrudes daily.

West Point has added classes on how to avoid ambushes, proper convoying techniques, the correct procedure for emptying a room when fighting door to door. "I'm 22 years old," says Cadet Ramon Ramos, "and sometimes I'll think, 'Wait a minute, did I really just have a class on how not to get blown up by an insurgent?' "

E-mail brings the war to the dorms. The night before the battle for Falluja began, Mark Erwin, a senior, got a message from his brother Lt. Mike Erwin, (West Point '02): "Markie - I will be carrying your cadet picture in my right breast pocket with my prayer to St. Michael, dog tags and St. Michael's medal," the big brother wrote. "If by some chance something happens to me, you're the voice to the family." Cadet Erwin never deletes an e-mail message from his brother. "You worry there might not be another," he says.

Lunch can be the worst.

"If they say the words, 'Please give your attention to the first captain,' you know it's coming," says Cadet Michael Linnington.

Another senior, Cadet Megan Williams, says: "Everyone shuts up. You're so afraid of it."

Cadet Linnington explains: "There was one the other day. The first captain gives a 30-second spiel - what year they graduated, how they died, if they were married."

The death of Todd Bryant ('02) in Falluja touched many seniors. When Cadet Ramos was an 18-year-old plebe, Todd Bryant was his intramural football coach. "I sat at his table," says Cadet Ramos. "Some upper class give plebes a hard time. Not Todd. He was just a nice guy."

Company D named a meeting room for Todd Bryant last month. "His family and wife came from California," Cadet Linnington says. "They had a slide show about his cadet life, and you watch it - it's your life. What we're doing now, it's what he did. It puts it into reality."

The cadets feel strange being so preoccupied, when their friends outside the military seem barely aware. Cadet Williams has a younger sister going to college at home in Texas. "You try not to judge," Cadet Williams says, "but they're very oblivious."

Cadets go to more funerals than most 20-year-olds. Cadet Williams attended a service for David Bernstein ('01), killed in an ambush in Taza. "I didn't know him," she says. "But I'm Jewish, and he was, and that touched me." When Cadet Brandon Bodor was in Washington for the inauguration, he stopped at Arlington National Cemetery, at the grave of Leonard Cowherd ('03), who was killed in Karbala. "Lenny was a good guy," Cadet Bodor says.

Cadets don't have to study the opinion polls to know they're heading off to an unpopular war. Applications to the military academies are down substantially. At West Point, applications hit a post-9/11 high of 12,383 for the school year that began 2003. The 10,412 applications for the coming school year represent a 16 percent drop in two years. The Naval Academy is down 2,852 applicants, a 20 percent drop in just a year, and the Air Force Academy is down 3,054 applicants from 2004, a 24 percent drop.

AFTER two years at West Point, a cadet is given a last chance to leave without having to serve in the military. Last summer, 52 members of the sophomore class of 963 left, compared with 32 the year before and 18 the year before that. West Point officials were relieved it wasn't more. "We were hearing rumors of mass resignations," says the admissions director, Col. Mike Jones. "But it was just rumors. Our numbers are down, but still very strong," he says, citing 10 applicants for every slot.

Cadet Bodor says it's no mystery why the numbers are down. "Iraq," he says. "Same as Vietnam. When you're in an unpopular war, people question, 'Is this what I want to be doing?' "

These cadets, who get a free education in return for five years of military service, are likely to face two Iraq tours if current projections hold. Their own feelings about the war seem surprisingly mixed. While Cadets Erwin and Williams expressed confidence in the effort to establish a democratic society in Iraq, Cadets Linnington, Ramos and Jarick Evans sounded less hopeful.

"There are cadets who might not want to go, they might not believe we should be over there the same way the American public feels," Cadet Linnington says. "But as military people we have a duty."

Cadet Ramos sees the division of opinion in classroom discussions. "At this point, to me, it's too late to debate," he says. "We may not like it, but we have to make the best of it. We're there."

He is grateful, he says, "that the American public knows it's not the soldiers' fault if they disagree with the war."

Among the 13 cadets I interviewed, Jarick Evans was the most openly critical. "The thing that disturbs me most, we don't have an exit strategy," he says. "When all we're told is we'll leave when the job's done, it leaves a bad taste in mouths of soldiers. That's the reason a lot don't want to go back the second and third times."

Cadet Evans estimates that half his class may feel that way. "There's a big fear we'll go back and forth, back and forth our entire military career because there is no clear mission," he says.

The interviews took place in Grant Hall, and it was clear these cadets had mastered a central lesson of the life of Ulysses S. Grant (West Point, 1843). Grant fought brilliantly in the Mexican War, even though he hated that conflict as an imperialist land grab. And he fought brilliantly in the Civil War, which he believed in with all his heart.

Cadet Evans has two older brothers who have served in Iraq, including, Jerel, 26 ( '01). "He told me the biggest thing is to have a good attitude," Cadet Evans says. "If the leader doesn't have a good attitude, he can't expect his troops to have a good attitude." And so, Cadet Evans says, despite any misgivings about the war, he's good to go. "I'll have a good attitude," he says. "The Army's been good to me. This is my job."


Michael Winerip has returned from a leave. He and Samuel G. Freedman will write this column in alternate weeks.

E-mail: edmike@nytimes.com