Was Edgar Allan Poe kicked out of West Point for nakedness?

Jeff Schogol writes for Stars and Stripes and calls himself The Rumor Doctor.  Here’s his take on the story of Poe’s short and stormy life as a cadet at West Point.

"It’s not hard to believe that Edgar Allan Poe, author of “The Pit and the Pendulum” and other horror stories, went to the United States Military Academy at West Point, an institution conspicuously absent from the list of top party schools.

Poe tried hard to get kicked out of West Point, and in 1831, he succeeded. Rumor is that the final straw came when he reported for drill wearing belts for his cartridges, a smile and nothing else, but did he actually do it? . . . But there are no records of Poe showing up for drill naked. Instead, Poe was court-martialed after he stopped going to class, parade, roll calls and chapel in January 1831. The following month, he was dismissed.

THE RUMOR DOCTOR’S DIAGNOSIS: The true story about why Edgar Allan Poe left West Point is sad and short, much like Poe’s life, but will the legend of him appearing naked ever die? Quoth The Rumor Doctor: Nevermore!"

GO HERE for full article.

Poe is the only major American writer to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point. Why Scholgol thinks Poe's enrollment there was, in his words, "not hard to believe" as it was "an institution conspicuously absent from the list of top party schools" is either a typo or an attempt at humor. Poe was a gambler and a hell-raiser at the University of Virginia (a major party school even back then). He appears to have continued on this course while at West Point. Jeffrey Myers’ biography of Poe states “only a quarter of the cadets in each class ever graduated; the rest were dismissed for bad conduct or scholastic deficiency.”  Poe never suffered from "scholastic deficiency."

For Poe’s military record in the National Archives GO HERE.

Your views on this aspect of Poe’s life?  Do you see any of Poe’s military career in his writings?