WAR GAMES: Cadets under Zielinski's lead face off against teams from Britain's elite Sandhurst Academy
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So she returned for her final year with a new commitment. She signed up for LASIK eye surgery so she could qualify for aviation, even though the date fell during swimming season and she was team captain. It was the first time she had ever voluntarily missed a swim meet. She turned down an invitation from the swim-team coach to stay on an extra year as a graduate assistant. She's in a hurry now. She can't wait to get to Fort Rucker (or Mother Rucker, as it's known to cadets) in Alabama and start flying, even though by choosing aviation, with its expensive training regimen, she had to promise an extra two years of active-duty service.
She has come to terms with her place at West Point and her reasons for being there. "If I were one year younger and 9/11 had happened while I was still in high school, there's no way I ever would have come here," she says. "To be honest, I am scared. But I've learned a lot here, and I think I'm ready to lead people, even to war." The once reluctant cadet has even become an evangelist of sorts. Beyer's little brother Billy, every bit as laid back as his sister was at his age, was inspired by her example and applied to West Point. In part on the strength of an essay about why he would be willing to die for his country, Billy was accepted last week. "I'm telling him he should probably go," she says. "I'd think he'd do well at West Point."
CADET ZIELINSKI
LEADING FROM THE FRONT
Some cadets go to West Point and encounter its demands, and for the next four years they pray that they can toe the line and make it through. Others, however, run the hardest obstacle course twice: once to test their technique, the next time to test their toughness.
You look at Greg Zielinski--Z to just about everyone on post--and for a split second you wonder whether he is actually built out of some material other than flesh and blood. Everything about him shines--his nearly shaved head, every buckle and boot, his manner. His father says if Zielinski hadn't gone to West Point, he probably would have been president of a fraternity. He is pathologically social, both liked and looked up to by fellow cadets, especially those who bleed Army green. "Z?" they say. "He's huah," delivering the words with the appropriate Southern drawl--"heezoowah"--as though a Northern accent wouldn't do justice to someone so ... infantry. Upperclassmen give him equal deference. One of his fellow cadets asks him, straight-faced, "Can I still call you Z when you're a general?"
The officers in the department of military instruction puff up at the mention of his name. "Z--that's my guy," beams a broad-chested major. Another says, "Greg Zielinski is the kind of cadet that makes you love teaching here." For them, Zielinski has molded himself in the Army's image of the proto-officer: strong, blunt, earnest, demanding. Even with four years to shape cadets, West Point has mixed success installing their program of warrior ethic in teenagers from so many walks of life. So when they see Zielinski adopt it all so naturally--chin out, eyes front, shoulders squared--they see total victory.