<p>A sobering article from Christmas Eve's New York Times:</p>
<p>In Army?s Locker Rooms, War?s Toll Hits Close to Heart
By JULIET MACUR
WEST POINT, N.Y. ? The words echoed through the mess hall: ?Please give your attention to the first captain!?</p>
<p>Standing at attention at their dining tables, the 4,300 cadets at the United States Military Academy braced for bad news. From a balcony above the cavernous room, the top-ranked cadet addressed the corps.</p>
<p>?I regret to inform you of the death of First Lt. David Fraser, class of 2004. First Lieutenant Fraser was killed 26 November in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.</p>
<p>?Please join me in observing a moment of silence for this fallen graduate.?</p>
<p>At several tables, cadets on the track team exchanged teary glances, again. For the second time in about two months, a former teammate had died in Iraq. </p>
<p>The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken their toll on West Point, which trains men and women to be Army officers. The academy has experienced a rising number of graduates killed each year in those conflicts, from 7 in 2003 to 15 this year; November was the deadliest month, with five deaths. </p>
<p>At least 14 of the 44 former cadets killed in action since 2003 played intercollegiate sports. They included former captains of the baseball, hockey and swim teams; a hammer thrower; and men?s soccer players. </p>
<p>Second Lt. Emily J. T. Perez, a sprinter in the class of 2005, was the first female graduate to die in Iraq, killed Sept. 12 by a roadside bomb. She was the highest-ranking black and Hispanic female cadet in the academy?s history, and also helped set a team relay record. </p>
<p>First Lt. Derek Hines, class of 2003 and a captain of the hockey team, was killed by small arms fire Sept. 1, 2005, in Afghanistan. He was so charismatic that a legion of his fans used to bang Heinz ketchup bottles against the plexiglass in his honor during games.</p>
<p>Coaches and teammates have had a particularly difficult time dealing with the deaths because West Point teams grow so close. They weather the pressure of juggling military training with studies with Division I sports, the highest collegiate level. They spend more time with one another than with anyone else, at practices, on trips and at meals, where the teams sit together. </p>
<p>When athletes graduate, they share their war-zone experiences with cadets via e-mail messages to remind them that teamwork is crucial to success at West Point and on the battlefield. </p>
<p>But death severs those relationships.</p>
<p>?This was my worst fear, to lose a teammate,? said Doug Pelletier, the captain of the men?s cross-country team and a friend of Fraser?s.</p>
<p>?It?s hard to explain, but being an athlete here is different than being an athlete somewhere else. You learn to genuinely care for each other.? </p>
<p>Building Bonds That Last</p>
<p>When Maggie Clark, a senior middle-distance runner and a cadet leader of the corps, contemplated quitting the track team during her sophomore year, her friend Dave Fraser persuaded her to stay. </p>
<p>?He told me, ?Unless you know for sure that you can step on the track and not love it, then you?d be making a big mistake,? ? she said, recalling a conversation they had after he graduated. ?Of course, he was right. Dave was always right.? </p>
<p>Fraser was the kind of cadet others wanted to be, always upbeat and one who made everything look easy. He ran track and cross-country, a year-round commitment. He majored in civil engineering, perhaps the most difficult course of study at West Point, and he was offered a future faculty position. On mornings when cadets had the rare chance to sleep in, he was up at 7:45 to teach Sunday school. </p>
<p>Even when he was a platoon leader in Iraq, he reached out to teammates who needed advice. </p>
<p>?We?re forced into a lot of hard situations here,? said Pelletier, who had also kept in touch with Fraser. ?And you learn that you can?t make it through this place on your own.? </p>
<p>Soon after arriving at West Point, cadets figure out that they cannot survive alone. Six weeks before classes begin, they take a basic training course nicknamed Beast Barracks, or simply Beast. </p>
<p>They are yelled at, tear-gassed, deprived of sleep and, at times, humiliated. During those physically and mentally challenging weeks, they learn to be soldiers.</p>
<p>Those who play sports, however, get a breather. After the first week of Beast, athletes escape to practice with their teams three to four days a week. There they are not soldiers; they can be themselves again.</p>
<p>Right away, something special happens to Army athletes. </p>
