West Point cadets face reality of going to war

By Paul Nussbaum
Knight Ridder News Service

WEST POINT, N.Y. — At a time when many other seniors are considering job offers or grad school, Matt Miller already knows where his career path leads.

Many of the cadets graduating from the U.S. Military Academy this year enrolled while the nation was at peace. In the past year they have had to come to terms with the fact that they will likely head to Iraq soon. Advertiser library photo • 1999

Proficient in Arabic, steeped in international relations and adept with an M-16 rifle, Miller, 21, of Wayne, N.J., will graduate this month from the U.S. Military Academy, a newly minted second lieutenant in the infantry.

After more training as a paratrooper and Army Ranger, he expects to be sent to Iraq to lead three dozen soldiers who probably will know more about fighting there than he does.

"The platoon will have already been there. They'll train me," Miller said during a break between classes.

For him and for the rest of the class of 2004, Iraq looms as a destination none of them expected when they arrived here four years ago. Then, the nation was at peace, Sept. 11, 2001, was just another date, and warfare was a theoretical exercise.

"I came to play basketball and get an education," said Matt Knox, 22, of St. Clairsville, Ohio. "I would have never in a million years expected to do this."

Now, they're about to be front-line officers in a fight without a front line, waging a war where the tactics change daily and the enemy is invisible.

They will have a measure of autonomy and life-and-death authority most 22-year-olds never contemplate. And in their final weeks on this cloistered campus, they wonder about what they will face and how they will cope.

"I think the hardest part will be deciding who is a threat, before it's too late," Miller said. "Who's trying to kill you and who's not?"

For the "firsties," the senior cadets, thinking about killing and dying has become as much a part of their routine as daily formations. Just since October, seven West Point graduates have been killed in Iraq, and several — among them Todd Bryant and Michael Adams — were friends of many here now.

"My mother is nervous, especially after the Jessica Lynch thing," said cadet Lauren Colonna, of Baden, Pa. "I'll be in the same kind of situation she was."

Colonna, 22, will be in the quartermaster branch, handling the logistics of resupplying troops. She knows that in Iraq, supply convoys have been among the favorite targets.

"We make sure we know our infantry skills. I'm qualified on my M-16," she said. "I'm going to be up there, and there's no front line. You just have to be ready."

Those who are about to lead troops in battle acknowledge there is no way to know exactly what lies ahead, or how they'll react.

"The reality is sinking in ... it's kind of surreal," said Andrew Chung, 22, of Las Vegas, who will be flying Black Hawk helicopters. In conversations with returning soldiers, Chung said young officers found they were "pretty well-prepared for the terrain but not prepared for the sentiments of the civilians."

"Being lured into ambush by civilians — how do you deal with a situation like that?"

West Point has changed its curriculum to try to answer such questions and teach cadets the hard lessons being learned on the ground in Iraq. Courses on counterterrorism, Arab culture and urban warfare are part of the training. Suicide bombers, insurgent fighters and IEDs (improvised explosive devices) are favorite classroom topics.

And cadets get grim real-life tutorials from returning colleagues.

One young lieutenant told cadets about the death of a soldier next to him, blown apart by a rocket-propelled grenade. In the midst of the firefight, he left his buddy's body behind. When troops returned later to collect the body, it was gone. The anguished lieutenant asked the cadets to help him answer a question that will never be on an academy exam: Did I do the right thing or the wrong thing?

The reports from Iraq have convinced the cadets they'll be up against an unpredictable foe.

"I think the Iraqi insurgents are a lot smarter than we thought," said Mike Hallinan, 21, of Syracuse, N.Y. "They have adapted. ... I think we seriously underestimated the enemy going in."

Among themselves and with their teachers, cadets have had spirited debates about whether their country ought to be in Iraq. But the discussion stops at the academy's gray stone walls.

"The validity of the mission is for policy-makers to decide," said Knox, who will be an infantry platoon leader. "Our job is to lead soldiers and bring them home safely.

"Of course we talk about it a lot, but mostly we're concerned about taking care of the men entrusted to us," he said.

They also talk about making peace.

Sarah Knutson, 21, of Eugene, Ore., will take advanced training in military intelligence before deploying to Iraq. She is a combat-weapons expert, trained in hand-to-hand combat, knife fighting and marksmanship. She is also a self-described "culture junkie," the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and convinced that Americans need to include Iraqis more in the building of their nation.

"We are building schools and forming soccer leagues. ... It would be more effective to get the Iraqis involved in doing that," she said. "They need to have some ownership in their country.

"I would like to think I can effect some change and offer a different perspective."

Capt. David Molinari, one of the West Point instructors who recently returned from the war zone, says the current crop of cadets is "more ready than their predecessors."

But the situation they face is "more dangerous than during the war," said Molinari, 29, of Jonesboro, Ga. "Now we're not fighting an army; we're fighting people."

Molinari predicted the young officers will be awed by their on-the-ground authority, in charge of three dozen soldiers with tremendous firepower.

"This is not going to be a management job. This is real life, as real as it gets."