“I woke up in a cold sweat. I had a nightmare that I was still in Ranger School. Thank God I was in Vietnam.” Col. Robert Tex Turner
You’re going to think I’m crazy but, at least for this humble mediocre infantryman, Ranger School was harder than Iraq.
No, really, it was.
I know, it sounds incredible. After all, Ranger School, no matter how storied, isn’t real. We shoot blanks, the “bad guys” are fellow soldiers, and if the mission fails, there are no real-world consequences (other than recycling). Ranger School is just training, hard training, no doubt, with a few dozen actual training deaths in the seventy-plus years of the course, but still, it isn’t real, it isn’t combat. 99.9% of all students, whether they complete the course or not, will survive to fight another day.
In contrast, in Iraq, we risked actual death and destruction, all the time. Whether it was a roadside bomb, an IRAM rocket attack, enemy sniper, errant mortar round, vehicular accident, negligently shot in the back by a pog . . . the bullets were real, the blood was real, the consequences of our actions, decisions made under stress, were real. 40 days in Mokesa, that was real. Five IEDs in a month on that b***h, Route Vanessa, that was too real. Those terrible two weeks after the IRAM attack, awful. Any given night when KBS was on fire, when everybody was fighting everybody, when the mosques were blowing up and the town was literally in flames, it was a miracle none of us were killed. Hell, just surviving two Summers in Iraq, the “black days,” when the asphalt melted under the soles of our boots, that was rough, hotter than hell, no fun at all.
But it still wasn’t as rough as Ranger School.
It might have been the sleep deprivation and the self-doubt, the constant pain and injury, or the hunger and hallucinations, whatever the precise recipe, in that dark and horrible place, one’s existence felt more precarious than it did in Iraq, one’s fate forever poised on a knife’s edge of success and failure almost worse than death. Behind every rock and tree was an OpFor, or even worse, a Ranger Instructor, looking for any excuse to Recycle our sorry asses, to keep us in the miserable purgatory of Ranger School. Other than getting severely wounded or killed, going crazy or being a straight criminal, there were few ways to get “kicked out” of Iraq. In Ranger School, on the other hand, there was a hundred different ways to fail.
No lie, I was more afraid of incurring the wrathful anger of a crusty Mountain Ranger Instructor than I ever was catching a bullet in Iraq. I felt invincible in Iraq, strong, secure; whereas in Ranger School, I was vulnerable, weak, exhausted and isolated. I was hungry at times in Diyala and Baghdad, but never hungry enough to actually want to eat an MRE. In Ranger School, I obsessed about them, dreamed about them, thought about food all night and day. I was hot as hell in Iraq, which sucks, but as a winter ranger, I was often bitterly cold, wet, reduced to a whimpering child, clasping pitifully onto my comrades for scraps of warmth. Throughout the course, I was no super soldier, far from it. I was a dirty, tattered, wounded, half-crazed homeless person living in the bush, eating scraps out of the trash like a raccoon, and on the lookout for any angle to ease my journey through the next day, even hour.
So, for this mediocre infantryman anyways, Ranger School was harder than Iraq. It was because I was hungry, sleep deprived, injured, exposed to the elements, at times ostracized, always clueless but more than anything else it was because . . .
I did not have my brothers.
In Ranger School, I did not have my teammates, my leaders, my people, next to me, in the suck, to make it bearable, to make it fun. At that course, I was completely and utterly alone; in Iraq, I was never without at least one person by my side, who I trusted with my life, to drive down any street, raid any house, jump off any f**king bridge if I had to, because I would not, could not ever let a brother down. With peers like Bob, Durk, Balanon, Chambone, and Hunter; soldiers like Low, Johnson, Matthews, and Myers; leaders like Chewie, Defaria, Caton and Bosveld, and one hundred more I could potentially list, there was nothing I couldn’t do, not with them next to me, leading me, showing me the way.
Truly, we did impossible things over there, but only because we did it together.
In Ranger School, no one really cared if I completed the next task, no one looked out for me, no one had my back; but you guys did. In Iraq, I had one hundred eyes on me at all times: teammates, team leaders, squad leaders, platoon sergeants, platoon leaders; true and fire-tested men with a thousand collective talents, people who cared for my welfare, my ability to accomplish the mission, who wanted to see me return back home again, by their side.
I don’t have nightmares about Iraq. I do have nightmares, lots of them, about Ranger School. After three months of Ranger School, I was itching to go to Iraq, part II. Later, after spending two years there, seeing the madness of KBS transform into the calm of 2009, I felt a sense of closure. I did what I had to do as an infantryman in Iraq, and I did it well as I could, with few regrets. I know I will never have to go back there, nor do I feel the need to. It was a complicated, crazy, messed up place, but after years of reflection, I know I did more good than harm over there, we did more good than harm there, and that for every story of shame, there is a greater story of triumph. (Warning: experiences may differ.)
Ranger School, on the other hand, has left me with continuing obligations, a mission that still consumes me, perhaps fueling the continuing nightmares. Every day, without fail, I find myself asking: Do I still have what it takes to earn the Tab? Am I living up to the Ranger Creed to which I am sworn? Am I fulfilling my ranger obligations?
Compared to Ranger School everything else in life has been easy: being a team leader and vehicle commander in Iraq, successfully exiting the military, undergrad, law school, passing the bar, marriage, raising children, skateboarding the length of California, two decades of jiu jitsu, all of it. These things are supposed to be hard, they were hard . . .
But not half as hard as Ranger School.
That’s why I felt so compelled to share my Ranger School journey and how the experiences and lessons learned can strengthen, improve, and give perspective to the lives of the reader. If you haven’t done so already, check out my complete Ranger School saga at https://a.co/d/7rAQU0u
Anyways, thank you, Attack Company brothers, for getting me through the hardest of times, and making it seem easy, even fun. I miss the jokes, the smokes, the adrenaline, the late-night guard philosophy, and the comradery in the suck. I owe so much to all of you, debts that can never be repaid. In the absence of orders, ATTACK!