<p>?They laugh with one another and say, ?Hey, I saw you getting yelled at,? ? said Brian Riley, the hockey coach. ?Then you can just see ? boom! ? from that day forward, this bond starts to develop. </p>
<p>?They start trying to help each other out, like telling each other how to get ready for an inspection. They?re already helping each other through, and this friendship begins to develop that is unbelievable.?</p>
<p>Some, like the track athlete Kevin Kniery, saw that bond on his recruiting visit. He said he wanted to be a part of that, even if it meant he would probably have to go to war someday. </p>
<p>Kniery said his parents urged him to drop out before the first day of classes his junior year, when he could have left without any military commitment. West Point graduates must serve five years on active duty and three years in the Reserve. </p>
<p>?For me, it wasn?t really the military that drew me in,? said Kniery, who was a freshman when Fraser was a senior. ?It was guys like Dave.?</p>
<p>For Coaches, Pride and Pain</p>
<p>Fraser designed a footbridge over a creek on the academy grounds as part of a senior project with Seth Chappell, another distance runner from the class of 2004. He enlisted help to build it so children would have a safe, direct route to the Youth Services Center. Its graceful timber arch is a feat of engineering.</p>
<p>Jerry Quiller, the track coach for 12 years, said he used to look at the bridge and feel proud to know Fraser, who had persuaded teammates to wade in mud and stack bricks during its construction because ?after all, the bridge is for the kids.? Now when he sees it, Quiller said, he is overcome with sadness.</p>
<p>Quiller has been through a tough stretch. He started the academic year by going to the funeral for Perez, who was buried on a blustery September day in the West Point Cemetery. It would be different if she had died leading an assault, Quiller said. But she was killed while riding in a Humvee in Kifl, Iraq.</p>
<p>Her death prompted discussions between Quiller and his wife, Sandy, who have three sons. Is the war just? How would they cope if one of their children died? </p>
<p>?Do you do a cremation? Where do you bury them?? Quiller said. ?Coaches at other schools don?t think about these kind of morbid things, do they?? </p>
<p>Coaches at West Point have serious and sobering responsibilities. They are counselors, protectors and surrogate parents. They are always conscious of molding their athletes into officers able to lead troops in harm?s way. </p>
<p>Kevin Anderson, the athletic director, said coaches have more contact with their athletes than perhaps any other authority figure at West Point. </p>
<p>Anderson, who came here from Oregon State in 2005, said he was amazed to see how grief united the coaches and their teams. One of his first official duties was to travel to Newburyport, Mass., for Hines?s funeral. There was a wait of more than three and a half hours to get into the funeral home, where Hines lay in an open coffin.</p>
<p>The current West Point hockey players were there, looking solemn in dress gray uniforms. They joined former players from as far back as the 1970s who had played for Jack Riley, the father of the current coach. ?I remember calling my dad because he lost a couple of players in the Vietnam War, and I said, ?How do you deal with this?? ? Brian Riley said. ?He told me, ?You can?t control some things, but the Army hockey family will help everybody get through this.?</p>
<p>?And it did. When you play a sport at West Point, you become a part of a family that will always be there for you, even in the worst of times, because they know what you?ve been through.?</p>
<p>He made a point of telling other coaches to always respond quickly to e-mail messages from former athletes in combat. Riley received a message from Hines on Aug. 30 and replied right away, signing off: ?Stay safe. Stay in touch. I am proud of you.? </p>
<p>Hines was killed two days later.</p>
<p>?Now, every time I hear that soldiers have been killed, I?m like, ?Oh, please God, don?t let it be anybody I know,? ? Riley said. ?You get nervous when you answer the phone.?</p>
<p>In June 2005, Joe Sottolano, the baseball coach, received a call telling him Maj. Stephen Reich, a former team captain and star pitcher, was killed in Afghanistan when his helicopter was shot down. </p>
<p>For weeks afterward, Sottolano said, he had nightmares about Reich. Sottolano envisioned Reich cursing as he tried to land the helicopter because Reich had been ?so competitive at everything.?</p>
<p>?As a coach, it?s a hard place to be,? Sottolano said, looking at a photo of Reich. ?It?s a tremendous honor to see these guys go off and fight, but it does take years off you.?</p>
