A WRINKLE IN THE LONG GRAY LINE

Donham remembers his tumultuous time at the West Point Academy during the Vietnam War and his contentious decision to declare conscientious objector status in this memoir.

When the author was accepted into West Point in 1967—he was merely 17 years old—he was largely motivated by practical concerns. He wanted to go to college and wasn’t sure his parents could afford it, and going to West Point deferred active duty while allowing him to graduate as an officer. However, he was not immune to the institution’s venerable prestige: “There was an element of romance to West Point, which from the outside made it easy to overlook the nitty-gritty. Cadets in precise formation, the dignity of the gray stone buildings, following in the footsteps of legends like MacArthur and Eisenhower—it seemed like a pinnacle.” However, he found the pressure of the discipline and competitiveness punishing and the brutal hazing by upperclassmen humiliating. Later, during his junior year, he experienced a “visceral reaction” to bayonet training, during which he fully recognized that the purpose of the academy was to prepare men to kill other men, a sensitivity affectingly described by the author. A deeply religious young man, the author became increasingly repulsed by the “moral and ethical irrationality of war.” On Christian grounds, he objected not only to the Vietnam War in particular, but to all war. Eventually, Donham concluded he could no longer remain at the academy, or in the United States Army, and sought to declare himself a conscientious objector, to date the only cadet in West Point’s history to do so. While the author’s remembrance can get bogged down in prosaic details (the reader tires of the gratuitously granular and repetitive account of the “routine struggle of cadet life”), Donham’s portrayal of his moral dilemma is deeply compelling. The response of West Point—they went to extraordinary lengths to discredit him—is lucidly depicted and reveals a darker side to the hallowed patriotism of the elite institution. The author’s experience is a unique one, and his reflection on it is thoughtful and forthcoming.

An engrossing memoir written with admirable candor and incisive self-reflection.