Finished Ranger School

Well, I have been out of Ranger School for almost two months now and I have moved to Fort Drum and started at my new unit. BUT, I feel like I should close out that part of my blog with a little description of the last phase and graduation.

I am really glad to be done with Ranger School. My last update was on the way to Florida Phase at Eglin Airforce Base. You would never now it was an Airforce Base where they put us. We were about a 20 minute drive from anything other than ranger training.

Florida was the most difficult phase for me. We had 10 consecutive days in the field. That is 9 mostly sleepless nights. 10 days of patrolling. 9 nights digging foxholes. 2 miserable nights in the swamp. 3 days paddling zodiac boats. 10 days of a general suckfest.

The nights in the swamp were the most miserable times I had in Ranger School.
The waterborne days start with a boat movement navigating down a river to a landing point right at dusk. Then you begin moving through the swamp for a few torturous hours in the dark until you reach a river that needs to be crossed. After crossing the river, you are soaked up to your neck and finish walking through the swamp. I say it is torture because you are tired, wet and hungry while you try to walk through a cypress swamp that has stumps and fallen trees under the water making just walking difficult, all the while it is almost pitch black because we are under a dense canopy of trees in the middle of the night.

I dont have any good pictures of Ranger School because you are not allowed to have a camera. So the best I can do is reference you to the ranger school brief.

Overall the school was probably the most difficult thing I have done in the Army. https://www.benning.army.mil/rtb/Ranger%20School%20Brief_files/frame.htm

I completed the cource in 60 days without any hiccups.