________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Q:
Sounds a little like fraternity rush. I suppose there's a positive side to that too. People need to
be given positive experiences.
Okay, any other things about the West Point years that we should cover?
A:
Well, I should tell you one other anecdote, and that was one of the first "missions" that I
undertook. It involved one other classmate that went into engineers later, John Wall. Several
of us in Company I1 decided that just before the ArmyNavy football game we ought to
have a foray down to the banks of the Severn (Annapolis) and be mischievous--
professionally mischievous in keeping with the spirit of competition and all that. We cooked
up a mission. Bob Speiser, Dick Sylvester, and I were the ones who did it, and we used John
Wall as an intelligence source because he had spent a plebe year at Annapolis before he came
to West Point--and spent a second plebe year there.
We wanted to go into the Naval Academy and paint Tecumseh, the Indian statue that sits
right in the courtyard of Bancroft Hall where the middies live. We wanted to paint Tecumseh
black, gray, and gold--Army's colors. So, we talked to John Wall to figure what's the best
way: do you go in by sea by rowboat; go over the wall and infiltrate in? He was our advance
eyes and ears and helped us come up with our battle plan.
We drove down one Saturday morning after taking a weekend of leave in late October,
stopping off at Sylvester's house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. His father was assigned at Fort
Dix. We picked up the paint and so forth, which had been procured and left there for us. We
then set forth and came on down to Annapolis. We arrived early, unfortunately, and went into
one of the local diners in town, awaiting lights out and taps, all the things that would close
shop at the academy, which I suppose was one o'clock but might have been midnight.
Then the waiter came over because we had gone past the hour, and said, "Psst, you guys are
really middies, snuck out, aren't you?" We said, "Oh, no, we're not that." We then left and
we were all in our cadet black parkas, but without the numbers and "USMA" showing. We
were wearing just jeans, so we were dark. We then drove to a back fence; climbed over the
wall; took with us the paint and some stencils and some spray cans of paint and some rock
salt; and began our infiltration across academy grounds. We moved in leaps and bounds and
very tactically as we moved across the dark areas--all of this not yet in the built-up area.
Then we came to a bridge that was lit; we had to dash across that. There was little traffic. We
could see a car here or there. Got across the bridge and went to the parade field. We used the
salt to put a big "A" right in front of the reviewing stand, trying to kill the grass so that in the
spring there would be a new brilliant "A" sitting there. Never did find out if that worked or
not.
Then we moved on in close to Bancroft Hall where we could see Tecumseh and everything
else. We met our first obstacle. As in any kind of battle, things aren't always quite the way
you expect them. So, it turned out to be both a disadvantage and an advantage--Tecumseh
had already been painted in all of its war paint, ready to go. He had not been unveiled; the
scaffolding and canvas were still around him. So, then we're sitting there in the shadows, just
19
Previous Page
