Falling to Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Naval Academy, and from the other to enter West Point, the academy for army cadets.
    I never learned how I did on that exam, but I guess I must have done pretty well, and the recommendations from my principal certainly helped. So I found myself in the fortunate position of having a choice. I did a lot of research on both academies, and for some reason I just never felt like I was a navy kind of person. I can’t explain why; it’s like some people prefer one kind of car to another. The more I researched West Point, and the history of the people who graduated from there, the more it sounded phenomenal to me, and I really fell in love with the idea of going there. I didn’t know that since one-third of the students from each academy would eventually end up in the air force, it would have made no difference to my future which one I attended.
    It was quite a change for me to go from thinking about the music world to an entirely different life in the military. I am ashamed to say that, once I knew I was going to attend West Point, I really let my work slide for the rest of that year at Michigan. I got through okay, but not well; I had lost interest, because I knew I was leaving.
    I was also depressed. My grandfather had always felt pain in his injured ankle, especially in winter. Now, his doctor found that the old break had also created a blood clot. They had to amputate one leg, and then the other. With no legs, that tough and active farmer lost the will to live. He died while I was at college, and I felt I had lost my best friend. There was now even less reason for me to stay in Michigan.
    I had to report to West Point in early July of 1951. I took a plane, my very first flight, in fact, to get there. I would spend the night in New York City before taking a train to the academy.
    I had never been to a big city like New York before; I was unsure how to act. But I was hungry, and that gave me courage. After strolling around town and spying some nice-looking restaurants, I walked into one and asked the maître d’ for a table. They required a jacket and tie, he said, and I wasn’t wearing either. I was heading for the door, when to my relief, he told me he would see what he could do. Emerging with a tie and jacket from a nearby closet, he told me I could stay. It was a strange introduction to a much wider world.
    I was about to join an even stranger world: the United States Military Academy at West Point, fifty miles north of New York City, overlooking the Hudson River. It is not only one of the biggest school campuses in the world, but also has been an academy since 1802. The day I showed up with more than eight hundred other new students, our lives all changed.
    My first view of West Point left me awestruck. We traveled alongside the Hudson by train, then disembarked by the river. After being assembled into groups, we were marched up the steep hill to the academy. I was completely blown away by the sight: the lofty gray stone buildings, set against a green forest and the blue river below, seemed like something out of the Middle Ages. Inside, the main hall looked like a vast European cathedral. It could seat two and a half thousand hungry students at once, while long-dead venerable generals who once studied there, too, looked down sternly at us from oil paintings. Naturally, I was intimidated by the scale and dignity of the place. Would I survive at this strict institution? I wasn’t sure.
    Then we were thrown into the furnace. Older students appeared all around us, screaming a rain of commands, most of which I couldn’t understand. We were lined up in a hallway and ordered to memorize a response to a command. It should have been simple, but with students right in our faces, nose to nose, shouting at us, it was hard to remember even the simplest phrase. It was terrifying. I was only allowed to look directly ahead, but could hear piercing shouts, commands, and marching all around me. I had no idea what the hell was going