Long Gray Hemline

For four tense months, the U.S. Military Academy had been preparing for the invasion--in some ways the most threatening in its 174-year history. In compliance with a law passed by Congress last October, West Point, the Naval and Air Force academies will each have admitted up to 150 women cadets for the first time by this summer. Last week 20 prospective female cadets journeyed to the hills 50 miles north of New York City to spend a day and a half learning what life would be like as Fourth Classmen, or "plebes," in West Point's 4,400-cadet corps.

The entrenched males were wary, but not hostile. "Our attitude now is better than it was last November, and in November it was better than in September, and by June it will be even better," said one cadet. "We have to accept it. We have to make it work."

To be sure, the academy is not turning itself upside down to accommodate the women, who were winnowed from 602 applicants and chosen for athletic as well as academic prowess. "Our prime function remains to produce military leaders," said Brigadier General Walter Ulmer, commandant of cadets. "The mission of the academy is unchanged."

That has never included coddling. The women will undergo Arctic exploration or jungle-warfare training or make paratroop jumps. Physical conditioning will include tough daily exercises, scrambling over obstacle courses and wriggling underneath barbed wire. Boxing? "We require it of the males because we're trying to teach them that it is better to give than to receive," said one briefing officer. But the women will be exempt from boxing and wrestling; they will substitute judo and karate. The female plebes, however, will undergo the same painful, often humiliating seven-week initiation ritual that male cadets have dubbed "Beast Barracks." Its main features: incessant needling from upperclassmen, split-second obedience to their slightest commands and constant criticism of plebes' posture. Though women are still barred from combat, female cadets will have to learn how to heft the 10 1/4-Ib. M-14 rifle and to fire the 32-Ib. M-60 machine gun.

Determined as the Point is not to pamper its women cadets, some special measures are being taken. Uniforms designed by Hart Schaffner & Marx will be essentially the same as those worn by men but cut somewhat differently, with a modified, narrower hat and an optional accompanying skirt (except for parade dress, when men and women alike must wear trousers and the regulation tall "tarbucket" hat). Hair must be cut short. Makeup? Yes, but in "good taste." Jewelry? A wristwatch and one ring. No earrings, no bobby pins, no hair ribbons. The women will room together in pairs--but in barracks alongside the men. Doors will be put on toilet cubicles, and curtains on the showers. Like other plebes, the women will have no radio, TV or stereo in their rooms. A doctor specializing in gynecology will be on duty to deal with medical problems.

One eager applicant last week raised a pertinent psychological question. Said she to Lieut. General Sidney Berry, the academy superintendent: "You said there would be a lot of stress. Don't you think that [crying] would help--wouldn't it take the stress off?" "It certainly would," replied the general, "and transfer it to the men." It may be a hot July on the Hudson.

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