Last Updated: 5/28/99
Army-Navy Spirit Week  From: Austin (Bud) Miller, '57
In years past, cadets would plan to steal the Navy goat from its very guarded enclosure at Annapolis. When successful, the goat was brought to West Point and the assistance of the West Point Veterinarian was obtained to insure the Goat remained in good health. The Goat was always displayed to the Corps as shown in the picture above and returned with appropriate ceremony to the Brigade of Midshipmen prior to the start of the football game.
The week immediately prior to the Army - Navy game is a very spirited one including "hi-jinks" in the Mess Hall; the Goat-Engineer Football game; in 1998, the inaugural Female Middies vs Female Cadets flag football game; and a huge bonfire rally on Thursday night. (In 1998, the bonfire was torched on Wednesday night -- believed to have been done by Middie exchange students). On Friday morning, the football team is given a rousing send off by the Corps and the entire West Point community as its buses are escorted down Thayer Road to Thayer Gate into Highland Falls. Another recent innovation is the wearing of active Army division patches on the football teams uniforms.Being new Cows in our "new" Company, A-1, we quickly felt the call of the Clock Tower and the famous prank involving the cannon placed on top. We just had to come up with our own prank that would leave our mark on history. We schemed to drag a sailboat on its trailer from South Dock up the steep incline to the level of the Plain and place it in front of Washington Hall to be seen by all on the Sunday morning prior to the Navy game. The boat would be decked out with an appropriate sail exhorting, "Beat Navy". Somehow we did it on a cold, dark November night, early morning and went off dragging that Sunday afternoon feeling very cocky and certain of our place in cadet lore.The owner of the boat, a faculty Captain, recognized his craft in front of the Mess Hall while he and his family were enroute back to quarters from chapel service. It didn't take him long to learn which company had been responsible and he sent word to the CCQ that if the boat was returned to South Dock by supper formation that Sunday, all would be forgiven. By the time the CCQ (a co-conspirator and classmate) got the news midway through the afternoon, he realized that he could never get in contact with all of us in time. He did the next best thing. He gathered up all available personnel in the company (read: Plebes) and started the treacherous descent to South Dock. They didn't make it. The boat broke loose halfway down and impacted against the very sturdy granite wall bordering the sidewalk on that steep, inclined road.The Captain was very fair. He arranged for appropriate deductions from the cadet accounts of us ringleaders to make repairs to his boat and never initiated any disciplinary action. He seems to have been way ahead of his time. I can't even remember his name.True confession time: Plebe Navy game, psyched to all get out, waiting for the National Anthem to finish, and reflexively yelling "Beat Army" which I had heard my first 17 years every time the National Anthem finished - my Dad is USNA '39. Nothing before or since has rivaled the sinking sensation I felt as I realized what I had just done . . . And all of these years I thought I was the only one to have had such a low point. This trip down memory lane is not only fun, but cathartic as well. BEAT NAVY!
Spirit from a '56 grad (FROM THE A-1 50 YEAR HISTORY BOOK) We later returned the arrows. Since then they have been welded into the quiver.
The year I entered the Academy they formed the I companies. I was in I-4. During the Beat Navy season, I made a giant poster of bedsheets to hang outside the 44th division. It had a picture of a big, muscular cyclops, and the touch I felt it needed to be complete was a blinking eye. I called on the construction office of the crews which were, at the time, tearing down the old barracks (Old North, at that point, I believe). Of course, I refused to even consider stealing one from somewhere along the construction saftey perimeter lines where they were using them. But fearing they would refuse to make me the loan of a blinking yellow warning light from their stock, I was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm and supportiveness of the office crew. They readily lent me a light (in fact they just gave it to me to keep), and it turned out that one of the men in the office was a Mr. Maher (First Name Unknown), the nephew of the well-known Marty Maher. I put the light in the appropriate place on the poster, and the Washington Post (of course NOT the NYT) put a picture of it on their front page. The Long Gray Line of us stretches . . . Chuck Rittenburg, '73
As for pranks, I was much too busy trying to graduate to engage in many pranks. Once I was made spirit rep or something like that, in charge of putting up the "beat Navy" sign on the company. At about that time one of the Tacs, Gene Forrester '47 gave a rousing pep talk at a rally in which he used the expression "Stick it in their ear". I had never heard that, liked it and commissioned a sign which showed a stupid looking Mid with a goat going in one ear and coming out the other all frazzled. The Rabble Rousers loved it and selected it to go to the game. It was loaded on a flat car to accompany the Corps to Philadelphia. The Com was inspecting the train (why?) and when he saw it he ordered the car cut from the train. That's not a prank -- I sincerely thought it was a great rallying cry, and, by the way, after our sign went up it did become our rallying cry. Unfortunately, Navy stuck it in our ear. Palmer McGrew 58
Questions
and comments are invited via E-mail. |
|---|
