That time I got kicked out of Ranger School (Part 2)

-Or-

How failing Ranger School made me a better cop, and person(eventually)

Welcome to another installment of the tough shit series. Inspired by Kevin Smith’s book of the same name, this series chronicles some shit that sucked which provided lovely opportunities for me to learn.

Here goes part 2. Missed part 1? Here it is. Where we left off; a long time ago, I was in this Army unit where going to Ranger School was a near requirement for being a leader. I earned a slot for the school, and despite not quitting I didn’t graduate. All my fault, and though I didn’t earn the coveted Ranger Tab, I sure as hell learned some crucial things that have since helped me immensely. What is Ranger School? A 3 phase training course, each lasting about 3 weeks all of which is miserable as fuck but a great way to train soldiers how to lead in combat. You can quit at any time, and there’s various shit you can fail. You fail certain things, and you have to do over that 3 week phase. That’s called “recycling“.

Last post we talked about how I had made it through the two week Pre-Ranger course, and then the first week called Ranger Assessment Phase (RAP week), which is the beginning of Benning phase. RAP week was a smoke session where you have to pass a bunch of physical events, tests, and fight each other. From there I moved onto the second part of Benning at Camp Darby. There we were formed up into Infantry Squads and fought a full time cadre of notional bad guys called the OPFOR(opposing force). We rotated in and out of leadership positions, and fought this pretend war while being graded on our ability to lead.

When it was my time to lead I fucked up. My radio guy, who was required to make regular check ins with headquarters, said he was talking to them without issue. Turns out he was making that shit up. Since it was my responsibility as the squad leader to make sure all of my sleep and food deprived soldiers were actually doing their jobs, I failed. I recycled Darby.

Luckily I didn’t have to do RAP week again, since I’d already passed that ball of fuck. Instead I only had to redo Darby. However, like all army training, everything is on a immovable schedule. Each phase operated back to back, with a new phase starting every 3 weeks. As soon as I failed Darby, another Benning phase with new Ranger students was starting.

This meant I had a week with nothing to do while I waited for the new class to go through RAP so I could meet up with them at Darby. What did I do during that gap week? Well I’d just been through 5 weeks of shit (2 weeks of Pre-Ranger followed by 3 weeks of Benning), so the army figured I needed a break. I checked into a hotel, sat by the pool drinking mai tais, and did some occasional pilates to stay limber.

Hahahahah, just kidding.

During the gap week I was sent to Vaughn’s Platoon, led by Ranger Instructor (RI) Staff Sergeant Lutz. I was sent there with everyone else who didn’t make it through Darby, but passed RAP week and didn’t quit when they were recycled. There were a dozen or so of us in this boat. It was still Ranger School, so they made sure our lives sucked. But we did get to stay in barracks, sleep 5 hours a night, and get regular food. Which in comparison to the normal pace of Ranger School was like a fucking vacation. SSG Lutz made sure we were smoked and harassed a good amount, but it was at a lesser amount than normal. Instead of spending all his time torturing us, he spent half of it providing remedial training. The purpose of Vaughn’s Platoon was to give us idiots a better chance at making it through Darby. We had the tenacity to make it through RAP week and Darby without quitting, plus the Army had spent lots of money to get us to that point, so they figured throwing more training at us hard but stupid students might get them a better return on their investment. Maybe we were the product of the sunk cost fallacy.

That week of Vaughn’s platoon was probably the best leadership training I’ve had in such a short amount of time, all of which I credit to Lutz. That dude was amazing. Sure, he made us do about a million push ups, run and ruck I don’t know how many miles, and do stupid tasks like line up an entire field of gravel into neat rows, but his take on leadership was titty sprinkles.

After making us do whatever stupid human trick for that day, he would then lead us through some ground fighting, which is essentially Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with weapons. We’d drill some basic moves, then go into timed sparring. After we had all choked each other out multiple times, which Lutz participated in, he’d gather us into a circle to talk through some leadership scenario and how to address it.

One stuck out. Lutz asked us “So you get some stupid order that doesn’t make any sense from the idiot in charge. It’s not illegal, it’s not going to get any of your guys needlessly killed, it’s just fucking stupid and a goddamn waste of time. But you have to do it-it’s an order. What do you tell your guys?”

To which a student said “You go to your men, tell them yeah, it’s a stupid order, but we got to do it because this is the Army, and we follow orders“. A bunch of other students, myself included, agreed.

Lutz replied with something like: “FUCK NO!!! You tell your men it’s MY fucking order, and it was MY fucking idea. Then you tell them to get to work. This is the job of a leader-not to win some popularity contest with our men at the expense of cohesion of the whole fucking Army. Yeah, if they know you and you are not a fucking idiot, they’ll know it wasn’t your idea and probably somebody above you. But it’s about setting the example and keeping morale up. They’ll know you think it’s stupid, but they’ll see how you act and what you say. They’ll do the same thing you do-shrug off the stupidity of an order you can’t get out of, and immediately carry it out without bitching. If you do it the other way, the easy way, and explain how it was some higher ranked idiot’s idea, you’re just giving them license to bitch more than they already do and you’ll end up killing morale in the long run. Do your job. Your a fucking leader. Fucking lead by fucking example.”

