movie Rio Grande

[Trigger Mike]

each time i see it i get puzzled. john wayne's son was kicked out of West Point for failing math and enlisted the next day into the army yet his father mentions him lying about his age to get it. how could he get into West Point and not be old enough for the army?

 

[Rye Miles #13621]

Just watched that movie last night. Man he put a long lip lock on Maureen O'Hara didn't he????

 

I wondered the same thing about his age, guess it pays to know people???

[Warden Callaway]

It's like cowboy action shooting - suspension of disbelief.

[Nasty Newt # 7365]

Grant entered West Point at 16. I think it was possible to be old enough for the academy and not old enough to enlist.

[Alpo]

http://www.maa.org/book/export/html/116851

 

About halfway down the page there's a picture of a man in uniform holding a quill in his left hand. The caption says, in part:

 

At this time, the entrance age was 14-18 years, and the only entrance requirements were that the cadets be well versed in Reading, Writing, English Grammar and common Arithmetick, including Vulgar and Decimal Fractions and the extraction of square and Cube Roots.

 

That seemed to be about 1820.

[Cat Brules]

I guess high schoolers today would be rejected!

[Shakey Merlot]

With few formal schools in the United States until after the Civil War, cadets would be accepted as young as 14 years of age. After the war, there were still few schools that taught beyond what we would now consider a middle school or junior high school level. There were higher level schools, generally called "Prep Schools" which prepared young men for college. But they were, for the most part, private schools and one had to be fairly wealthy to enroll the children. So it IS possible that, in the movie, he is 16 or 17. I believe that, during the Civil War, the enlistment age was set at 18 years. I'll have to look it up. Many of the young lads who fought were, of course, much younger, particularly in the Confederate Army.

 

Shakey

 

PS: Sometimes, on Facebook and other types of social media they will post a grade school exam. They are pretty hard sometimes, but my point is back then kids were taught things that they don't teach until the 9th grade or later now.

[Rooster Ron Wayne]

Thats the way it was wrote in the Script !