At 6:45 in the morning, a week before classes started, 20-odd members of the Hopkins ROTC were awake, uniformed and ready to head to Gunpowder Falls State Park for their yearly orientation, during which they would qualify as marksmen on an M-16 shooting range and, as a rare treat, take a joyride in a Huey utility helicopter.
For me, the bumbling reporter tagging along, the experience was to be an induction into the customs and training of the armed forces, a brief foray into the world of military precision -- and I was late.
My three alarms had failed me; after all, I hadn't seen this side of 8 a.m. since May. And while I somehow managed to arrive at the ROTC building just in time for the bus to Gunpowder, I did so as a dazed, perspiring specimen of civilianhood -- the pathetic character in an episode of M*A*S*H who inevitably trashes the mess hall by accident.
It was going to be a long day.
'Here's how you hold an M-16'
On the bus, squad leader Andria Caruso, a Hopkins junior and biology major, was showing me how to handle an M-16 semiautomatic. All the cadets on the trip carried their own weapon, on loan from the Maryland National Guard. The last time I had seen an M-16 in person was on the D.C. metro the summer before, during a week of Code Orange terror alerts. Now I was holding one.
"You have to squash your face into it," Caruso encouraged. She went on to explain the intricacies of zeroing, or focusing the weapon on a target. "See the picture at the end of the sight? To zero the weapon, the picture should stay the same no matter which way you move."
Tim Park, another squad leader, sat down behind me and kindly offered up a hefty silver package labeled "meatloaf in meat sauce" -- for breakfast. "Would you like to try an MRE?" he asked.
MREs, or Meals-Ready-to-Eat, are the packaged military staple now familiar to anyone who's seen emergency food rations being air-lifted to New Orleans.
Like Terrace food on a bad day, most of these high-calorie meals would only taste good if you were starving. But here, with a surprisingly complaint-free foray into MREs, began the subtle transformation of these students from college kids to military hopefuls.
You could see it in their stances -- straight-backed in front of the officers, or leaning on the butts of their M-16s in groups -- as well as in the joking and conversation.
You could see it in the way senior cadets recounted the exploits of much-admired ROTC officers to new recruits: Ltc. Kenneth Romaine, head of the Hopkins cadre, is a veteran of both the current Iraq war and the Gulf war. Cpt. Amy Wallace, the only female officer in the cadre, has seen more combat than many men.
And according to a few cadets, the wry and idiosyncratic Cpt. Thomas Langston, who trained with U.S. Special Forces, led a terrifying mission in Panama involving some enemy force coming in unforeseen numbers. Coming from the students, the details may have been outsized, but the simple fact remained: "We all basically idolize him," said one cadet.
These officers-turned-instructors aren't just awesome to the cadets -- they're "squared away," the term of highest praise, embodying both guts and experience.
"I've learned more about leadership from these officers than I have in any class," said cadet Jonathan Miller.
For Miller, who was turned away from West Point at the end of his freshman year because of a failing physics grade, the ROTC at Hopkins represented a way back into the ranks of the nation's most prestigious military school.
He plans, he said, to give the arduous application process into West Point one more try, even if it meant starting his undergraduate career over from scratch.
His commitment is common among cadets. After all, joining a college ROTC is serious business, worlds away from choosing a major, an adviser or a class.
Those who stay in the program after sophomore year are committed to four years of active duty in the U.S. military after graduation, followed by six years in the reserve or National Guard. With a controversial war on in Iraq, even the most gung-ho admit to feeling the uncertainty of the times.
But upon arrival at the Gunpowder shooting range, these new ROTC inductees and their more experienced squad leaders were all smiles. Their commitment and guile would be tested later on, when classes and training, and then service, began in earnest. This was the fun part.
