James R. McNeal

Throughout history, cultures have imposed stress and endurance tests on young men (mostly) to come of age into society, and beyond it. Call it rites of passage or to hell and back, or in this case Crucibles, by James McNeal and John Eric Smith, both of the same class of the US Naval Academy (class of 1986). Their book collects various approaches since the dawn of time. It is enlightening, and surprisingly, even has lessons for every society today.

Throughout history, various organizations show more have made access tough by imposing severe challenges to those who would be part of them. The weaker crucibles are simply endurance tests; if you don’t quit through this, you’re in. The better crucibles filter for people who would do the best job once they’re in. That means educating them, training them and indoctrinating them in teamwork, loyalty and other such values.

They run the gamut from a lot of marching to absurd tests. The most gruesome and pointless crucible award in the book must go to the Kingdom of Hawai’i, where the final test was being paddled out to sea, where the body of a freshly killed prisoner was slit and dumped overboard into the water, attracting tiger sharks. The candidate then had to jump in after it and kill a tiger shark with his bare hands, then pluck out and eat its left eye. The right eye was also removed and taken back as a trophy of this great accomplishment. And behold, a new Kahuna was made.

Most of the crucibles in the book are military. The military, in its neverending quest for arbitrary and capricious cruelty, trains its own by giving them a dose of it themselves. The first hundred pages or so of the book are all military examples, and they become routine, expected, and flat. The choices are varied enough: Nepalese Gurkhas, Vatican Swiss Guards, Knights Templar… but there is a dull and pointless sameness to them. If you want to be a soldier, you need to suffer pain, strain and abuse first. Got it.

Fortunately, there’s more. The authors examine other organizations, like the Freemasons and their famous 33 degrees member can earn on their way up, and what the actual rules and processes are that the organization imposes on members.

They also examine the Mercury astronauts’ insane fitness tests and regimens. Before anyone flew (It began in 1961), no one knew for sure what sort of stresses they would endure or how they would be affected, so the training process (that began in 1958) was simply the worst and the hardest possible. Everyone who made it would fly, but they had to be really fit. Today, we know pretty much anyone can do it (675 have done so), so the crucible to be an American astronaut has faded in its extremity.

The authors even examine the American Mafia, with its fanatical loyalty requirements and Made Men. These organizations are never out of the crucible stage, and everyone is constantly being tested, one way or another.

Then there is West Africa, where tall, hardbodied adolescent girls were selected to be trained as the fiercest fighting force in the kingdom. They were called the Dahomey Amazones. They could and did handle vicious weapons the enemy would likely have never seen before. Recognition were things like a ceremonial belt, which had acacia thorns sticking inwards into the wearer’s waist, further pain to remind them of who they were. They were trained to suppress all pain and emotion, except for savagery in battle.

Among the most pointless is the crucible of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, where the authors met and survived the horrors. It is years of harassment, idiotic rules (eyes always front when walking the halls, turn only at metal plates in the floor, no shortcuts for plebes, yell Beat Army! when turning corners…. And worse punishments, all while attempting to fulfill educational courses and earn a degree. For some the harassment remains with them as bitter memories for life, the hell of life at the school something supposedly to be perversely proud of despite the fact everyone loathes and despises it. A third or so of the recruits don’t make it to the end. It is cruel and unusual punishment, and builds mental illness rather than character, from the descriptions here.

Unexpectedly, the Conclusion is fabulous, the best chapter in the book. It is perceptive and useful. It takes the most outstanding aspect of the crucibles examined throughout the book, and calls them out as best practices. The authors have benchmarked crucibles from around the world and throughout history. Some examples:

-Design your crucible to potentially open more than one door. Training sacrificial warriors is one thing, training a renaissance man who can excel in multiple environments for the good of the country is better.

-Put your best people in charge of the crucible pipeline. The pride and joy of the service should be star recruiters, celebrities to the target audience.

-Allow the crucible to uplift citizens. The Gurkhas of Nepal are respected globally, and joining them is a direct path to respect and decent income for impoverished Nepalis. Their pay, as low as it is, is 35 times the average.

-Be open to innovation, especially in recruiting. Ancient crucibles might be legendary, but they don’t necessarily address 21st century issues, needs or values.

-Craft crucibles to cultivate organizational loyalty. Look at the mafia, compared to kamikaze pilots of Japan, who were simply sentenced to death in their early 20s.

-Make crucible events outward facing. White coat events for doctors bring them closer to and respect from the community. Theirs is an eight year crucible of learning, exhausting residency, and debt. Connecting to the community is hugely positive for all.

So despite the long flatness early on, Crucibles is a valuable look at an endless manmade phenomenon that is not going away anytime soon.

David Wineberg show less

This book is a very quick and thoughtful read that delves into a tradition not well known outside the Naval Academy and Annapolis communities. I had thought this book would be a dry historical treatment, but it unfolded in a quite different manner. One thing I discovered early in my reading is that the Herndon tradition is not really that old, only taking the form Heidi and I discovered less than twenty years before.

The authors do the obvious history thing, introducing William Lewis Herndon show more and the meaning of the date embossed on the monument. They describe Herndon's personal attributes that made such a monument a necessity at an institution training future naval officers. (An aside--the Herndon Monument is closely associated with Matthew Fountaine Maury, whose association with the Confederacy will likely result in the building currently named for him in the Yard to be renamed. Will that association with Maury taint the Herndon Monument?)

The book contains 13 chapters, most of which stand alone as Naval Academy vignettes. Three of the chapters are an extending telling of a first person account of actually participating in a Herndon climb, while the other chapters offer third person accounts from individuals one or both of the authors interviewed for this book. While most of these accounts fall into the category of sea stories, two of the chapters tell of deep personal losses experienced by Navy families and shipmates. One chapter talks about the integration of women into the Academy and the Herndon tradition, neither of which have been done smoothly or fully successfully.

This is a book that need not interest only the Naval Academy or Annapolis communities. There are lessons to be learned here, especially when trying to diversify traditional organizations. show less