Chapter 3: a new insight
“I really didn’t think I was going to graduate.”
John, at West Point
After resigning his commission as a second lieutenant with the U.S. Army Air Corps and passing his entrance exams for West Point, John was sent to Amherst College in Massachusetts in January, 1945. He was 21 years old, the cut-off age for admission to the prestigious military institute. The new cadets were given the new West Point uniforms called “pinks and greens.”1 Actually, the pants were a lavender color. “We thought we were just the neatest thing,” he boasted.
He was to attend classes while awaiting his actual West Point assignment. But, with what he viewed as free time on his hands, he only attended 12-15 classes since they didn’t check roll. Because he was a pilot, John did have to keep up his flying time. He and other pilots would go to the nearby Westover Base. He could fly as a co-pilot on a B-24 but he said he didn’t like that plane much “because the wings flopped on it.” The B-24s were used in Poletzi, Romania and many got shot down, he said. The cadets learned they could go 20 miles to Windsor Locks where they had a BT-13. “The base operations guy had a UC-78 [twin engine prop plane]. He gave us the instruction manual to read. We didn’t have any idea what we were doing. It’s a wonder everybody in World War II didn’t get killed.”2
He said he drank whiskey and pretty much stayed drunk for three months, which included a time that a group of 15 or 20 of them rented the Phi Delta Theta sorority house for two months.3 “We thought we were really big men. I’d wake up in the morning and have to choose between Southern Comfort and Old Grand Dad. We were totally out of control.”4 In March, they moved him to the Westover Air Force Reserve Base in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The West Point candidates had been moved to a barracks and, since they didn’t have much to do, they decided to go to West Point to see what it was like. “We thought it all looked foolish, so we went out and got drunk. I can’t believe the foolish things we did,” sighed John. Still not having much to do and seeing as how being an officer meant he wasn’t “checked on,” he went to New York City. If in uniform, he could get a room at the Commodore Hotel for $3 a night. “I went to a lot of shows and the theatre. Then I found Leon and Eddy’s nightclub, which had foul-mouthed comics. Daddy came up and I took him there. He didn’t think it was funny at all. I hadn’t even realized they were foul-mouthed.” Before July 1, when he was to report to West Point, John went home for a week to see the family.
When he arrived back at the new cadet area, he said that “all hell broke loose.” They were hollering and screaming, “Drop that bag! Pick up that bag! Drop that bag!” The cadets had to run everywhere. He suddenly realized they were doing everything they could to make him quit. “I’ll see you bastards in hell before you make me quit,” he said to himself.5
John said that being at West Point ultimately taught him about himself and how the experience had finally brought clarity to his life: “I had cheated in high school; I cheated at the University of Georgia; I was an inveterate liar because for some reason, I felt I was inadequate as a person. And when someone would ask me a question, I would answer as a little child would. I would try to please them. Word got out that you couldn’t trust John Saxon because he wouldn’t tell the truth; they told us about that honor system up there. I thought I was in the wrong place. I thought I was genetically a lair, cheat and a thief because I had stolen some things. I just thought I was a bad person. They said they would throw us out if we didn’t honor the system. I said I would see them in hell before they would throw me out. I knew they would have to catch me and I would make it hard for them to do that.”
He added, “For three years I was very careful not to cheat—I kept my eyes on my own paper—and I told the truth—not because I wanted to but I didn’t want to get caught and thrown out. At the end of the second year, I found it wasn’t hard to do because I had trained myself. One day I realized that people don’t get mad at you for doing something wrong; but they’ll never forgive you for lying about it.”6
The new cadets, or “plebes,” were quartered in the Beast Barracks, four to a room. A Kappa Alpha fraternity mate from the University of Georgia was with him, along with a couple of other fellows. The last two weeks of the initial training he was the room orderly because he was the only left in the room. The Georgia friend had worked at it, said John, but he couldn’t hack it physically because of his legs. A third guy was a combat soldier with a Silver Star and saw himself as being above “the Mickey Mouse stuff.” He explained that if a cadet wanted to leave, he checked into the hospital. “The leaders wanted you away from everyone else so you couldn’t talk others into leaving.” The fourth cadet went to visit that roommate and decided to stay in the hospital, too.
