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Ninth andTenth which had marched to glory with Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill during the Spanish American War, but a young college man, the son of an army colonel and a well-educated mother, would find little satisfaction in an outfit which offered no prospects for advancement. Theofficers of the U.S. Army were generally produced at West Point and similar schools ( except, perhaps, during a war), and everybody knew there hadn't been a colored graduate at the Military Academy,in fifty years.One or two had been appointed, of course by congressman who thought it no more than fair to do so, but the result was always the same. The colored boys would soon drop out. The general public never seemed quite sure just why, and nobody expected a change in that situation. Customs get fixed by long habit, and habits are hard to break. What's more, there was no sign of a war back in 1930.

The exceptional case of Ben's own father was no encouragement to a boy about to make a start in his life's work. The elder Davis was promoted to the rank of full colonel in 1930, following a long career of military service in the war with Spain, in the occupation of the Philippine Islands and at army posts in the United States. It had been a slow pull up through the ranks. Even so, there were no indications that he could have accomplished it had he not made a start during wartime. Colonel Davis' advancement rank had, up to the time young Ben was a sophomore at the University of Chicago, been half the result of an accident, half the result of slow plodding.

Ben Davis, the younger, counted on no such accidents, and he was never in a mood for slow plodding. In his nature there ws as much of Mercury as of Mars. He couldn't be happy while mooning in uncertainty. He had to know his objective. He required some knowledge of how that goal was to be reached. Given that much however, he would ask no special favore. The Army, as the outlook appeared to him in 1930, promised a colored youth less than the minimum that any boy has the right to ask on entering a career. But suddenly something happened. Ben Davis, the slender uncertain sophomore, the perplexed but easygoing math major at the University of Chicago, was offered an appointment to United States Military Academy at West Point.

The forces that brought about this appointed were part of the general evolution of the nation, no doubt, but the younger Davis was not then, nor is he now, one to question too closely the causes behind surprising developments. What he saw in the appointment was simply a crack in the wall that had hedged him about and depressed his spirit. But now-now the wall was weakening. A little help from him, and it might fall. The idea thrilled him. He bounced out of his former mood so suddenly he almost convinced himself that Mercury had actually put wings on his feet.

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