Duty First by Ed Ruggero

front of them, thus playing the role of enemy soldiers who believe their rear is protected by the cliff.
    The lieutenant in charge of the training site climbs high on a rock above the new cadets.
    “To an untrained soldier a rock face such as the one you see before you would be an obstacle.”
    Four GIs appear at the top of the cliff, behind and above the enemy. Suspended from climbing ropes, they lower themselves headfirst over the edge of the cliff. They hold their weapons in one free hand. When they are just above the “enemy,” they open fire; in the confined space made by the cliff and the boulders, the blanks sound like explosions. Two of the guards “die” outright; the other two return fire. One of the attackers is hit. A few new cadets jump as he falls a foot or two, then stops and dangles head-down from the climbing rope, held only by gravity and by a loop of nylon line through the metal D-ring at his waist. After dispatching the remaining defenders, his buddies climb back up, unhook the wounded man, tie him to the back of one of the others, then rappel to the bottom. The young men scuttle about the rock face as easily as if it were flat ground.
    On the deck, one soldier checks the enemy casualties, removing their weapons; another is on the radio, reporting the friendly casualty, the enemy dead, the successful completion of the mission.
    “Hoo-ah!” the new cadets yell at the end of the little drama.
    Before Alpha Company gets out on the high cliff, there are more basic skills to learn: how to tie the knots that will hold them up; how to fashion a “Swiss seat,” the rope brace that wraps around the back and through the legs and from which their weight will hang.
    Grady Jett’s squad marches to a corral made up of a thick nylon rope stretched around some trees to make a forty-by-sixty-foot rectangle. Two cadet squad leaders demonstrate the knots; then, along with soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, they move around inside the corral, checking, correcting, coaching.
    Jett knows the importance of drills; his squad has been practicing their knots for two days. They each carry an eight-foot length of rope with them, and at every opportunity Jett puts them through their paces with the unfamiliar knots. When the cadet in charge of the training site asks, “Who knows what a square knot is for?,” Jett immediately shoots up his hand. His new cadets follow instantly, proud that their squad is prepared.
    Staff Sergeant Bielefeld, the NCO in charge of the training site, sits on a large rock some twenty feet above the new cadets. Bielefeld served with the army’s elite Ranger Battalions before his stint with the 10th Mountain Division.
    “West Point turns out good officers,” he says, watching the low ground and the scrambling cadets. “So does ROTC. I only knew one dud West Pointer; he was a by-the-book guy.”
    Another NCO, who spent four summers training ROTC cadets at their Advanced Camp (military training) thinks that West Point cadets are at a disadvantage.
    “They’re not used to dealing with soldiers and NCOs; they’re so isolated here. And they act like wild bucks when they get out. Of course, I’ve seen that with ROTC lieutenants, too.”
    His complaints are not unusual. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Brown,‘80, who commanded hundreds of brand-new infantry lieutenants at Fort Benning for their initial training, said the West Pointers had a more difficult time handling their newfound freedom than did the ROTC graduates.
    “They’re locked up for four years, then they get out; they have money, a car, freedom,” another graduate said about new West Point lieutenants. “They go nuts.”
    The new cadets of Alpha Company first practice rappelling on a gradual incline, a sixty-or seventy-foot rock face at a forty-five-degree angle. The slope, and just about every other rock in the area, has been painted with the blue and red 10th Mountain Division shoulder patch, but the most common decoration is the