There was little left at Devon any more which had not been recruited for the war. The few stray
activities and dreamy people not caught up in it were being systematically corralled by Brinker.
And every day in chapel there was some announcement about qualifying for “V-12,” an officer-
training program the Navy had set up in many colleges and universities. It sounded very safe,
almost like peacetime, almost like just going normally on to college. It was also very popular;
groups the size of LST crews joined it, almost everyone who could qualify, except for a few who
“wanted to fly” and so chose the Army Air Force, or something called V-5 instead. There were
also a special few with energetic fathers who were expecting appointments to Annapolis or West
Point or the Coast Guard Academy or even—this alternative had been unexpectedly stumbled
on—the Merchant Marine Academy. Devon was by tradition and choice the most civilian of
schools, and there was a certain strained hospitality in the way both the faculty and students
worked to get along with the leathery recruiting officers who kept appearing on the campus.
There was no latent snobbery in us; we didn’t find any in them. It was only that we could feel a
deep and sincere difference between us and them, a difference which everyone struggled with
awkward fortitude to bridge. It was as though Athens and Sparta were trying to establish not just
a truce but an alliance—although we were not as civilized as Athens and they were not as brave
as Sparta.
Neither were we. There was no rush to get into the fighting; no one seemed to feel the need to
get into the infantry, and only a few were talking about the Marines. The thing to be was careful
and self-preserving. It was going to be a long war. Quackenbush, I heard, had two possible
appointments to the Military Academy, with carefully prepared positions in V-12 and dentistry
school to fall back on if necessary.
I myself took no action. I didn’t feel free to, and I didn’t know why this was so. Brinker, in his
accelerating change from absolute to relative virtue, came up with plan after plan, each more
insulated from the fighting than the last. But I did nothing.
One morning, after a Naval officer had turned many heads in chapel with an address on convoy
duty, Brinker put his hand on the back of my neck in the vestibule outside and steered me into a
room used for piano practice near the entrance. It was soundproofed, and he swung the vaultlike
door closed behind us.
“You’ve been putting off enlisting in something for only one reason,” he said at once. “You
know that, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t know that.”
“Well, I know, and I’ll tell you what it is. It’s Finny. You pity him.”
“Pity him!”
“Yes, pity him. And if you don’t watch out he’s going to start pitying himself. Nobody ever
mentions his leg to him except me. Keep that up and he’ll be sloppy with self-pity any day now.
What’s everybody beating around the bush for? He’s crippled and that’s that. He’s got to accept