Innate Idiots
"I came here to learn football for free. I was originally going to Annapolis, but as you can see, I'm a bit older. The age limit didn't work out there. Coming to New York from the Kansas countryside feels a little surreal, though—"
"Hey! How long are you going to keep talking by yourself?"
"Sit down, sit down. You're about to cause an earthquake in the poor guy's eyes. Cut it out."
This idiot gambler was that Eisenhower?
This was the man who would one day smash Hitler's teeth in and enter the White House.
To be fair, I had already met figures who would leave their mark on future history—but none of them had felt particularly different from what I'd imagined.
But… Eisenhower was mercilessly shattering every image I had built in my head.
After the brief introductions ended, it was finally my turn. I gathered myself.
"I'm Yujin Kim. From San Francisco. A Korean-American."
"Korea? Where's that?"
"You're not Chinese?!"
Something felt off.
Sure enough, the bastards started rummaging through their pockets, pulling out bills and coins one by one.
"No way. This is a scam!"
"So where's Korea?"
"There's a small peninsula between China and Japan. That's Korea."
"Ah… I know that place. Didn't Japan just swallow it recently? Then 'Japanese' should count as correct, right?"
"Shut up. I'm Irish. If someone called me English, I'd knock his jaw loose. I bet he'd do the same."
"Damn right. Back in my hometown, I beat up so many Japs like that I could've filled a whole Union Pacific train car."
Whatever the case, everyone here was still a hot-blooded teenager.
Young men in the prime of their fiery youth who had chosen, of their own will, to put on the uniform.
Thankfully, the ones I'd met so far seemed decent enough.
"Yo, amigo!"
"Oh—uh, hi?"
"My name Anastacio Quevedo Ver. Uh, sorry. English… hard for me. Can you help?"
Fortunately, I wasn't the only person of color at West Point.
From the Philippines—newly fallen into America's hands—one cadet was sent to West Point each year. Anastacio, my classmate, was one of them.
"Won't it be tough if English is difficult too?"
"People in Philippines expect much from me. I learn well, then go back. Don't worry."
"Alright. If anything happens, tell me. I'll help you with English whenever I can."
"Thank you! You want learn Spanish?"
So there were moments where I could breathe.
"All rise! Form ranks and enter the mess hall!"
"Yujin! Get over here. We've got to eat something."
"Won't it be uncomfortable sitting with a yellow guy?"
"If someone's uncomfortable over something like that—whether you're black or yellow—he's got no business serving his country. He can go live in Alabama or something."
Ike grabbed me firmly, his expression serious.
"Come on, sit! There are some new friends I want to introduce you to. You guys cool with that?"
"You tell someone to get lost to Alabama right in front of him, and if we say no, we're the trash here. Don't casually turn people into idiots like it's nothing."
The two men eating with Eisenhower nodded reluctantly.
"This guy here's named Omar."
"Omar Bradley."
"I'm James Van Fleet."
The big names just kept rolling out.
Omar Bradley. A hero of World War II.
James Van Fleet. A late-blooming general who would later fight in the Korean War.
What on earth was 1911 West Point?
"Anyway, we were having a very serious discussion."
"Yeah. Since you're here, you might as well join this critical debate."
What was this? Heroes recognizing heroes?
As expected of West Point. A gathering of the strongest figures in the world. My chest swelled with anticipation.
I sat properly and began eating at a perfect right angle. The suffocating military rigidity seeped into every trivial detail.
Shoveling bread into my mouth, I quietly listened to the "grave and serious discussion" of these future legends who would write the history of the U.S. military.
"So here's what I think."
"Yeah?"
"Obviously… football's the greatest sport, right?"
"What?"
"Think about it. Football is the foundation of military science and the pinnacle of strategy and tactics. All those bat-swingers do is throw a ball, swing a stick, and run around some fixed square."
That terrifying slander had just come out of Eisenhower's mouth.
"Hah… It pains me to see your insight is that shallow."
Bradley, mild-looking yet firm, shook his head decisively.
Yes, show me something real. Not this utterly useless nonsense—give me some dignified, serious debate.
"Baseball is obviously superior. Football's just something Americans stole from British rugby. It lacks American spirit. The ball rolls wherever it pleases, there's no calculation, no elegance."
Please.
Stop trampling my fantasies.
While I was silently turning into Munch's The Scream, these idiots' veins began bulging as they argued football versus baseball.
And the real problem? The louder they got, the more the guys around us started joining in, swelling the ranks of this absurd doctrinal controversy.
"Hey, Kim!"
"Yeah, me?"
