United States Army

The U.S. Army is presented as the alternative awaiting Willie Keith if he fails to qualify for naval service, and later as a possible route out of the Navy through a family-arranged commission. These possibilities frame his early uncertainty about military life, but the evidence shows no transfer or Army commission: when confronted with the prospect of failing, Willie says he would remain at sea as an enlisted sailor.

The Army as the Alternative to Naval Training

At the receiving station, a pharmacist’s mate treats Willie as an unsuitable candidate for the Navy, despite Willie’s claim that he can play tennis for hours and climb mountains. A doctor notices in the record that Willie attended Princeton University and directs that his pulse and back be left unrecorded pending a recheck at the Navy Yard. The medical concern is specifically marked as lordosis, making the possibility of rejection concrete rather than merely academic.

The threat becomes clearer when Willie and his fellow trainees discuss what happens after their three weeks as apprentice seamen: the top two-thirds of the class become midshipmen, while those who fail are sent to the Army. Willie responds to the possibility by frantically trying to touch his toes, an effort that leaves him unsteady. The scene links his fear of the Army not to a considered preference between services but to the immediate pressure of passing the Navy’s physical and academic tests.

A Family-Proposed Commission

Later, Dr. Keith tells Willie that his mother has been exploring a transfer from the Navy to the Army. Through Uncle Lloyd, whose partner has become a colonel in Public Relations, the family believes it may be possible to obtain an Army commission for Willie. The proposal would offer a way around the uncertainty of his naval training, but Willie has not previously known that his mother is pursuing it.

The possibility unsettles him partly because he wishes he had heard of it sooner. His father raises the chance that he might fail the following week, and Willie answers that, if he did, he would enlist as a sailor. The narration makes clear that this is not a settled plan he has formed in advance; the words come to him in the moment. The exchange therefore distinguishes the family’s proposed Army commission from Willie’s spontaneous expression of attachment to a life at sea.

An Unchosen Path

The Army remains a counterfactual branch in Willie’s story: it is invoked as the consequence of failing naval training and as an alternative commission arranged through family connections, but the supplied episodes do not show him serving in it. The contrast helps define the stakes of his early Navy experience. A medical recheck, the class’s promotion threshold, and his mother’s effort to redirect his career all place other futures within reach, while Willie’s unpremeditated response points back toward the Navy. His eventual course is not the result of an Army transfer; the Army matters here as the path he might have taken but does not choose.