European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 12, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Books the Long Gray line author tells Story of the class of 6i by Chris Carola associated press members of West Point s class of 1966 March in preparation Lor their graduation ceremonies. Thirty of them died in Vietnam. Thirty graduates of the West Point class of 1966 died in the Vietnam Wir. No graduating class that saw action in Southeast Asia had a higher toll. Many of those Young men Are buried beneath two rows of Low while Stone in Section 34 of the cemetery at the . Military Academy at West Point . Class of in is chiselled on each Stone bonding the c  in death As it did in life. Washington to t rep a tar Rick Atkinson has written a Book about the members of the class of 66, tracing their  a West Point As  plebes full of  idealism to the Ideal shattering experience of Vietnam from postwar career changes to a 20-year reunion of classmates sharing a fierce determination to Honor the  the Young men win. Ought Between the rashly changing social and to in values of the 19 0s and the staunch traditions i a hallowed military Academy. They Are a Good Way of looking at our collective social history says Atkinson whose Book 77ic Long Cray line has  Best seller lists. They straddle a kind of fault line of american  the class of 66 arrived at West Point just a month after president Kennedy delivered a rousing commencement address to the class of 62. Tin words of Douglas Macarthur s famous duly Honor country speech delivered a month earlier still echoed through West Point s Granite Halls. Macarthur told them if you fail the country will be destroyed and they believed that says the author who first wrote about the class of 66 while he was a reporter for the Kansas City times. That four part Sercu for which he won a pulitzer prize in 1982, grew from a conversation with a Friend who was a 66 West Point graduate. Me was talking How they had gone charging off to War and How they were going to win the War and come Home to ticker tape parades Atkinson says. They thought they had a kind of social covenant with the country they d go to West Point serve their country and in Exchange they would be held in High  instead 66ers came Home from Vietnam to derision and disdain he says. Many were disillusioned about the War and the army. Some questioned whether four years at West Point had adequately prepared them for the horror they faced in the Jungles and Rice paddies of Vietnam. When you re 22  old you presume yourself to be immortal. These Guys were no different Atkinson says. Some Tell  West Point Anil their army training had not Pri pared them for i Nin Lial Lor seeing other men  1 he deaths of two i graduates in   came to symbolize the futility my frustrate .11. Of fighting in Vietnam. The first died when i tried to pull a Soldier r it of v in mud and the  s i in accidentally fired the second was killed along Uilah to 1 other sold is uhen an Amer an Jet a Jih a i i heir Hilltop posit i. It in the midst of a Lieut e  r a Hundred of Jim graduates were wounded in Southeast . I or some the Trady continued after the . Atkinson writes of to c  win w re murdered one by his business partner my the of her by North korean so i Krs in a Border inc Idt no Over the trimming of a  tree. The author follows the Odyssey of the class of .6 mostly through lit Xvi. Of classmates John Wheeler Lorn  and George Crocker. Rot Ker  ame a career army Man leading troops in Vietnam and Grenada. In Between he helped revive a drug Ridden demoralized army in West Germany and served As a West Point instructor when a cheating scandal and the admission of women sent the Academy into turmoil in 1976. He is now chief of staff of the 82nd airborne div. Wheeler and Carhart had both resigned their commissions by 1971, As had a third of the 579 graduates of the class of 66. Carhart and Wheeler also served in Vietnam the former in a combat outfit and the latter in the rear Echelon. The two classmates clashed after the War when Wheeler Helper establish the Vietnam veterans memorial in Washington d.c., and Carhart objected to the memorial s design calling it a Black  of sorrow and  Atkinson. Uthe son of a retired career army Otili it grew up on army bases a fact that tame in Handy while writing the Book. I Teel comfortable around military men. I know they Are fundamentally the same As anyone else. Their hair is Cut a Little Shorter if anything else. I know the Lingo to a certain degree. I Don t now How far it will take you but it will help you get a foot in the  in 197 1, Atkinson received an appointment to the West Point class of 74, but he chose to attend College in North Carolina to study . I just Del idea it was t for me he says. It was the Spring of Kent stall.1, when the War and the army were As unpopular As they Ever  it / Onu Cray line has received mostly favourable reviews from critics and West pointers both past and present at a Book signing session last fall at Wesl Point a Long Gray line of cadets snaked through the Academy Bookstore waiting to buy copies and get hem autographed by the author. Atkinson has met or talked to about half of the lass of i i keep running into them on the to id he says. Some have said that admitting  cad is and other attempts at humanizing West Point have devalued the place in Many  others have told Atkinson that the intense Haing Cak is Sutler in their first year is juvenile and contrary to what constitutes the tenets of Disi  despite whatever a differences or disillusion they May Harbor Atkinson says. West Point still commands a special place in the lives of the class of i. Most of them feel this great attachment toward West Point it s the Fountainhead of their youth As one of them said. The Academy is was and always will be a very big part of their  mtg tint it