Professor Hale–a West Point grad and a graduate of Army Ranger School–has an excellent set of posts on the experience.
And yes, he should write a book about it.
Here they are:
Ranger School Chapter 3: Who’s Your Buddy
Ranger School, Chapter 4: Food
Ranger School, Chapter 5: Pain
Ranger School, Chapter 6: People
Ranger School, Chapter 6 (Addendum)
“And yes, he should write a book about it.”
i concur!
Thanks.
These are great reading for those who aren’t even looking at the military route, as much of what you have written has many applications in life as a whole, not simply Ranger School in particular.
Yes, Rangers have to be physically tough. But you could go to any gym in America and find people who are physically tough enough for Ranger School. They can knock out the pushups, the pullups, the situps, and run the miles. But most wouldn’t have a chance at passing.
Yes, Rangers have to be smart. Then again, they don’t have to be geniuses either. You can go to any school in America and find any number of folks who are smart enough for it. But most of them wouldn’t have a chance at passing.
What separates the Rangers from the washouts? It’s that six inches between the ears.
Every branch of the military has its Spec Ops groups. Their training regimens vary considerably, but the basic formula is similar: make recruits perform extraordinary tasks under varying levels of major discomfort; stress them in ways that challenge their expectations of fairness; make them deal with situations that are not “textbook”; and make them do that on a continuing basis.
In life, there is much to be learned here.
You’re going to have all types of people to deal with, some of whom are even going to be your bosses. Some will be reasonable, some will be assholes, some even will be incompetent assholes. You will not always be able to extricate yourself from those types.
There will always be a certain degree of “suck factor” in any work situation. (Even a good marriage will not always be peaches and cream, either.)
You will not always get the breaks you deserve. You will not always get the promotion, or the recognition, or even the compensation. Sometimes, you will get outcomes that you did not expect. Those outcomes will not always be fair. More often than not, you can count on the latter.
When things really get tough, even the folks who otherwise respect you may question your decision-making. It happens in the military; it happens at home, too. Even where you’ve earned it, you may not get the respect you merit.
How you respond to those challenges will define what you become in life.
As Professor Hale pointed out, many folks drop out of Ranger School due to “back pain”. Sometimes, that is legit: if you blow out a disk, you may not be able to continue. But most of these folks are just looking for an honorable “out”. They are more than physically capable of continuing, but simply lack the drive–or even the courage–to persevere.
Sometimes you are going to have a challenge–at home, at work, with a family member–where it is a given that the proper course of action is going to suck. Your spouse is going to give you hell, one or more family members may disown you, you may have long hours on the job with no extra compensation or recognition to show for it.
Even worse, you may experience bad outcomes that weren’t your fault. You may lose a job in spite of your performance; you may suffer through a divorce through no fault of your own; you may get sued over something that you were not at fault for, but against which you have not the means to defend yourself.
You can do everything right and still end up broke and without a family.
While those challenges require a level of prudence, it is often perseverance and courage that make the difference between making lemonade out of lemons, and sinking into defeat.
Every Spec-Ops group in the military drills it into their recruits: if you’re still alive, you are never out of the fight. “A (Ranger, SEAL, etc.) never quits!”
One need not be a Ranger or a SEAL or a Recon Marine to appreciate that lesson.
and this is in the comments and not a post … why?
excellent.
am writing a piece on this regarding marriage to be up soon … we want to think “it” shouldn’t be *this* hard, but the reality is, life is this hard. life is not fair or equal or just. when my girls whine that something’s not fair, i tell them to add it to the list. sometimes they say, “I don’t want to add it to the list!” i totally get that; i don’t either. but it’s reality this side of heaven.
I concur. A very good comment.
That’s the problem. Lots of things are going to happen that are going to be tacked onto “the list”.
We may not want those things there. We may not like that others have gone through life and not had those things on their list–whereas we have those things on our lists–but, ya know what? It’s there and you have to deal with it.
Jeff Struecker–like Professor Hale–went to Ranger School.
Struecker went on to serve in various Ranger groups. He would be deployed in Panama and later Somalia, where he was involved in the ultimate suckfest known as the Battle of Mogadishu. His role is portrayed in the movie Black Hawk Down.
He didn’t plan on his machine gunner–Sgt. Dominick Pilla–getting killed by a lucky prick with an AK. As it is with life, so it is with combat: sh*t happens.
None of the Rangers or Delta Operators that day planned on an uneventful mission going completely FUBAR, with two Black Hawks getting shot down, and 18 fellow Rangers and Operators dying.
When the Rangers started their mission, it began quite well and was very close to success. Right before everything went FUBAR. When PFC Blackburn missed the rope–for reasons we may never know–they experienced the “unfair” side of life in a succession of events that led to them going from a mission that was proceeding successfully to nearly being massacred on the streets of a Third World hellhole.
But you know why a bad situation DIDN’T become a massacre? They didn’t quit. They kept their heads. They improvised. They made the best of an absolute worst-case scenario.
Struecker’s book The Road to Unafraid is a good read. Another good read is from Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell: Lone Survivor. He lost three of his SEAL buddies, suffered a broken back, and barely escaped with his life when Operation Red Wing went to crap. In that case, one fateful decision doomed the mission: in a gesture of mercy, they let some herders go free. (Those herders notified the Taliban, and that turned into a 200-on-4 fight.)
Did Luttrell quit against those odds?
Did his leader, Michael Murphy?
Did his fellow sniper, David Axelson?
Did fellow SEAL Danny Dietz?
None of those guys quit. They kept their heads. They kept shooting Talibastards to the best of their ability. Even when they were shot, they kept fighting. Even when their faces were blown off, the kept fighting.
Murphy–mortally wounded–exposed himself to enemy fire in order to call for help. He would not live to receive the Medal of Honor in person.
Luttrell managed to make it out alive. Barely. He had to crawl 8 miles–while badly wounded, and without food or water–to make it to a village where the people took him in.
(And yes…eventually it was the Army Rangers who would rescue him.)
We won’t all have to experience a 200-on-1 disaster. Nor will we all have to experience the specter of an entire city hacking our bodies to death and dragging them through the streets. We won’t all have to go to Ranger School, the “Q” course, or BUD/S training.
But the lesson is the same, minus the extremes.
Never quit.
as your sweet wife and i agreed on the phone the other day, there’s only one Amir. well written.