Up-range, down-range and in between
Working with live ammo apparently requires a lot of careful instruction. In front of the row of canals in which shooters crouch and aim, an authoritative Sgt. Derrick Beatty gave instructions in a booming voice: Anyone heading down-range must wear Kevlar helmets ("K-pots") at all times, and all weapons must be pointed down-range. Any potential dangerous behavior was to be stopped with a loud, "Cease fire, cease fire, cease fire!"
In front of the canals, practiced older cadets gave their trainees advice.
Senior Gavin Maguire, described unhesitatingly by his fellow cadets as the best shot in the battalion, usually has a quirky way with words (later in the day, he shouted at some dawdling cadets that they were "all moving like pond water!"), but with an M-16 in hand, he dispensed expertise with the authority of an officer. "Watch your breathing," he said. "Small changes can really throw you off."
After their qualifying rounds, the shooters retrieved their paper targets from down-range and held them up like report cards: Slight deviations in the bullet-hole clusters were tell-tale signs of an unsteady hand, while one new cadet's near-perfect array of hits earned him the biggest compliment of the day -- "the next Maguire."
Up-range, a group of cadets waiting for their turn -- Hopkins students Jonathan Miller and Alex Johnson, and Brian Maddox and Andy Kwon from University of Maryland, Baltimore County -- gathered to chat about ROTC life.
I asked them if their peers on campus understand their aims in the program.
"I can tell you for sure that they don't," said Johnson. "They keep asking, 'Are you in the army?'"
Miller agreed. "I showed up to my international relations class in civilian clothes for the first four weeks," he said. "The anti-military sentiment was rampant. They didn't understand that the military is impartial; that's the whole point. One day, I showed up in my BDUs [battle dress uniform], and the whole tone changed. It showed me that they had no clue what it was all about, that the jobs we're preparing for supercede political views."
The prickly -- and very political -- issue of Iraq was one that the cadets sidestepped in one way or another, and no one voiced a supporting or dissenting opinion in what has become an increasingly unpopular war.
For some, it was personal; cadet Meagan McClellan's father was just finishing a tour of duty in Iraq. For others, like UMBC cadet Maddox, it was the looming possibility that gave their training a more urgent edge.
And for one strongly religious sergeant of the cadre, it was even a sign of God's displeasure at the modern culture of excess.
"Everyone has some opinion of Iraq, whether we should be there or not, whether it's fair or not," said senior Tim Park.
He plans to take an educational leave after graduation to attend medical school.
"For me, because I want to be a doctor, I just want to help people, wherever I am. In a way, the politics [of Iraq] don't matter -- we're already there."
But the terms were more ambivalent for one new cadet, who joined the ROTC for a trial class and has not yet committed to service. There were aspects of the Hopkins program that didn't appeal to him, he commented, not caring to elaborate. "The war makes everything more uncertain," he said, "because there's a possibility we might have to go."
Taking flight in the bird
Finally, after six hours of shooting and waiting and talking, we were ushered to a field where the Huey helicopter stood, an olive-green giant with propellers that sent broad swirls of sand into the faces of on-lookers and toppled soft-hats from heads.
However, disappointment awaited me -- the necessary permission for a civilian to board hadn't been prepared in time. I would have to watch from the ground.
Even then, the excitement was palpable. Row after row of cadets trotted toward the helicopter for a 20-minute ride over the local area, over which the Huey buzzed like an oversized dragonfly, and exited after landing with identical grins. I felt, for a moment, a slight twinge of envy.
Yes, they had to wake up and exercise at dawn a few times a week. Yes, they may face combat abroad in the future, and they will have to struggle with the judgment of their peers while they are here. But anybody would covet a ride in that big green bird.
"Miller, how was it?" a cadet asked junior Julie Miller as she returned from the flight to join her cohorts, who occupied themselves on the grass by giving their weapons a rough clean.
"Can't you tell by the [expletive]-eating grin on my face?" she said.
Park had a more vivid recollection: "We were flying close to the tree line, right into the horizon, and we could look down and see all the people's residences, yards and pools. It was beautiful."
