Duty, Honor, Vietnam: Twelve Men of West Point.

• Author: Atkinson, Rick

Duty, Honor Vietnam: Twelve Men of West Point. Ivan Prashken Arbor House/William Morrow, $19.95. West Pointers in combat have always attracted an attention that is disproportionate to their numbers in the Army's officer corps. That is partially because they are an obvious symbol of the officer brethren. As Black Jack Pershing decreed in 1917, "The standards for the American Army will be those of West Point." Another reason for the spotlight is that West Pointers have so dominated the upper ranks of the Army. Although comprising only I percent of the officers in World War II, military academy graduates accounted for more than half of the division commanders and included such celebrated figures as Eisenhower, Bradley, MacArthur, and Patton. At the peak of the Vietnam war, 21 of the 30 top army officers in the war zone were academy graduates, including, of course, William C. Westmoreland, class of 1936

Prashker has tapped our fascination with the products of "that rockbound highland home" by profiling a dozen officers who fought the war and whose links to West Point permit an examination of how Vietnam subsequently affected the military academy. He is shrewd enough, however, to focus not on the commanders at the top, but rather on platoon leaders and company commanders. By describing the ties they maintain to their alma mater, he shows the war's profound impact on West Point and the Army at-large.

Vietnam was hard on West Point. Not only did the academy lose many of its cherished sons-about 300 West Pointers died in Southeast Asia-but when Americans grew weary of the conflict, their hostility inevitably was directed at the academy, as though it was the causus belli rather than an instrument of the war. The cocksure ebullience that prevailed at West Point in the mid-1960s, when instructors posted placards in their offices that declared, "War is my business and business is good," gradually gave way to a dour realization that there was very little to cheer about in this wan In the early 1970s, West Point had difficulty attracting qualified young men because of the national opprobrium toward the military. A sea-change in attitudes toward authority and toward West Point's venerated values-duty, honor, and country-led to the massive cheating scandal in 1976, in which 150 cadets were expelled, The academy's 47th superintendent, Major General Samuel W Koster, was forced to resign in disgrace after an investigation tied him to the My Lai massacre of...