woods when I took my training, and if there had been, I would have felt sorry for them and been frightened for them.
But the people in Washington and the Pentagon had heard and heeded the call to equality. It was a good call, a necessary call, a long-overdue call. And certainly attitudes and perceptions had changed since I was a young man training for Vietnam. But not everyone’s attitudes changed, and the move to equality proceeded at different paces in different sections of the national life. There are glitches in the system, little pockets of resistance, situational behavior, primitive stirrings in the loins. This is what happened on a night in August ten years before. The commandant of West Point did not announce that a hundred women in the woods with a thousand men did not get raped during recondo training. And he wasn’t about to announce that one did.
So the people in Washington, in the Pentagon, at the Academy, had reasoned with General Joseph Campbell. And, as he related it to Cynthia and me, it certainly sounded reasonable. Better to have one unreported and unvindicated rape than to rock the very foundations of West Point, to cause doubts about a co-ed academy, to cast suspicion on a thousand innocent men who did not gang-rape a woman that night. All the general had to do was to convince his daughter that she—as well as the Academy, the Army, the nation, and the cause of equality— would best be served if she just forgot about the whole thing.
Ann Campbell was given a drug to prevent pregnancy, she was tested and retested for sexually communicated diseases, her mother flew in from Germany and brought her a favorite childhood doll, her cuts and bruises healed, and everyone held their breath.
Daddy was convincing, Mommy was not as convinced. Ann trusted Daddy, and, at twenty years old, for all her world travel as a military brat, she was still Daddy’s girl and she wanted to please him, so she forgot she was raped. But later, she remembered, which was why we were all sitting in the general’s office that evening.
So that was the sad story, and the general’s voice cracked now and then, got husky, got quiet. I heard Cynthia sniffle a few times, too, and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t feel a lump in my throat.
The general stood but motioned us to remain seated. He said, “Excuse me a moment.” He disappeared through a door, and we could hear water running. As melodramatic as it sounds now, I almost expected to hear a gunshot.
Cynthia kept her eye on the door and said softly, “I understand why he did what he did, but as a woman, I’m outraged.”
“As a man, I’m outraged, too, Cynthia. Five men have a memory of a fun night, and here we are dealing with the mess. Five men, if they were all cadets, went on to graduate and become officers and gentlemen. They were classmates of hers and probably saw her every day. Indirectly, or perhaps directly, they were responsible for her death. Certainly they were responsible for her mental condition.”
Cynthia nodded. “And if they were soldiers, they went back to their post and bragged about how they all fucked this little West Point bitch cadet.”
“Right. And they got away with it.”
General Campbell returned and sat again. After a while, he said, “So you see, I got what I deserved, but Ann was the one who paid for my betrayal. Within months of the incident, she went from a warm, outgoing, and friendly girl to a distrustful, quiet, and withdrawn woman. She did well at the Point, graduated in the top of her class, and went on to postgraduate school. But things were never the same between us, and I should have thought of that consequence of my behavior.” He added, “I lost my daughter when she lost her faith in me.” He took a deep breath. “You know, it feels good to talk it out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know about her promiscuousness, and professionals have explained to me what that was all about. It wasn’t just that she was trying to corrupt the people around me or to embarrass me. She was saying to me, ‘You thought nothing of my chastity, my decision to remain a virgin until I was ready, so what I’m giving to every man who wants it is nothing you care about. So don’t lecture me.’ ”
I nodded but could not and would not comment.
The general said, “So the years pass, and she arrives here. Not by accident, but by design. A person in the Pentagon, a person who was closely involved with the West Point decision, strongly suggested that I consider two options. One, that I leave the service so that Ann might decide to leave also or might decide that her misbehavior was no longer profitable.” He added, “They were quite honestly afraid to ask for her resignation, because she obviously had something on the Army, though she never had a name. My second option was to take this uncoveted command at Fort Hadley, where the Psy-Ops School has its subcommand. They said they would have Ann transferred here, which would be a natural career assignment for her, and I could solve the problem in close quarters. I chose the second option, though my resignation would not have been unusual after the success in the Gulf and my years of service.” He added, “However, she told me once that if I ever accepted a White House appointment, or ever accepted a political nomination, she would go public with this story. In effect, I was being held hostage in the Army by my daughter, and my only options were to stay or to retire into private life.”
So, I thought, that explained General Campbell’s coyness regarding political office or a presidential appointment. Like everything else about this case, this Army post, and the people here, what you saw, and what you heard, were not what was actually happening.
He looked around his office as though seeing it for the first time, or the last time. He said, “So I chose to come here to try to make amends, to try to rectify not only my mistake but the mistake of my superiors, many of whom are still in the service or in public life, and most of whose names you would know.” He paused and said, “I’m not blaming my superiors for putting pressure on me. It was wrong what they did, but the ultimate decision to cooperate in the cover-up was mine. I thought I was doing what I did for good and valid reasons—for Ann and for the Army—but in the final analysis, they were not good reasons, and I was selling out my daughter for myself.” He added, “Within a year of the incident, I had my second star.”
At the risk of sounding too empathetic, I said, “General, you are responsible for everything your subordinates do or fail to do. But in this case, your superiors betrayed you. They had no right to ask that of you.”
“I know. They know. All that talent, experience, and brainpower, and there we were meeting in a motel room in upstate New York in the middle of the night, like criminals talking ourselves into a completely dishonorable and stupid decision. But we’re human, and we make bad decisions. However, had we truly been men of honor and integrity, as we said we were, we’d have reversed that bad decision no matter what the cost.”
I couldn’t have agreed more, and he knew it, so I didn’t say it. I said instead, “So for two years, you and your daughter engaged in close-quarter hand-to-hand combat.”
He smiled grimly. “Yes. It turned out to be not a healing process at all. It was war, and she was better prepared for it than I was. She had right on her side, and that made for might. She beat me at every turn, while I offered to make peace. I thought, if she won, she’d accept my apology and sincere regrets. It tore me apart, as a father, to see what she was doing to herself and her mother. I didn’t care about myself any longer. But I was also concerned for the men she was using…” He added, “Though in some odd way, I was happy just to have her around on any terms. I missed her, and I miss her now.”
Cynthia and I sat quietly and listened to him breathe. Clearly, the man had aged ten years in the last few days, and probably another ten in the last two years. It struck me that this was not the same man who had returned in triumph and glory from the Gulf not so long ago. It was amazing, I thought, how even kings and emperors and generals could be brought down by domestic discord, by the wrath and fury of a wronged woman. Somehow, amid all the sophistication and diversions of this world, we forgot the basics: take care of business at home first, and never betray your blood.
I said to him, “Tell us about rifle range six, and then we’ll leave you, General.”
He nodded. “Yes… well, I saw her there on the ground, and… and I… I honestly thought at first that she’d been assaulted… but then she called out to me… she said, ‘Here’s the answer to your damned ultimatum.’
“I didn’t understand at first what she was talking about, but then, of course, I remembered what they’d done to her at West Point. She asked me where her mother was, and I told her that her mother didn’t know anything about this. She called me a damned coward, then she said, ‘Do you see what they
“And what did you say to her, General?”
“I… just called out to her… ‘Ann, you didn’t have to do this.’ But she was… she was wild with anger, as though she’d completely lost her sanity. She yelled out for me to come closer, to see what they did to her, to see
