S.H.: You served two tours in Iraq since graduating from West Point. What was it like to return to your alma mater as a combat veteran?
Matt Mabe: It’s funny. When I was a cadet, I would look at graduates returning for their reunions as people who had triumphed in life. Some still wore the uniform. Others had left the Army to pursue careers in civilian life. They all carried an air of accomplishment. They all seemed to have won the lottery of life.
I always fantasized about returning one day as one of those content, successful, confident graduates I admired. And when I finally did make it back, I guess I played the part.
It was Homecoming weekend. There was a tour and a parade. There were barbecues and a football game. There were thousands of cadets enjoying one day of respite in a punishing four-year experience. It was novel and pleasant.
But, deep down, I felt empty. I began to think about those of my classmates who could not be there to share the experience with those of us who could.
I thought of Todd Bryant, who was killed by a roadside bomb outside Fallujah on Halloween Day 2003 after only a few weeks on the ground. He had been married for two months.
I thought of Jim Gurbisz, who suffered the same fate in Baghdad in November 2005. He was honored with a burial in Arlington National Cemetery.
I thought of Drew Jensen, who was shot in the neck by a sniper in Baqubah in May, paralyzing him from the neck down. He had been trying to save one of his soldiers who was pinned behind a Humvee after a bomb explosion. Last month, Drew asked his wife and mother to take him off life support. Before having his final wish granted, he donated $10,000 to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to establish a fund to help families cover expenses while visiting their wounded loved ones.
I thought about the values that the academy imbued in all of us over four grueling years. Things like Loyalty, Selfless Service, Honor.
I felt proud to have once walked the same halls as these men. It comforted me to think that their souls will always dwell among those hallowed grounds.
I am haunted by the sacrifices that thousands of Americans like them have made. The faces of the cadets I saw at my reunion reminded me of the innocence they will soon lose when they, too, are thrown against the guns.
And my heart broke for my country.
What are your last memories of West Point as a cadet?
My last and most vivid memories of West Point are of my graduation in June 2002, and not just because it’s how I spent my last day there. The morning was hot, bright, and perfect. It was the culmination of four anxious years spent in intense training and labored study.
Graduating cadets had put more effort into polishing their brass breastplates and hat crests, pressing their white belts, and shining their shoes than they had in all four years before.
We were the bicentennial class. Accordingly, a great deal of preparation had gone into the week-long ceremonies. VIPs, old graduates and media had descended on the place to be a part of it, to remember it and to record it. I felt privileged just to be present.
President Bush was the keynote speaker. He delivered what is now considered to be his second in a series of speeches to the American public that would make the case for war, the first being his post-9/11 State of the Union Address.
After the speech, I lined up in the queue to receive my diploma and my shiny new lieutenant’s bars. I was so nervous that I didn’t even hear my name called. I had to be prompted to walk up the ramp and salute the superintendent.
Then, diploma in hand, I walked a few steps further to stand face to face with the commander-in-chief. He shook my hand.
Cadets spend their entire time at West Point dreaming of the emblematic moment when they can “see the academy in the rearview mirror.” Driving away with my parents and my sister that day, I know I must have turned around and taken one last look at those fabled, formidable gates. But I don’t remember it.
All that resonates from that day is what President Bush said to me when I stood before him on the graduation platform.
“Take care of those soldiers, son,” the president told me.
I said that I would.
What part of your reunion brought about the strongest emotions?
I am not a sports fan. I never have been. But the most moving part of my reunion occurred in the stands watching Army’s Homecoming football game against Tulane.
The sight of a sea of cadets in their crisp white summer uniforms assembled in support of an often beleaguered team reminded me of the camaraderie I once enjoyed. It made me miss the Saturdays in the fall when I could let out all the frustrations of an exhausting week with my buddies in the stadium. That phenomenon at West Point has clearly not changed.
And I may not have even noticed the significance of the current cadets’ raucous gathering had it not been for the perspective of the woman I brought as my date.
She said it was refreshing to know there is still a place that exists where young people embody values that many Americans seem to have forgotten.
It made me think that what the cadets today face after graduation is immensely more harrowing than what my classmates and I ever imagined our service would entail. When the towers came down in New York, cadets in my class were already locked in to our Army commitments. Before that, all we knew was that we would be joining a “peacetime Army.” Had any of us wanted out after September 11, it would have been tough luck. (To my knowledge, none of us did.)
It is one thing to have to go to war. It is quite another to volunteer for it.
The young men and women today who decide to enter the ranks do so with the certainty that they will, and I am humbled by their courage.
Coming together for the first time in five years, how much did you and your classmates talk about Iraq?
None. I think that we were all sick of talking about it. I mean we all have our war stories. What I needed was a vacation from the reality that the Iraq tragedy has created.
My conversations with classmates centered around our time as cadets. We laughed a lot about our misfortunes as plebes and our antics as upperclassmen. We recalled the miseries of merciless winters. The inconveniences of daily discipline at the academy, which seemed trivial after graduation, became important again.
For me, West Point is a magical place. It exists in a fairytale setting, tucked away in the hills along the Hudson River. Its ramparts dominate the twist in the river where General Washington’s Continental Army was once garrisoned.
The timelessness of the academy almost makes one forget that there is a world outside.
My classmates and I talked for hours about lots of things: our young years, new families, aspirations for the future. But Iraq did not come up. And for that day, it was fine with me.
