Last Min Tips/advice/TTPs before Ranger School?

[Ranger Bill]

You see? Ranger School is not so tough, as long as you love misery and never quit.

[Hilo]

Rangers,

I graduated today at Victory Pond! Did a 26 day recycle in FL before hitting the swamps X 2.

Great experience overall.

I'll post Pics when I have the chance.

Take it easy,

Hilo

[IDon'tCare]

About time you got your Tab.

Congratulations.

[RRDTm3]

Rangers,

I graduated today at Victory Pond! Did a 26 day recycle in FL before hitting the swamps X 2.

Great experience overall.

I'll post Pics when I have the chance.

Take it easy,

Hilo

tis a good thing you didn't fall in with the fuck up's in Mtn's who got caught with Copenhagen

[Hilo]

By x46412, shot with Canon EOS 20D at 2008-09-16


By x46412, shot with Canon PowerShot A540 at 2008-09-16

Rangers,

Reposted emails to Family and Friends:

Hello all,

I am now on my eight hour pass after having just completed the Benning Phase of Ranger School. The attrition rate has been 46% as of this date but I have managed to avoid becoming a member of the Gulag.

I have no real problems with the patrols or the physical events but spot reports are killing me. "oh, you only have 5 pairs of socks and one on your feet? You were supposed to have 6 pairs packed in your ruck, folded just so, and laid out so I can see them all at one glance!" I think I've become good at managing people and small teams but have forgotten how to manage myself. Fran usually takes care of making sure I have my ID card, dog tags, etc....and without her I'm having to relearn how to take care of myself. All I can say is good bless my better half!

I have a good squad...we have Bat Boys, NCO (up to the rank of E7--actually our E7 just LOMed....AKA quit), and officers--I am the highest ranking member of the squad. I got some good advice by COL Howard before entering RS--when in charge be in charge...but when you're not in charge be a HUMBLE follower. This has worked very well for me. Everyone has something unique to contribute and we work well together. The NCO's make sure I have my gear in order and I help them with planning and patrolling. The Bat Boys are the tech experts on weapons emplacement, maintenance, claymore, crew served, ambush emplacement, etc. We pool our strengths and have been ok thus far. We started with 19 people in my squad and of this date we now have 10.

I've really learned that a bit of pain in this course is inevitable..but misery is not. I've managed to avoid misery thus far. Sleep deprivation is a funny thing. People are starting to fall completely asleep standing up....we are all zombies. Over the last 3 days I've gotten about 1.5 hours of sleep....just due to involuntary bouts of sleeping....of course ending in being woken up with an RI's boot on my backside!

Oh, I'm no longer a five jump chump! I got my 6th jump at the end of rap week. Stand up, hook up , shuffle to the door, jump right out and count to four! Under good canopy, good PLF, double time off the drop zone....good times!

I've got a few hours to reconstitute my packing list and eat everything in site before reporting back to school. Tomorrow we'll move to Delonoga, GA for the mountain phase of ranger school.

It is truly amazing what the human body is capable of if you really put your mind to it. I have mentally dug in and am prepared to do what it takes to earn the tab.

I hope you and yours are doing well. I think about you guys all the time.

Very Sincerely,

Joe
Roster 176, Alpha Co, 1 PLT, 2nd SQD.
---------------

Hello all,

I hope everything is going well for you and yours.

I just wanted to write and let you guys know that I graduated from Ranger School on 5 SEP 08. It's been a long time coming and although this was my first time attending the school I've wanted to do this ever since I was a cadet.

When I was a brand new 2nd Lieutenant an man by the name of Joseph Fenty sent me to Pre-Ranger up here at Fort Drum, NY. The two week course was tough as the instructors tried their best to cram 2 months of Ranger School into the two weeks of the Pre-Ranger course. About a week into the course I looked out of my planning bay and noticed COL Fenty's silver VW station wagon pulling up besides the building. The next thing I know the room was at standing as the instructors called the room to attention for my Battalion Commanders arrival. The instructors asked COL Fenty if he wanted to speak to me and he simply responded, in typical Fenty fashion with a smile on his face, "no, I just wanted to check up on Joe and make sure he's doing OK."

One of the tests at Pre-Ranger is land navigation. There are 3 consecutive days of it. If you pass during one of the first two days then the third day was, although you still had to do it, a non graded event. I went out and found all of my 8 points during both the first and second days. On the third day I took a group of about 10 students (who had also passed at this point) into the woods and set up a patrol base. Instead of using the 3rd day for more practice we had one rule: you had to use every piece of sleeping gear you had. We set up our sleeping pads, all three layers of our sleeping bags, curled up in our poncho liners, set up a guard rotation and...went to sleep. It was great...until the instructors caught on. I got called in the 1SG's office and told that he was going to tell COL Fenty and that I was going to get a good yelling at for what I had done. He called me the "Sleepy Ranger Ring Leader." I was pretty scared. Upon graduation from the course COL Fenty told me he wanted to talk to me. Boy was I nervous. But when the time came for my "yelling" COL Fenty asked me to repeat the Ranger Creed. He stopped me when I got to the stanza that says: "Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong, and morally straight, and I will shoulder more than my share of the task, whatever it may be, 100 percent and than some." He asked me to think about what it meant to give 100 percent to every task, even if I already knew I had achieved the standard before hand, even if I was dead tired. This was typical Fenty. No loss of composure...just delivering the right message at the right time. I never forgot that lesson and never will.

Throughout the course I probably averaged 1-2 hours of sleep a night. I was tired physically and mentally. I wrote after phase one of RS that I had learned that a bit of pain was inevitable in the course but I had not yet, at that point, reached the point of misery. During the next 3 phases (I did the last phase twice!) I definitely reached the point of misery a couple of times. The lesions I learned from COL Fenty Served me well.

My Ranger Tab is dedicated to COL Joseph Fenty, my first Commanding Officer and one of the finest Soldier's and men I've ever met.

Besides actual combat, RS was the best developmental experience I've had in the Army. I learned a lot about a lot of things, but mostly about myself--just how far the body can go when you put your mind to it, how you can accomplish any goal as long as you're willing to "dig in" and are prepared to weather the storm, and how tired men will only follow someone who leads by example.

I hope you all enjoy the pictures. You'll notice that I'm not stick thin. This is because of the 26 day recycle period I spent between phases in FL. During the recycle period I went from 175 to 205 then lost 10 pounds doing FL a second time, so I came out of the course weighing 195lbs (about 15 lbs lighter than when I went in).

I can't say when..but I'll be headed to Iraq very shortly. I'm excited (my wife is there already!).

Thank you so much for your support. Take care.

Sincerely,

Joe

PS: my first meal during grad' week pass: I bought a loaf of white bread, a jar of chunky peanut butter, fluffed marshmallow topping, jelly, Reeses PB cups, and a Hershey's chocolate bar...used all the above items and made as many sandwiches as I could! It was AWESOME!

Rangers Lead The Way!!

[Ranger Bill]

Congratulations for getting this done.

[McD]

Congrat's on getting your shit!

[rgrjoe175]

Congrats.