‘They’re not quite right in rugby’: how West Point made one band of brothers

A new book tells how the lives of 15 young men were shaped by the brutal realities of life at the US Military Academy, the shock of the 9/11 attacks and the lure of a whole new sport

At the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, they call the class of 1915 the class the stars fell on", because 59 of its 164 graduates made brigadier general or higher. Among them were Omar Bradley, first chair of the joint chiefs of staff, and Dwight D Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces in the second world war and 34th president.

The Class of 2002 might yet challenge 1915. As the bicentennial class, they were always marked for attention. Though they entered West Point in 1998, 25 years after the last major war, their final year began with 9/11. In an instant, they knew they would become the first cadets to graduate in wartime since Vietnam.