“They gave us fits that first year,” recalls John. He didn’t wear his pilot’s wings on his West Point uniform in order not to attract attention. An upperclassman challenged him for not wearing his wings, which John took as an insult: “Mr. Saxon, I understand you won’t wear Army Air Corps wings on a West Point uniform.” John thought, “You dumb SOB.” But he said, “Yes, sir!” Once it was known John had pilot’s wings, he said they jumped down his throat. “The place was full of draft dodgers so they wouldn’t have to go to war. They stayed on my case. I had ‘calls’ at all times—I was in some upperclassman’s room in a brace [standing at attention] until graduation at the end of the year.” For that graduation event there was a recognition parade and upper classmen came down the line to shake hands for their success in getting through the year. John shook about five hands and went back to the barracks. “I was burned at them,” he said. “We had some mean upperclassmen.”
He remembered being hungry all of the time that first year. Because of the “eating formation” they had to follow, every time a bowl or other item was to be passed to upperclassmen, a plebe had to put down his eating utensil. And the bowls and items were being passed constantly. There was a time an upper classman said they could have a pint of ice cream after dinner if they could do 15 pushups with a full field pack. John said, “I was skinny and wirey, but I could go and go.” He got his ice cream. When the plebes went into nearby Watertown, townspeople would invite them into their homes for cookies and milk. “We thought that was just wonderful.”
John didn’t see the first year as being hard on him academically, however.7 “I had a bad attitude about studying,” he admitted, “but I was able to pass because I was riding my taking trig three times at the University of Georgia. Mimmy had taught me Latin and Mimmy and Daddy had always insisted that I use correct English at home.”
Then, there was that sophomore year. “I had figured if I studied more, I was playing their game.” His chemistry finals brought a startling new challenge to this thinking. The final lasted for four days and he knew he couldn’t pass it. “I didn’t have time to learn it, so I started memorizing the book three days before the exam. I couldn’t understand the chemistry, but I could memorize the “pages.” John passed that final.
Now it was time to face the 10-part calculus final that was given in sections everyday for two weeks. He couldn’t study because he didn’t know calculus. He had made a D the first semester. John failed the second and third days of the final exam. “I had ripped my knickers. I was going to flunk out of West Point.” Evidently giving up, John went to the doctor the next day, on Thursday, and told him about a cyst at the base of his spine that had bothered him since the previous summer. It was that doctor’s first day at work and he didn’t know he had to have permission from the academic board to perform non-emergency surgery during final examinations.
In retrospect, John said, “You see, God wanted me to graduate from flying school (which he also hadn’t thought would happen) and from West Point. I reckon he wanted me to write my mathematics books, even back then.”8 The operation was to be the following day, on Friday. They had to postpone the surgery until Monday, however, because there had been a big wreck on the highway and all available medical help was needed for that.
When the surgery was done, the doctor had to “wire” John’s buttocks together and he was to remain on his stomach at all times to avoid the wire cutting through the flesh. He was in the hospital for about two weeks. He was then given two more weeks of sick leave. Here it was the end of his sophomore year and he was getting two weeks of sick leave plus the four-week leave he received at the end of each school year—a total of six weeks. On top of that, the calculus failure list came out and his name was not on it. John said, “I still can’t believe all of this happened.” He went home to Georgia for those summer days in 1947.
Mechanical engineering reared its head in his junior year at West Point. He wondered what would happen if he really studied “like the billy dickens.” Cadets’ grades were the basis for their rank in the class, with 20 sections of students in his junior class. “I was at the bottom in the 19th section,” he said. As he studied—like the “billy dickens”—he moved up to the 12th section, then to the 3rd section, and finally, the 2nd section. He wanted to see if he could stay there, and he did, even rising to the 1st section of students.
Shaking his head as he tells this story, John said, “I can’t believe my mind worked this way, but I thought, ‘I’ve proved I can do this.’” So, he quit studying. That was the end of the first semester. The academy said they were going to put the first three sections on an accelerated plan and at the end of the first six weeks, John was the bottom man in the 3rd section.
Another highlight of his junior year was when he was one of two cadets to appear in a Hollywood movie being shot at West Point. Beyond Glory was filmed in September 1947, starring Alan Ladd and Donna Reed.9 During its premiere and a dinner at West Point on July 28, 1948, a ceremony was staged during which John was given a special “Academy Award” by his classmates. Called the “Dumbjohn,” it was a statue of a uniquely-designed military-uniformed figure. Beyond Glory made its Georgia premiere in September 1950 without Lt. John Saxon, Jr., in attendance, who, by that time, was stationed at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma.