"Pick a side. You with that old man, or with me?"
"Yujin's obviously football. Just look at him—he's got a strategic mind. Of course he'd like football."
Ike said with a smug grin.
Sorry to disappoint.
"Baseball, obviously."
"What? You traitor…"
"In San Francisco, everyone knew me as the Rainmaker on the mound. If I've come all the way to West Point, I should be swinging a bat, not tackling people."
Ike, even if you look at me like the sky just fell, it won't change anything.
Even a hundred years back in time, baseball reigns supreme.
In my previous life, I was a die-hard Giants fan shouting "My Life is Giants!" And in my second life's hometown of San Francisco, the Giants would one day arrive—still a long way off, but they would come.
Wasn't that proof enough that some supernatural force clearly favored the bat?
Ah. Regret suddenly surged through me.
Coming to West Point had been a monumental mistake.
If I had gone to the Major Leagues instead, I could've witnessed legends like Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig firsthand and carved my own mark into baseball history.
Perhaps God hadn't sent me back to change Joseon's fate or World War II—but to rewrite the history of the bat itself…!
Before I knew it, I had joined the debate, passionately preaching the greatness of the pitcher's mound at the top of my lungs.
"Who said you could talk during chow! All of you, outside! Now!"
The lion's roar of fury filled the mess hall, and before the bread could even slide down our throats, we were out rolling across the drill field.
In the end, I barely finished half my lunch that day.
For all my grand thoughts, I too was just another idiot ruled by hormones.
If I had to sum up West Point's curriculum in one sentence, it was the educational equivalent of a deranged old fossil clacking his dentures.
Outwardly, I often muttered, Ah, what a damnable era. But truthfully, I had held the United States—the mighty nation of abundance—in extremely high regard.
Yet the U.S. Army was far more… incompetent than I'd expected.
"Therefore, basic small-unit tactics consist of—"
Sitting in class, I could barely suppress a yawn.
A second-rate army of a second-rate great power.
That was the U.S. military in 1911.
The textbooks and primary case studies were almost entirely devoted to the Civil War, where Grant and Lee had once clashed.
Doctrine was no better. Not even the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War had been reflected in West Point's lectures. After all, the main enemies of this era's U.S. Army were little more than Mexican bandits, Filipino militias, and rifle-bearing Native Americans.
Even the tests were rigidly focused on one thing: How well have you memorized the material? There was no room for creative or original thinking. The idea of "American education equals emphasis on creativity" clearly did not apply to this time period.
So during lectures, I took just enough notes to secure decent grades and instead focused on recalling everything I had learned in my previous life.
What I was learning here would soon become obsolete. The doctrines that would matter were those forged in blood during the coming world wars—the very knowledge already etched into my memory.
Non-military subjects weren't much better.
Given my upbringing, I was fluent in multiple languages.
English and Korean were a given. I had constantly encountered Japanese and Chinese growing up, so I spoke both languages fairly well.
On top of that, spending time with upperclassman Vicente and Anastacio here at West Point had made me reasonably comfortable with Spanish. Naturally, second-language class was a free pass.
If there was anything remotely worth learning, it was architecture and engineering—but even those I had studied to some extent in the Korean Army of my previous life.
More precisely, engineering capabilities lagged far behind the future, so what I needed was to understand "what was possible in this era."
With classes being this disappointing, my original plan began to unravel.
According to my master plan before admission, as someone who had already served as an officer in a previous life, I would dominate the entire academy academically—secure first place overall—and earn praise like, "Wow, he's incredible!" or "He may be yellow, but his ability is the real deal." That recognition would be the cornerstone of my future career.
But now? I could barely tolerate the lectures.
The more I crammed this outdated nonsense into my head, the more it felt like my future knowledge was rusting away.
And to make matters worse, I learned belatedly that the unspoken rule at West Point was that top academic performers were funneled into the Corps of Engineers.
Engineers?
No thanks. That stuff's terrifying.
I didn't want cavalry either. The cavalry I wanted involved steel cannons and armored divisions—or airborne helicopter assaults—not cowboys firing carbines from horseback.
With neither the motivation nor the will to aim for top grades, I inevitably began devoting more energy to other pursuits.
If I couldn't earn recognition through academics, I would have to do it another way.
Crack!
"Run! If you don't make it in, I'll cut your balls off!"
"Kim hit another one! All you idiots who said a yellow guy couldn't swing a bat—drop and give me push-ups!"
"Lucky."
The baseball bat.
That day, the West Point baseball team witnessed a piece of technology from a hundred years in the future.