May 31, 2005, 8:18 a.m.
Keeping Freedom Alive
The Class of 2005.

It was a brilliant day Saturday at West Point, where the United States Military Academy Class of 2005 received their diplomas and commissions as Second Lieutenants in the United States Army. Michie stadium was filled with family, friends and returning graduates. This class has been called the Class of 9/11, since they had arrived at West Point two months before the attacks that would change the world. As it happened, 911 cadets made it through the four years to graduate.

During the reading of the names, I was reminded of the scene in Santa Fe Trail where the Class of 1854 is receiving diplomas, and every surname is pregnant with meaning — Longstreet, Sheridan, Hood, Custer, Stuart, among others. Of course, of them only Stuart actually graduated in 1854, but the scene would not have been as dramatic with authentic, lesser-known names from that class like O’Connor, Randal, Weed, and Greble (all of whom were killed in action in the Civil War, by the way). Some from 2005 caught the ear — Patton, Pickett, Stillwell — echoes of earlier conflicts, a lot for a young officer to live up to. Others on the program may one day become household names, bywords for valor, sacrifice, or heroism.

That was the point of the roll call in the movie — at the time they graduated, neither officer nor onlooker knew the role they would one day play. The gentleman sitting next to me wore a cap with the emblem of the 101st Airborne Division. I asked him when he had served. “Bastogne,” he said. He was one of the handful of soldiers, outnumbered, isolated, and under-equipped, who had helped halt the December 1944 German offensive, what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. He was present when General Anthony C. McAuliffe said “Nuts!” to the German demand to surrender. A few months earlier he had never heard of Bastogne. A few years earlier he was a teenager in Ohio who had never heard of Pearl Harbor.

A 1992 grad said that the current class differs from hers. They are more serious, she said. They looked sharper at the graduation parade, and seemed more focused at the ceremony. Guest speaker General Richard B. Myers noted that this class entered with a nation at peace, which had transitioned to war. Yet the members of the class had kept with it, even though they could leave voluntarily any time before the beginning of their third year. When General Myers made this observation the crowd, parents, siblings, and friends, began to applaud. It was a great moment, not a response to an obvious applause line, but a spontaneous tribute to a spirit that deserves respect. These new officers (and service members in general) know what they are facing. Stories of the occasional deserter or recruitment shortfall become chum for the media; that reenlistments are up, particularly in the theaters of conflict is not generally reported. Moreover, at West Point, the washout rates are down significantly. Those with doubts, questioning their commitment or ability to meet the challenge, the marginal applicants, are not showing up. Those who answer the call today are aware, determined, motivated. They are not coming just to get an education. They know they will probably soon be in harm’s way, and they are preparing themselves, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

You can feel the sense of purpose on the post, talking to the cadets. This is their war. They know it. They study it. High-ranking officers visit to talk about it. Many members of the rotating faculty have just come off tours in combat zones. Few entering West Point classes have seen the transition from peace to war and gone on to graduate with the fight still on. The plebes of the summer of 1941 are analogous — Pearl Harbor took place six months after they arrived. They were scheduled to graduate in 1945, but the exigencies of war moved the date up a year. One of the cadets in that class was John S.D. Eisenhower, son of the Supreme Allied Commander. He and his classmates received their diplomas June 6, 1944, hours after Allied forces stormed the French beaches in Operation Overlord on D-Day. But there was still enough war to go around, and many of the Class of 1944 did not come back.

After the diplomas are presented, the oath taken, the class dismissed, and the hats thrown, most of the new officers hold pinning ceremonies, where family and friends gather and oaths are re-administered, gold bars affixed to new green uniforms. The graduates choose places with special meaning to them, near a monument, on the Plain, by the river. Some pin in groups, others alone. At one pinning ceremony I attended, the grad had asked a chaplain to make some remarks. The chaplain appeared in a worn camouflage uniform. He had recently done a tour in Iraq, and would probably soon be heading out for another. He said that he hoped that the young officer would not spend much time wearing his Class As, and recalled Douglas MacArthur’s wish to be buried not in his finest dress uniform but in his fatigues, because, as he said, “whatever I have done that really matters, I’ve done wearing [them].” It was a blunt reminder of what the ceremony was all about. I was in the company of warriors.

When MacArthur graduated at the head of the Class of 1903 he had no concept of the two world wars that awaited him, or of Inchon, or after. Likewise, the members of the Class of 2005 cannot know what the long term holds for them. The graduates of the early 1840s thought they would be fighting Indians in Florida, but wound up in Mexico. Graduates of the 1850s saw their future in plains warfare against the Comanche and Sioux, but ended up fighting each other, led by the veterans of the Mexican War. Grads of the 1950s who prepared to fight World War III with the Soviet Union found themselves in Vietnam. Those of the 1990s who were told that history had ended and the future was peacekeeping are today dismantling the global terrorist network. And the war on terrorism will not last forever. New challenges will arise as the old ones are overcome. The Class of 2005 will soon have a chance to see and do things they could not have anticipated, but from those I have gotten to know over the past few years I am positive they are up to the challenge.

— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council and an NRO contributor.