The Templar Cross

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The United States Military Academy at West Point was deserted. There were no platoons practicing close order drill on the Plain, marching under the tarnished eternal eye of a bronze George Washington on horseback. There was no echoing sound of polished combat boots on asphalt in the Central Area as cadets did punishment duty. No barking orders echoing from stone walls. No drill sergeants calling cadence.

Graduation was over. Firsties transformed into newly minted soldiers were gone to their posts-plebes, cows and yuks all gone on summer training tours of one kind or another. No bands played, and the trees whispering secrets in the early-summer breeze was the only sound. The complex of old gray buildings was fading to a warm golden hue in the waning light of the sun. It was the last Sunday in June. Tomorrow was "R" Day.

Lieutenant Colonel John "Doc" Holliday walked across the broad, empty expanse of the Plain in his dress whites, feeling just a little bit tipsy. He was returning home from his farewell dinner at the West Point Club on the far side of the campus and he was relieved that there was no one around to see him in his present condition. Drunk history professors in tailcoats reeling around on the grounds of the nation's premier military school didn't go down well with civilian cadet moms and dads; definitely not good public relations.

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