Extra-curricular activities at West Point left a major impression on John. Every cadet had to play either an intramural sport or a team sport. He remembered a young man with red hair. He had never played a sport and the first time he played in the intramurals, he made a tackle. Everyone was yelling, “Way to go!” By the end of the season, he had made 20-30 tackles and had become accustomed to, “Way to go!” John said, “You can’t believe the difference those intramurals made to that young man.” Because of these experiences with intramurals, John became a fan of those over varsity sports in high schools and colleges. “Too few get to play in varsity sports,” he said. Sadly, John said that young man was killed in Korea, his first year out of West Point.
John got his own short claim to fame when he substituted for a goalie who was late to the game. They discovered the opponents couldn’t get shots past him and he became the “first team” intramural goalie for the game. When it was realized he was body-blocking the shots, they figured out how to play around him. His team lost.
Along this line, John told about the superintendent of West Point from 1945-49, Major General Maxwell Taylor, who was “quite an athlete” and an avid tennis player. He had required Cadet Charlie Oliver to play tennis matches with him. Charlie was the sixth ranked player in U.S. men’s singles and Gen. Taylor told Charlie that he was to beat him as badly as he could. John thought that said a lot about Gen. Taylor.
The superintendent was seen as a god by the cadets, mainly because of his exploits during World War II. He had been the first Allied commander to land in France on D-Day and was commander of the 101st Airborne Division. When it was surrounded in Bastogne, France, at the Battle of the Bulge, Gen. Taylor was at a staff meeting in Washington, D.C., and unable to be with his men in that battle. He was quoted as saying that was his greatest disappointment in World War II.
John thought the following story was especially illustrative of Gen. Taylor’s special brand of leadership: To stop the complaining of his airborne troops who didn’t like having to wear combat boots in parades during the war, Gen. Taylor called for a parade formation. He then climbed into a C-47 airplane and flew over the field, parachuting out with slippers—no boots—on his feet. As he came down, the slippers came off and he landed in his socks. To his startled men, he said, “Gentlemen, I never want to hear another complaint about landing in combat boots. Pass in review.”10
For John, Gen. Taylor was the best kind of general officer. He was literate, a great public speaker, and a wonderful superintendent of West Point. Of really special importance to the cadets, John said, was the fact that Gen. Taylor had designed the short coat and class shirt so cadets didn’t have to wear the uncomfortable high collar to class.
John’s senior year went by quickly. They got insignia and ranks to put on their uniforms. The best students were made class officers and, he said, “We looked up to them.” Reflecting, he thinks the academics at West Point are probably much higher now than when he was there. “We were in class three or four hours a day and then were involved with military training,” he said. He was able to take French, even though he wanted Spanish, and became fairly fluent in the language.
It was during those four years that the maturing John found a life of new meaning and clarity. “We learned about being responsible for our actions and not playing favorites. That’s the reason so many West Point graduates do so well—by doing the right thing. They really do believe in ‘duty, honor, and country.’ We got through college without going out and getting drunk. I had to have that structured environment or I wouldn’t have done anything they asked. They gave me a good education in spite of my recalcitrance.”
When Mimmy, his father, and Ann arrived for his West Point graduation, they went to Lookout Point, with its vista of the Academy grounds. Mimmy said, “I don’t see how anybody could be unhappy in a place this pretty.” John said he teared up and apologized to his mother for graduating at the bottom of his class. Mimmy asked him how many had started in his class with him. He responded, “About 1200.” She asked how many finished the program. “About 560,” he said. “That means you’re in the top half of your class,” she replied.11
John maintained throughout his life that if it hadn’t been for Mimmy, he would have been dead or in jail. Even in 1995 during his oral videotape histories, he wondered why he had had such a bad attitude, including his first year at West Point. He said that after his graduation, he couldn’t believe it was real. “I was free, but for the next two or three years, I was afraid they’d come back and get me.”
Chapter Three - John Saxon’s Story read by Niki Hayes and Jenny Hatch #JohnSaxonsStory