I’m not doing his explanation justice here, but he went on to explain how a real leader doesn’t try to get his men to like him; it’s not about being liked-it’s about the Army as a whole working together. Soldiers know stupid shit is a part of the Army, but once a leader starts commiserating with their people about this, discipline and morale crumbles away because they no longer see their leader as the person in charge. They see them as a person trying to be their friend, not lead them. From there they start thinking it’s us versus them, them being whatever idiots are in charge. This is not ideal, in fact it gets people killed. Sure, there are idiots in charge occasionally, and they make you do dumb stuff. But the whole idea of the military is based on people following orders which allows for quick decisive action, not a slow moving democracy where committees go back and forth forever. Democracy is awesome for doing what’s right and establishing as fair as a system as you can get out of humans, but when you need to get a bunch of people to take coordinated complex actions immediately to keep from dying, everyone better be on the same page right away. When shit is going down, anything that opens up that gap between order given and action taken increases the likelihood of things going off the rails.

By the time I ended up in Vaughn’s platoon, I’d been doing the Army thing for 5 years, and I’d seen it done both ways. Lutz was right. I’d never had it spelled out for me this way, but this was one of many of many lessons he’d give us on leadership in between the normal Ranger School antics of physical punishment and constant harassment. We’d have to do a twenty part series just to cover all this shit he put out, and sadly I can’t remember half of it. Ultimately I took a lot from my time there.

The week went by, and like that we were sent back to the suck. Some random RI loaded those of us from Vaughn’s into the back of a deuce and a half(big truck somewhere between a semi and a pickup), and drove us out to Darby at 0300. Everyone else getting done with RAP week had to ruck out there, as the final task of the Ranger Assessment Phase was a long ass march for time to Camp Darby. We’d already passed that stuff, hence the lovely truck ride. I recall a blissful hour and a half of sleeping on the cold ground next to my ruck, waiting for the rest of the class to meet us out there. Finally they showed up, and it was back to the standard game of yelling, pushups, and being given little time to do lots of stuff.

Darby was like deja vu. I was plopped into the middle of a new squad, and we began our fake campaign against the hated OPRFOR. I was like fucking Nostradamus; I’d recognize some hill where we’d probably get hit with mortar fire, and whisper to my fellow students that we were about to get our asses reamed. Then my predicted shit would go down, and afterwards my new friends would look at me with some appreciation. Getting fucked with still sucked, but knowing when it was coming took some of the sting away. It became a little bit more like a game. By now I’d been doing this shit for six weeks, while some of the guys who didn’t have a Pre-Ranger course beforehand were just a week deep. When every day is at least 20 hours of constant crazy, six weeks felt like an entirety. I knew how much stuff sucked, and tried my best to help my fellow students that were new to the game. Helping them do mission planning, making sure they didn’t miss commo windows, keeping track of our location to the meter even if it wasn’t my job. Even took more than my share of duties humping the machine guns. I wanted to win, and I knew we’d need to work together to keep the wheels from falling off like the last time I went through this crap. Darby still sucked, and frankly it sucked more the second time through since I’d lost at least ten pounds, and had been going without adequate sleep and food for so long. So it goes or whatever.

Contrary to my being a nice dude when I wasn’t in charge, this time around I was a complete fucking asshole when I was in a graded leadership position. I was prepared to recycle this phase for the next hundred years if that’s what it took to earn my Ranger Tab, but I sure as hell didn’t want to. So I micromanaged the absolute shit out of my squad when it was my turn to lead them. I didn’t care how squared away each dude seemed, I did not want to get screwed over again because I failed to make sure they were doing their jobs. And I caught a lot of fucked up shit. I caught hard core dudes from elite units falling asleep, not taking care of their equipment, forgetting aspects of our mission, and a thousand other little things. I remembered it didn’t matter how good someone was, throw in sleep and food deprivation, along with constant physical exertion, and every single person would go to shit.

The first time through Darby I was nice. I’d say something like “hey man, give me a hand here and try to stay awake-just a little bit longer and we’ll be done.” This time I’d say “wake. the. FUCK. UP.”

I don’t remember what our missions were; it’s been years. Probably ambush and recon or something. I do remember at the end we were all smoked and dead on our feet. We did our peer evaluations, and finally I was called in to talk to the RI. Here I’d find out if I would go on to Mountain Phase, or have to do this whole thing over again. Word was if you failed Darby a second time they’d make you redo RAP week as well. I was really hoping to not do that. Like….a lot. I was more than a little nervous, but when the RI called me in I mustered up some anger so I’d seem confident and got ready to hear how I done did.

I’m not sure exactly what the RI said. Might have been “You are a go-good luck in Mountains” or it could have been “You’re a stupid worthless fuck but we figured we’d mess with the Mountain RIs and send you there-go fuck yourself”. Seriously, no idea what he said-but I knew he said I was a go for this phase and I was being sent on to the next one. He gave me my peer eval sheet to review and I was even more surprised. The first time through I finished in the middle of the pack. This time I did better than 80% of my peers. Totally surprised-I knew I was being a major asshole when I was in charge, and figured I’d do worse this time around in my evals. I was willing to suffer in peers as long as I passed. But it seemed that even though I was a dick, everyone liked me more. This was an odd trend I noticed from then on, especially as the weeks turned into months and I became even more harsh when I was in charge. My peers got even better. I recalled Lutz had said something about this back at Vaughn’s, something like “when the shit is going down, or something has to be dealt with, guys don’t want to be buttered up by some dickhead leader trying to be their friend and sugar coat everything. They want to be told what to do, and be corrected quickly so they can fix their shit and move on.” Guess he was right.

With that I was off to Mountain Phase. Which would absolutely fucking crush me, but provide me with three major lessons I’d apply later in life. Good fucking times. See you on the next one. 🙂

Have you been through similar stuff, or learned similar lessons? I’d love to hear about it. Also, it looks like this Kicked out of Ranger School series is going to be multiple parts. I may focus on that for a bit, or I may go back and forth with other stuff like I’ve been doing. What would you like? Or I can always write a post about buying index funds too .😉 Lemme know!