To address Jewish concerns about attending the United States Military Academy at West Point and serving in the military, the late Colonel Zickel (US Army Reserve, USMA class of 1949) asked 630 Jewish graduates of West Point to recount their experiences there. He includes excerpts of their overwhelmingly positive responses to his questionnaire in regard to both general and religious issues, after tracing the role of Jews in US military history and discussing his own service in the army. The book also explores the thus far undocumented history of the Jews at West Point, including the creation of a Jewish chapel for cadets which many of the graduates site as bringing them closer to their Jewish heritage. This book will be of value to anyone interested in West Point, Jewish history and American military history. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
The Jews of West Point in the Long Gray Line
By Lewis L. ZickelKTAV Publishing House, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 Lewis L. Zickel
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-60280-117-2Contents
In Memoriam..............................................................ixAcknowledgments..........................................................xPreface..................................................................xiIntroduction.............................................................xiii1. The West Point Story..................................................1Birth of the Academy.....................................................3The Jewish Warrior.......................................................7War and Peace............................................................9Racial and Ethnic Prejudice..............................................14Comments on Anti-Semitic Experiences.....................................20Individual Responses.....................................................22Bedrock Values Programs: Honor and Respect...............................44Religion at West Point...................................................47Shabbat Worship is Very Special..........................................61The Birth of the West Point Jewish Chapel................................62Jewish Religious Activities at West Point, 1984-2005.....................78The Alumni Gallery.......................................................93The Three Amigos.........................................................982. My Story..............................................................107Plebe Year...............................................................122The Fourth Class (Plebe) System..........................................124The Elusive Young Man....................................................130Outside the Box..........................................................134Football Rally...........................................................138The Picnic...............................................................139Roadside Service.........................................................140The Pencil...............................................................144Combat Chaplain..........................................................145The Battle of Unsan......................................................146My Seventy-ninth Mission.................................................147Bridging the Generations.................................................148A Chance Meeting.........................................................152The Recruiter............................................................157The New Orleans Belle....................................................162The Marksman.............................................................1633. Their Stories.........................................................167Tales of the Shinyo Maru.................................................170A Sample Questionnaire...................................................181Selections from the Questionnaires.......................................208Epilogue.................................................................315Index....................................................................317
Chapter One
PART 1 THE WEST POINT STORY
Birth of the Academy
The "shot heard around the world" fired at Concord, Massachusetts, in 1775 came from the muskets of untrained colonial rebels. The professionals wore red coats. It was the start of a war against the strongest military power of the time, waged by untrained leaders and soldiers from General George Washington down to the men in the line. Neither Washington nor his generals and officers had any formal education in the military arts, the sciences, or engineering. If not for foreign volunteers such as the Marquis de Lafayette, the Polish patriot Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and the Prussian officer Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Augustus von Steuben, the Continental Army and the Minutemen might have been hard pressed to defeat the British and to win the American Revolutionary War.
The eighteenth-century colleges of higher learning in the American colonies (later to become the newborn nation) offered courses only in the liberal arts, theology, and some science. American education was devoid of engineering courses and military science. Schools specializing in these studies simply did not exist, nor were there teachers qualified to teach them. General, later President, George Washington was painfully aware of these shortfalls, which plagued his efforts all through the war. By the time he became president, he was convinced that the nascent nation needed a school, or a series of schools, to educate officers, engineers, and scientists. He envisioned a single school combining all of these courses of study. He sought support from Congress to open and fund such an establishment, and he selected the fortified ramparts of West Point on the Hudson River for its location. Alexander Hamilton wrote a curriculum for the new school. However, neither Washington nor John Adams, his successor, was able to persuade Congress to authorize such a school in the postwar environment. Ironically, success fell to Thomas Jefferson during his presidency. The irony stems from the fact that Jefferson had always opposed the establishment of a federal military academy, but for an unknown reason, he moved rapidly to have it approved by Congress. Finally, on March 16, 1802, Congress authorized the establishment of a Corps of Engineers consisting of ten cadets, with provisions to double that number. This marked the birth of the profession of engineering and the profession of arms in the United States. The new academy formally opened with two cadets, Joseph G. Swift and Simon Magruder Levy. As Swift observed in his diary, Levy "was from a prominent Baltimore Jewish family."
The early years of the Academy were less than ideal until a member of the Class of 1808, Sylvanus Thayer, became its fifth superintendent. Recommended for the post by then Chief Engineer Joseph G. Swift and appointed by President James Monroe, Thayer served in that capacity from July 28, 1817, until July 1, 1833.
Thayer realized that the Academy needed proper textbooks, qualified faculty, and a system of discipline, teaching, and learning. In 1816 the president authorized him to travel to France to seek the first two items on his list. He and Lieutenant Colonel William McCree (initially offered the assignment of superintendent, but who had turned it down) were dispatched with a letter of introduction from the president to the aged Marquis de Lafayette, asking him to introduce Thayer to Napoleon. Thayer was excited by the prospect of meeting the great Napoleon Bonaparte. Unfortunately for Thayer, the emperor had been defeated by the British at the Battle of Waterloo and sent into exile before he arrived in Paris.
Thayer's mission was to "study the military schools of Europe and coastal fortifications of France, considered the best in the world, and to purchase books and scientific equipment for the Academy." Thayer visited bookstores, Saint-Cyr, the French military academy, and the Ecole Polytechnique, the French school of engineering. With Napoleon gone, King Louis XVIII was in power, wreaking revenge on all he could find who had been enemies of the House of Bourbon. One of those being hunted down was General Simon Barnard, a talented engineer from Napoleon's staff and his aide-de-camp. Barnard willingly accepted an invitation to emigrate to the United States and become a...
