WAR GAMES: Cadets under Zielinski's lead face off against teams from Britain's elite Sandhurst Academy
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Pae gets advice from a friend in Iraq who stresses the need to be flexible--he was trained in field artillery but found himself immediately doing convoy operations in humvees. The mission is changing, he warned Pae; get ready to change with it. Pae has noticed a shift in tone, through the tips on which books to save for reuse in officer basic training and in the half-hearted jokes about Iraq's being better than West Point. His friend seems less like the goofy cadet Pae remembers and more like a sober officer steeling himself for the times ahead.
THE FIRSTIE CLUB
Most cadets are too busy to reach the club much before 9:30 or 10, and a reinstated curfew this year requires them back in barracks by 11:30. That gives them exactly one hour to blow off the kind of steam it would take most people a week's worth of drinking to expel. "The Firstie Club is like Alcoholism 101," jokes a cadet. "One hour to drink as much as humanly possible."
The members of the class of '05 are up to the task. They line the bar three deep and come away with $5 pitchers of beer in each hand. Zielinski carries three pitchers over to a booth and breaks into leader mode, calling friends over, drinking a beer with them, clapping a hand on their shoulders, moving on to the next guy. He sits back down and charts out the bar crawl he will lead to Highland Falls that Saturday. They'll start, it's decided, at Hacienda: "Great margaritas, supercheap." If this is the night for the cadets to savor the choices they have made, then he'll also offer his ode to the infantry. "Everything is based off the infantry. Take engineering--that's just smart infantry. But I love it. I love the men."
Pae has come to the Firstie Club, a rarity for him. He sips his beer as others gulp. Cadets from his company squeeze into the booth and talk excitedly. Some look back: Remember the kid who brought a skateboard to Air Assault School? Others look ahead. Pae is looking forward to posting to his unit in Germany. Great weekend trips. His parents had wanted him to post to Korea, but Pae resisted. Units in Korea are just as likely as units in Germany to deploy to Iraq, he told them. What Pae didn't tell his parents was just how ready he felt to get in the fight. "Yeah, I'm excited," he says. "I know it sounds funny, but we've been training for this for a long time." Over in one corner, a table of massive men in camouflage are talking to some cadets; Pae eyes them with a mixture of awe and ambition. They are the commanders of armor officer basic training, which Pae is looking ahead to. "It's really rare to be able to talk to the leadership over a beer like that. You won't be able to do that when you're down there," he says.
Kristen Beyer is here too, sober and in jeans, a pink blouse and flip-flops. She has been making the rounds, smiling broadly. She's not talking military, not thinking military. She just likes being with friends, nodding along to the music. There are a few other characters in attendance--the cadet band thrashing out speed-rock covers, a Vietnam War hero dispensing advice at the bar, an exchange cadet from Uzbekistan playing drinking games in the corner--but by and large, it's all Firsties. The mood is convivial and congratulatory. The Firstie Club is like a sports bar where the cadets gather to cheer on their favorite team: themselves.