Word: beyers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Kristen Beyer is here too, sober and in jeans, a pink blouse and flip-flops. She has been making the rounds, smiling broadly. She's not talking military, not thinking military. She just likes being with friends, nodding along to the music. There are a few other characters in attendance--the cadet band thrashing out speed-rock covers, a Vietnam War hero dispensing advice at the bar, an exchange cadet from Uzbekistan playing drinking games in the corner--but by and large, it's all Firsties. The mood is convivial and congratulatory. The Firstie Club is like a sports...
...shadowed three members of the class of 2005--Beyer, Zielinski and Pae--through their final spring march to graduation: this weekend they will parade across the Plain, listen to speeches, throw their taut white hats into the air and go out as second lieutenants into an Army that has signed up for a generation's worth of war. Against the backdrop of Abu Ghraib courts-martial and new reports of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, as the Pentagon fails to meet its recruiting goals and Congress debates the ban on women serving in combat, many cadets too have freely questioned...
...CADET BEYER...
...Beyer, a shy 18-year-old swimmer from Tucson, Ariz., who had arrived just 10 weeks earlier, the weight of history was overwhelming. After 9/11, the cadets were deluged with honors--praise, medallions and miles of thanks from yellow-ribbon America--that most didn't think they had earned, at least not yet. "People really loved to tell us that we're great Americans," she recalls, "but I really didn't think we were all that great. We're just college kids." Strangers started coming up to her on the street when she was in uniform, thanking her for what...
...life is right for them before they take their affirmation oath. Up to that point, they can still transfer out and owe the Army nothing. Those who stay serve five years of active duty after graduation and three more in the Army Reserve. Like many other West Point athletes, Beyer had not grown up with visions of military glory. In fact, she had barely heard of West Point until its swim coach flew out to recruit her and offered a chance to compete in Division I, get out of Tucson, test-drive military life for a couple of years risk...