"Walking Away From The Ledge” The Cut List: Vol. 11. These are the stories that didn’t make the cut to the final edit in my book.
Some of these stories will jump around, but I’ll do my best not to leave you, the reader, guessing when and where they happened. Finally! Ranger School has come to an end. Next drop, Friday, discusses Iraq circa 2003.
Day nine, getting ready for the Santa Rosa inlet crossing to the final ambush on the beach, and I get another leadership role, PSG. What?! I thought I was good. I dive into the role and support the PL as best I can. He was a Marine going through Ranger School, and he wanted to plan the mission. I let him have the planning while I checked on the patrol base. I didn’t make them dig in since we were only going to be there a couple of hours; it didn’t make sense. Strike one, I would learn later.
The LT wanted to do all the planning and didn’t want me to bother helping with it. An issue of pride, perhaps, or he wanted the practice; I don’t know, so I left it. Strike two. We completed all the planning and then made a move to the Zodiacs we would use to cross the inlet. Leadership changed again for the ambush. I had no idea what was going on with that, but now the pressure was off me and on someone else. I learned why later, you will too. Stick with me!
We all mounted our boats and started crossing Santa Rosa. I was on the boat that couldn’t get the paddling down right and was zigzagging the entire way across. We started near the front and made it across as one of the last. It was a sad sight, but we knew beyond those dunes was the trip back to base and, hopefully, within a few days after that, home. We made it across, linked up with the rest of the weapons platoon, and set up the ambush. I don’t remember seeing an enemy or anything, but the ambush went off, and I had the ammo bag, so I told the gunner not to let off the trigger so we could dump it all. That barrel was redder and hotter than I think I had ever seen a barrel get before.
Tired, excited, all that, I forgot to grab the ammo bag when we moved to clear the ambush. I have heard that after the Santa Rosa mission, there is a final eight-mile road march back to base, but we had LMTV trucks and the RIs yelling “load up!” I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many guys load trucks that quickly in my life, like they were going to drive off even if dudes were hanging out the back. I was ecstatic for the ride instead of a walk. Everyone was looking forward to hearing their grades and a chance to visit the “Gator Lounge,” where we were allowed two beers.
We got back and began downloading our gear and laying everything out for accountability while the RIs gave their final assessments to the last leadership positions. I was pulled aside and informed that I was given that last leadership position not for me but to help the guy who would be PSG for the ambush. “I’m giving you a NO-GO because you didn’t have the patrol base dig in, even though you weren’t there very long, always dig in, and you didn’t help the PL with planning.” Internal eye-roll face, I’m feeling a recycle of Florida phase coming up. “You were given the last position because it didn’t matter if you got a NO-GO, you were going to graduate anyway… whoops, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” he said with a smirk that gave away the fact he knew what he was doing.
Ten days, maybe 15 hours of sleep the whole time, and it takes me about five seconds to register what he said. I repeated “I’m going to graduate?!” He smiled, shook my hand, and said, “Congrats, Ranger.” I think I almost started to cry. The end, role credits. Oh wait, no! Some assclown, probably a LT, walks up right then and says, “do you have the ammo bag?” I rummage through my crap and can’t find it and remember I never put it back in my ruck. The RI says, “Oh, normally that would be a major minus, but I don’t want to do extra paperwork, so I’ll let them know to do a statement of charges.” Luckily, with depreciation, it was like $12.00 or so. I didn’t care anymore; I earned my Tab, and I was thrilled!
Thank you for bearing with me on the Ranger School stories. As you can see, they took up eight or nine pages of my book, and while hilarious, they didn’t serve to move the official story along. If you have 40 minutes to spare check out the Rangers in Action video here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCSVsdwaVkA
Want to know more about some of these situations? You’ll have to get the book “Walking Away From The Ledge" for more details! If this story hit home—or reminded you of your own service—drop a comment below or share it with someone who might need it.
https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/
https://books.by/w-brand-publishing/walking-away-from-the-ledge
