Tower of Strength

Tower of Strength Beneath a hot Virginia sun one day last week, Defense Secretary George Catlett Marshall stepped to the front of the speakers' platform to receive a tribute it had taken him 50 years to earn. Virginia Military Institute had turned out in full regalia to do him honor as its most famous living alumnus.

There were speakers, a medal from the state of Virginia and a full-dress parade by V.M.I.'s 770 cadets, resplendent in black shakos, grey tailcoats and white ducks. Then Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch rose to dedicate the George Catlett Marshall Arch, a new sally port leading into the new quadrangle at the center of the V.M.I. post.

It was the first such honor V.M.I. had ever paid to one of its sons. Appropriately, V.M.I. had chosen for the occasion the high point of the school year: New Market Day, the time when V.M.I. pays tribute to the cadets who marched forth as a unit during the Civil War to help stem the tide of the Union Army advance up the Shenandoah Valley. It was also a time when V.M.I. likes to look to its past and review the events that have made it one of the nation's crack military schools.*

Gentlemen Cadets. V.M.I first opened its doors in 1839 with 23 gentlemen cadets, grew until it had 176 to march off to Richmond four days after Virginia seceded from the Union. It had grown to a new enrollment of 241 when the corps marched forth once again to the Battle of New Market in 1864. That day, ten cadets were killed and 47 wounded, and V.M.I. became the only school in the U.S. entitled to carry a battle streamer on its flag. A month later, a Union force under General David Hunter sacked and burned the school.

Since then, V.M.I. has had a more peaceful history, even though its sons have not. One of its first instructors, now the patron saint of V.M.I., was General Stonewall Jackson (who led the cadets to Richmond in 1861). During World War II, 4,000 of V.M.I.'s 6,000 living graduates were in uniform, and 57 of them rose to general-officer rank. Among V.M.I. alumni now on the Korean front: Lieut. General Lemuel C. Shepherd, commander of the Fleet Marine Force in the Pacific; Lieut. General Edward M. Almond, commander of the X Corps; Major General Clark L. Ruffner, commander of the 2nd Division (see WAR IN ASIA).

Ramrod Discipline. Today, under the superintendency of Major General Richard J. Marshall, distant cousin of General Marshall, V.M.I, stretches out over 300 acres, a place of fortress-like tan stucco-covered buildings, looming towers, and crenellated walls. V.M.I. still takes a fierce pride in its ramrod discipline. All cadets live, four to a room, in two adjoining barracks, kept always in inspection-ready order. Uniforms are hung on racks (there are no closets), cots are stacked each day, rifles and sabers are racked against the walls. The day officially begins with breakfast formation at 7 a.m. From then on--through classes in engineering, the sciences, history and English, through military drill at 4 p.m. and study hours at night--the cadets have scarcely a moment free.

Of all the cadets, the "rats" of the entering class have the roughest time. They must still sit at rigid attention while eating, catching the glasses that upperclassmen fling at them for refilling, and serving up dishes in silence. In the barracks, they must move on. the double at all times, race up the stairways to their fourth "stoop" (upperclassmen live below according to class). They serve as "dykes" (fags) for their seniors, run errands, polish shoes and stack cots. Except in their rooms, they must hold themselves in a rigid, chin-in brace, must never speak unless spoken to. ,

Integrity & Responsibility. Rats or not, all cadets are subject to the same demerit discipline. Each day, new delinquency lists are posted in Jackson Arch, reporting such offenses as "Yelling after taps," "Shoes in disorder," and "Dirty ducks." The main way to get rid of demerits is to march them off in penalty tours, up to 100 (300 miles) before the end of term. On Saturday nights, the first-classmen are aU lowed to stay in town until 10 p.m., there to spend their $10-a-month allowance as they wish. Otherwise, except for such events as the Thanksgiving Day dance and the final hop, there is little time off in four years at V.M.I.

But when those four years are done, V.M.I.'s cadets have a good deal more to show for them than merely a degree and a military commission. Most of them would say, with George Marshall last week, that they had absorbed what he called V.M.I.'s great virtues--"development of character, integrity and responsibility to constituted authority"--and the sense of V.M.I.'s motto: "In war a fortress, in peace a tower of strength."

*Though only West Point and Annapolis graduates are commissioned automatically into regular ranks, V.M.I, is one of eight schools given special recognition by the Army, Marines and Air Force. The others: Virginia Polytechnic Institute, the Citadel, North Georgia College, Norwich University, Pennsylvania Military College, Clemson, and Texas A. & M.

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