Thursday, November 5, 1998 25-MILE MARCH PROPOSED NEW APPROACH IN THE WORKS FOR VMI'S 'BREAKOUT' Senior cadets think a march to New Market is fitting, since the battle is the theme for this year's ratline. By MATT CHITTUM THE ROANOKE TIMES This year's freshman "rats" at Virginia Military Institute won't have the fond memory of scratching their way through freezing mud to liberty from the rigors of the "ratline." "Breakout," the filthy climax of the six-month training period freshmen endure, will be significantly cleaner this year, though senior class President Ezra Clark promises it will be every bit as daunting. If the plans are approved by the senior class and the administration, members of the class of 2002 will complete a march of 25 miles to the battlefield at New Market, where 10 VMI cadets perished in Civil War combat. To culminate the ritual, the rats will charge across the "Field of Lost Shoes," just as their predecessors did on May 16, 1864. After marching over 80 miles up the Shenandoah Valley, the VMI Corps of Cadets joined Confederate forces that day in a charge across the Bushong family farm, taking a battery of cannons and giving the Confederacy one of its last victories of the Civil War. The leaders in the senior class, which runs the ratline, wanted a breakout for this year's rat mass that would be "something new, something meaningful," Clark said. They think a march to New Market is fitting, because they chose the battle as the theme for this year's ratline. "The hill is still an option," Clark said, "but it's not one we're heavily considering." The march is a marked departure from the climb up the muddy hill, which is fraught with its own kind of symbolism. VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting III has called the hill climb the "concentrated essence of the ratline." Throughout the year, the rats' lives are complicated by upperclassmen who quiz them on VMI history and compel countless calisthenics from them. Those same upperclassmen impede their progress through the mud. But in the end, the rats are embraced by the upperclass and helped up the hill, just as they are accepted as full-fledged members of the corps of cadets after breakout. Clark said the march is much grander on a symbolic level, connecting the rats to their predecessors who fought and died at New Market. Some alumni agree. "It seems more memorable to me just to recognize what those young guys had to go through back then," said Al Soltis, former president of the Roanoke Chapter of the VMI Alumni Association. "It's going to help us get back to our roots, if you will." Besides, the ratline changes constantly, including breakout. Before the hill ritual began in 1981, rats had climb barracks stairwells that were greased and clogged with ropes, furniture and upperclassmen. In another incarnation of breakout, rats ran through a gantlet of seniors armed with paddles and coat hangers. It was called "Bloody Sunday." While the details of the ratline may have changed, the spirit of it has not, those who have endured it say. "The thing that's never changed in my mind is the individual challenge," said Tim Cordle of Roanoke, a 1979 graduate and Soltis' successor as president of the Roanoke alumni chapter. Every incarnation of breakout has culminated in "one final push effort, something that might look insurmountable, something that drew everything up into one final climax," Cordle said. The march seems to meet that requirement, he said. Originally, the seniors wanted to take four days and re-create the entire march the 1864 cadets made, but the school's academic schedule wouldn't allow it. The latest plan is to put the rats through a series of workouts on a Friday and Saturday in late February and then march the last leg to the battlefield on Sunday. To anyone who thinks this year's breakout will be easier than years past, Clark has an open invitation to see for themselves. "I challenge anybody to participate in the weekend," he said. "Come on out."