West Point ’41: The Class That Went to War and Shaped America

1 | Hell on the Hudson

1 1 Hell on the Hudson It was only the fourth day at “Hell on the Hudson,” otherwise known as the United States Military Academy at West Point, and already Herb Stern had enough. It was a scorcher, with temperatures hovering around a hundred degrees, but instead of fishing for bass on the Hudson or jumping into a watering hole as any other sane young man might do, Stern was marching in formation dressed in full military gear, lugging forty-plus pounds on his back, plunging, lunging, dropping and dipping to calisthenics, and running until he was ready to drop. And that was just the beginning of the day. As the sweat poured down his earnest eighteen-year-old face that Independence Day of 1937, Stern swore to fellow classmates, “I’m getting out of the Army!” But then, Herb Stern had waited so long to get in. Stern was nine years old when he knew beyond a doubt that he wanted to be in the United States Army. He’d been captivated by his uncle’s tales of terror and triumph of the Americans over the Germans in World War I. “I ate their eyeballs like grapes,” his uncle said of the beastly Germans. They were the darndest doughboy stories, his uncle’s tall tales of heroic Army officers in action. Herb Stern wanted to be one of those men. A few years after hearing those riveting tales, Herb found out that his uncle had never actually set foot overseas and had certainly never seen a doughboy in combat. But by then it was too late. Herb’s mind was set on the Army, so he did what hundreds of other young men did. He planned. He improvised. He coerced. He connived. He got himself an appointment to West Point that hot summer, 135 years after the academy had opened the gates to its gray cloistered walls. Obtaining an appointment to the academy was no small feat. Each U.S. congressman and senator was permitted a very limited number of seats to give to aspiring young men in their districts; the president of the United States was granted a number more. The slots were coveted and went Kazel-Wilcox - West Point.indb 1 3/19/2014 5:40:08 PM 2 ★ west point ’41 quickly. And even if some were doled out as favors of sorts, the recipients still had to pass demanding academic tests to gain entry. Garnering an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy, however, meant so much more than realizing a young boy’s dream of becoming a military hero. It was, after all, the height of the Great Depression. Most families had little in the way of funds to place food on the table, let alone pay for college educations. There were no college loan programs, and scholarships were far and few between. West Point offered an education for free—and three meals a day. That was good enough for Henry Bodson, who knew he couldn’t depend on his family for food and support. I’ve got to make it on my own, he told himself. Bodsonknewhe’dhavetobeextremely resourceful. He’d gottenby pretty well as a boy on the sometimes-mean streets of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. A whiz in math and science, he’d even skipped a few grades in school, all the while selling newspapers seven days a week for pocket money. When Columbia University invited the sixteen-year-old to a one-day meet and greet to explore attending the university, he was flattered but went primarily because of the free dinner. For all his gumption, Columbia, in Bodson’s mind, was way beyond his courageous expectations. Instead, Bodson opted for a smaller technology institute on the lower east side of Manhattan, Cooper Union, and entered it in the fall of 1934. He did well for a while. Then he faltered. When the dean of academics called him on the carpet, the young Bodson couldn’t begin to explain the real problem. He had trouble scrounging up the ten cents for subway fare to reach school. One out of five men in the country were out of work at the time, and subway fares didn’t come easy for a seventeen-year-old from Brooklyn with little support. Bodson, undeterred, moved on to plan B. While Americans were grappling with the Great Depression, across the Atlantic Ocean Germany was arming itself and threatening the rest of Europe. Much of America was...