Ernest Graves
Q:
I think that you did very well there academically, as I remember.
A:
My father wondered whether all the other things a plebe had to do were going to drag
down my academics. As it turned out, they didn't.
Q:
What's memorable to you about your experience at West Point?
A:
I certainly remember those first weeks which were very tough for me. I couldn't get
anything right, and I got a lot of demerits. My father had told me that I shouldn't get
demerits. As a matter of fact, I had trouble most of the way through plebe year. I was
never close to being found for too many demerits, but at West Point your standing is
determined by a combination of all factors--your grades, your demerits, which was
called "conduct." While I was there they introduced the concept of using the results of
your physical fitness tests as a factor. They also had a leadership rating, which was done
by the instructors in the tactical department, by the upperclassmen, and by your
contemporaries.
My father followed all these things very closely. Each subject had what were called
proportional parts. These determined the weight given to the different subjects.
I suspect that I was the only one--or maybe there were two cadets in my class--that
ever worried about all this. I figured out at one point, perhaps with my father's help,
that one demerit was worth a failing grade on one day's recitation in class.
When I went there, each cadet had to recite every day in class. You went to the board,
you wrote the solutions to problems on the blackboard, and then you stood beside the
board and defended your solutions. You were graded on the basis of 3.0. In other
words, not 100 but 3.0, which meant there were 30 tenths. A passing grade was 2.0 and
a maximum grade was 3.0.
I figured out that, in terms of proportional parts, each demerit was worth 3.0, which
meant that it was equivalent to a grade of 0. I don't know how many of my classmates
knew that, but that made demerits pretty important. Fortunately for me, demerits plebe
year did not count toward graduation standing. By yearling year, I had got much better
at these things and I had very few demerits in my first class year. Because of the war,
I only went three years.
Q:
I didn't know that.
A:
The classes ahead of me were accelerated. The class of June of 1943 graduated in
January of 1943. The class that would have graduated in 1944 graduated in June of
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