A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

91stray activities and dreamy people not caught up in it were being systematically corralled byBrinker. 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 soundedvery safe, almost like peacetime, almost like just going normally on to college. It was also verypopular; groups the size of LST crews joined it, almost everyone who could qualify, except fora 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 toAnnapolis or West Point or the Coast Guard Academy or even—this alternative had beenunexpectedly stumbled on—the Merchant Marine Academy. Devon was by tradition andchoice the most civilian of schools, and there was a certain strained hospitality in the way boththe faculty and students worked to get along with the leathery recruiting officers who keptappearing on the campus. There was no latent snobbery in us; we didn't find any in them. Itwas only that we could feel a deep and sincere difference between us and them, a differencewhich everyone struggled with awkward fortitude to bridge. It was as though Athens andSparta were trying to establish not just a truce but an alliance—although we were not ascivilized 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 needto get into the infantry, and only a few were talking about the Marines. The thing to be wascareful and self-preserving. It was going to be a long war. Quackenbush, I heard, had twopossible appointments to the Military Academy, with carefully prepared positions in V-12 anddentistry 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, inhis accelerating change from absolute to relative virtue, came up with plan after plan, eachmore 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 onconvoy duty, Brinker put his hand on the back of my neck in the vestibule outside and steeredme into a room used for piano practice near the entrance. It was soundproofed, and he swungthe vaultlike door closed behind us."You've been putting off enlisting in something for only one reason," he said at once. "Youknow 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 evermentions 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 acceptit and unless we start acting perfectly natural about it, even kid him about it once in a while, he