At the end of the year in June, when the Post is thronged with visitors, relatives, and friends of cadets who are present for the graduation exercises, an outdoor demonstration of the setting-up exercises is given on the Plain. The precision and uniformity with which the movements are executed arouse great interest as eight hundred supple young bodies respond as one to the sonorous commands of the instructor perched on a solid wooden table.
[Illustration: Setting up Drill on the Plain]
This drill is usually followed by the Outdoor Meet, the annual athletic event corresponding to the Indoor Meet. Each class has its best representatives entered to win a victory in the dashes, hurdle races, long distance races, hammer throwing, jumping, and pole vaulting. Back of the roped lines surge the cadets of the various classes, cheering themselves hoarse for their own representatives. Mothers, sisters, sweethearts, friends, friends’ friends, in the fluffiest and gayest summer dresses devouringly trail their “Kaydet,” and give excited and exaggerated opinions about things of which they are totally ignorant,--but bless their hearts! their presence is an inspiration to the young gods at their Olympian games.
On the June morning of the Outdoor Meet, West Point usually offers one of her incomparably beautiful days as a fitting setting for the display of her cadets’ physical prowess. And when the Meet ends, the cadets all feel that one more year’s progress been made in their physical development. The First Classmen who on the morrow will go forth into the Army, leaving the protecting walls of West Point, reflect with emotion and gratitude upon all that West Point’s training has done to strengthen their bodies to endure whatever hardships that might arise in their new lives as officers.
In the Area of the South Barracks, directly opposite the sally-port, is a little brick building with a clock tower. It is small and insignificant looking to the ordinary observer, but not so to the cadet. Here dwell the “Tacs,” the officers of the Tactical Department, who are charged with the discipline and purely military instruction of the Corps. More especially, it is the Headquarters of the Commandant, his assistants, the cadet Officer of the Day, the officers of the guard, and the orderlies. The mail, the precious mail, is assorted twice daily within its old walls, and its creaky wooden floor is worn thin by the lively tread of hurrying cadets feverishly crowding around the bulletin boards.