<p>From a four-inch-thick folder in which he keeps correspondence from players, he grabbed a copy of an e-mail message from Josh Rizzo, who graduated in 2002. Before returning from Iraq, Rizzo wrote that he had endured a lot of close calls and that in those times, he had used ?a lot of the stuff you taught me, man.?</p>
<p>?I?ll always be an Army baseball player,? Rizzo wrote. </p>
<p>Sottolano sighed. ?You feel responsible for their success over there,? he said. ?The stakes are high when they leave here. We can?t let them go there thinking they are on their own.?</p>
<p>An Uncertain Future</p>
<p>A memorial service for Dave Fraser was held at the base of his footbridge on Dec. 9, the first day of final exams. Teammates, coaches, instructors and friends huddled together to remember Fraser, who they said was much more than a cadet. He was more like a brother or a son. Some fought back tears. Others wept silently as tears streaked their uniforms. </p>
<p>Fraser had been buried four days earlier in his hometown, Houston. He could have chosen to be laid to rest at West Point Cemetery, which sits on a bluff above the Hudson River about a mile from the bridge. That is where a handful of former athletes killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are buried.</p>
<p>Other athletes occasionally visit the cemetery to pay their respects. </p>
<p>The day before the women?s basketball season opener in November, two players from last season?s team walked a visitor down a narrow road that skirted the headstones. The players, Adrienne Payne and Megan Vrabel, paused at the grave of Maggie Dixon, their former coach. Dixon was 28 when she died of a heart ailment in April, one month after leading the team to the first N.C.A.A. tournament berth in the program?s history. </p>
<p>Payne and Vrabel, both lieutenants, then continued to the graves of some of the graduates who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. They read the names: Second Lt. Emily Perez, the track star; First Lt. Dennis Zilinski, the swim team captain from the class of 2004; Maj. William Hecker, Payne?s freshman English teacher. All were killed in Iraq in the past year. </p>
<p>?I feel like we were just in class with some of these people,? Vrabel said. ?And now they are here beneath this grass.?</p>
<p>Payne nodded and said, ?It just doesn?t seem real.?</p>
<p>She and Vrabel have been best friends since meeting on their recruiting trip in 2001. But after spending so much time together during a trying period for their team, their lives are beginning to diverge. </p>
<p>Payne will soon be serving in Iraq in the ordnance branch, which provides and delivers ammunition and explosives. Vrabel, a team captain last season, is an intern in the West Point basketball office and engaged to Ben Mayhew, a pitcher for Army?s baseball team. She will leave in the spring to begin training in air defense artillery. </p>
<p>?We needed each other at school, but we really need each other now because the stresses are there, and growing,? Payne said. </p>
<p>Unlike some athletes who attend West Point largely for the chance to play a Division I sport, Payne wanted the test of military training, too. But then she had three shoulder operations, each one putting her athletic and military careers in doubt. She refused, however, to let that jeopardize her future. So she pushed through the pain. </p>
<p>As a senior, Payne was the point guard of the scout team, peppy and positive for the other players who rarely saw much game time. Now, she said, she must be just as positive for the troops she will lead. That is what being an Army basketball player taught her, she said. </p>
<p>?I?m not scared for myself because if it?s my time to go, it?s my time to go,? she said. ?I?m scared for my friends.? </p>
<p>She will be the first member of last season?s basketball team to deploy. But she knows soldiers in Iraq, including her boyfriend, First Lt. Corey Sherk, once a quarterback and tight end for Army. Payne said she prayed for Sherk?s safety even more since Capt. John Ryan Dennison, the husband of a former women?s basketball captain, was killed in Iraq in November. </p>
<p>Now that she is headed there, Payne will be on the receiving end of prayers. </p>
<p>?When will I see my best friend again?? Vrabel said as she and Payne stood next to Perez?s grave. ?Will she make it to my wedding? Will I make it to hers?</p>
<p>?You can?t help but wonder: Is everything going to end over there??</p>
<p>The former teammates locked eyes. Then, taking one final glance at the headstones, they walked out of the cemetery in silence.</p>