Home of the Doolies

An ornate complex of glass and aluminum buildings stood all but deserted in the pine-covered heights of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, like a giant motel that was somehow mistakenly plopped down in a forest. Here and there a lonely figure in khakis scurried across the shimmering terrazzo courtyards and disappeared into a wall of glass. Then suddenly, into the woodland slumber burst the sound of a brass band and the clack-clack of boot-steps--and up the ramp into the spacious grounds marched 450 men, battlegarbed in steel helmets and full field packs. Their young faces were almost hidden by the helmets as they marched, and they strained to achieve a mature military aspect. Officers barked orders in authoritative voices: "Heads up! Keep the step! Look proud! Look proud!" Proud they were, for this group of men was part of the 1,148 members of the U.S. Air Force Academy who were arriving to take up quarters in their smart, expensive ($133 million, so far) new campus' north of Colorado Springs.

The men comprised the newest of the academy's four classes, set up three years ago in temporary quarters at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. They were a strange sight to be parading a courtyard befitting a grand motel. Incongruous was the battle dress, designed for fighting men, worn by youngsters to whom the annealing process of military life was still incomplete--and incongruous, too, were the orders shouted by cadet officers, straight and cold as steel girders: "All men quartered in Area D, be sure to keep your shades pulled when changing clothes! There are secretaries across the way, and we don't want them to be embarrassed." Announced another: "If you wake up in the middle of the night and there's a little man playing with your radiator let him play with it. Last night was colder than hell, and there wasn't any hot water."

Code Lights & Pingpong. Inside the dormitory the new arrivals found their quarters (two men to a room). As they picked their way down the line of duffel bags, foot lockers, skis, banjos, rifles and packs, the "doolies,"* i.e., plebes, had to halt before passing an upperclassman to ask "By your leave, sir." In the well-outfitted rooms, other cadets pored over manuals, searching for instructions on where to place skivvies in the gleaming walnut dressers, where to hang battle jackets behind the handsome sliding panels of their closets. Instead of commands from a bull-voiced sergeant, they got fresh instructions from a softly modulated public-address system, and instead of a bulletin board, they watched a panel of code lights that blinked out the kind of uniform to be worn for supper formation.

As the cadets rushed to get ready for an inspection, top academy officers were worrying over the kind of details that always seem to interrupt the textbook version of military precision. The dining room chairs (with under-seat cap racks) had not yet arrived; two colonels and two majors knocked their heads together over the problem of where the cadets would place their caps during supper (solution: on extra tables and under chairs). And the Roman Catholic chaplain was hunting for the culprit who installed a pingpong table in his temporary chapel. "It's organized confusion," moaned one light colonel. "And that's the worst kind."

The Maneuver. Actually, the switch from Denver's Lowry A.F.B., where the academy's first class got going three years ago, was a model military maneuver. The moving day was set for Labor Day weekend 1958 way back in 1955. Since that time, 5,000 engineers, architects and construction workers had pushed aside 18 million cu. yds. of dirt, poured 800,000 cu. yds. of concrete, covered more than 4,000,000 sq. ft. of floor space. The textbooks had been procured and classroom movement was precisely engineered to determine the exact amount of time required for students to change from one room to another. The dining room staff was ready to feed faculty and cadets--and most of the installations on the 17,800-acre campus were ready for use. Only a few hours after the cadets' arrival, the formation area in front of the quarters was cleared of cadets and stray baggage. The students melted into the living area ike sunrays; out of the mass of luggage, everyone found his full-dress white uniforrn for Monday morning formation; officers had their sashes and sabers, and the doolies, too, knew their place in ranks. When the cadets marched down the ramp and onto the parade ground, they left a row of trampled grass as straight as a surveyor's sighting, and when they passed in review, the thousands of Colorado Springs civilians who turned out to see the show rewarded the boys with applause.

Like Annapolis and West Point, the Air Force Academy was set up to train officers ("Not flyers," said a brasshat once, "but generals"), and it has devised a curriculum that will make the cadets well-educated officers at that. Cadets get 140 credit hours of sciences, social studies and the humanities, 26 credit hours of "military airmanship." One innovation: sciences and humanities get equal emphasis, whereas at West Point the sciences take precedence.

Scorn & Pride. With all its concentration on education, the Air Force Academy has paid plenty of attention to the sharper side of military training, rears its crew-cut doolies in all the traditional modes set at Annapolis and West Point. There is no hazing as such (an upperclassman must ask permission to touch a fourth classman, even if he wants to straighten his tie), but the doolie moves double time outdoors, walks at attention indoors, is constantly subjected to a withering stream of comment about his inadequacies as a future Air Force man. In the dining hall he sits and eats at attention, his eyes downcast unless he is being addressed by an upperclassman. Lingo is all important (the kitchen is the "hangar," the table is the "ramp"). One doolie at every table during meals is designated "copilot," sees to it that the diners are supplied with cold drinks, announces in a singsong intercom voice to the cadet officer at the head of the table: "Sir, I have a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen). The cold beverage for this meal is orange juice. Is there anyone who does not desire orange juice at this time?"

Combined with the tough course of studies, the heavy blanket of scorn heaped on Air Force Academy newcomers takes a big slice of resignations and washouts every year (22% v. West Point's 30%, Annapolis' 22.5%). But for those who remain, the rigid life shapes strong, intelligent, self-disciplined men, ready to match their pride with that of the Point and the Naval Academy. The new plant will contribute to that pride. Said one cadet last week, as he gazed at the Air Force Academy's permanent home: "All the time we were in the barracks at Lowry, I felt more like an airman than anything else. Now I really feel like a cadet."

* A term inherited from West Point.

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