WEST POINT, NY: TOO MANY BRAVE SOULS

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"I got interested in this place," says Lieut. Colonel Conrad Crane, a member of West Point's history department, "when I asked the cadets in my class why they were here. Some said free education or to get a job on Wall Street. I wanted to show them what being a West Pointer is all about." He shows them a graveyard full of the young, dating from the first man buried here in 1782.

Walk along the western edge, and you find the dead of World War II, many of whom perished young. Charles Finley of the class of 1943, killed in Normandy in 1944. Henry Benitez of the class of '42, killed at Falaise in '44. Turner Chambliss Jr., '43, killed June 6, 1944. And so on, until you turn a corner and start finding George Tow and Samuel Coursen of the class of '49, killed in action in Korea, 1950. Over behind the Viele monument are the graves from Vietnam. There is a row in which 10 of 11 graves are occupied by members of the class of '66, and that does not begin to encompass that class's contribution. When that run ends, you have five in a row from the class of '64. One belongs to John Hottell III--a Rhodes scholar, twice a recipient of the Silver Star--who was killed in 1970. The year before, he had written his own obituary and sent it in a sealed envelope to his wife. "I deny that I died for anything--not my country, not my Army, not my fellow man," he wrote. "I lived for these things, and the manner in which I chose to do it involved the very real chance that I would die...my love for West Point and the Army was great enough...for me to accept this possibility as part of a price which must be paid for things of great value." Walk through the graveyard; cemeteries humble the ironist.