"Walking Away From The Ledge” The Cut List: Vol. 2. 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. First up are some RIP (Ranger Indoctrination Program) holdover happenings, followed by meeting the 15 other Muldoons I would go to my first unit with, F. Co., 51st IN (LRSC), at Fort Bragg, NC, and finally some Expert Infantryman Badge (EIB) cringey stories.
While in RIP (Ranger Indoctrination Program) holdover, we had two projects come up, if you could call them that. The first one we worked on was finding an M4. Some poor, hapless Lieutenant (LT) had his M4 Rifle fall out of his weapons carrying case while on an Airborne operation. Since we had a great deal of Soldiers with time on their hands, we did “hands across Georgia” in a group effort to find the missing weapon. I think we were walking out there every day for the better part of three weeks until they finally gave up the search. We all assumed the LT was removed from his position in Ranger Battalion and sent to a regular line Infantry unit—poor bastard.
Everyone I had met in the first six months after basic training and airborne school, on the way to my first unit, was from all around the states with varying degrees of life experience. I think only one guy had a college degree, some, like me, had college experience or credits, but it wasn’t the life path they were interested in, and others were 18 years old, just out of high school. The only reason I even mention this is that you don’t have to force diversity. If you step out of your comfort zone and into the world at large, you will find diversity without even looking. All these guys had different nationalities, backgrounds, and experiences that made each one unique and worth getting to know, even if a few of them turned out to be gigantic douchebags! Such is the Army, such is life.
This included our first experience with the Central Issuing Facility, or CIF—the most disliked institution among all military bases. You see, they issue you gear that is either new or supposed to be in like-new condition. They don’t care about the condition; they give it to you if you have something close enough to operable, as what you are supposed to have. However, when you have to return something to them, they want it back in brand-new condition, even if they gave you the most jacked-up pile of crap to begin with! Either way, I have only had one gripe with CIF when I left Fort Bragg.
The day-to-day in LRSC was what could be called hazing at its finest. I usually couldn’t walk in the door without having to do push-ups or flutter kicks. We would have to recite the Ranger Creed at the top of our lungs, and God help us if anyone messed up one line or even one word. Now that I think back on it, I usually looked forward to the next meal since that would afford me a break from the onslaught of verbal abuse. I use the term lightly because I didn’t think or feel that it was abuse; it was just the way infantrymen communicated to one another.
Shitbag, fucking idiot, useless as... insert metaphor here, etc. The truly gifted had derogatory slang that would make you feel like crap and laugh at the same time. Rhetorical questions like “are you as fucked up as you want to be?” Yes, would be admitting that you knew you were fucked up but that you didn’t want to be anymore fucked up. No would mean that you were not at your “fucked up” peak and that you desired to be more fucked up. I memorized the Ranger Creed quickly so that it would never be my fault if I or we had to do one extra push-up for my mistake. At the time I wished the other Fuckin New Guys (FNGs) did the same. There’s not much worse than being punished for another individual’s mistakes.
During EIB (Expert Infantryman Badge) training, we had to conduct radio calls using numbers and the phonetic alphabet to transmit a coded message: a grid coordinate or some crap like that. One of the letters in my transmission was “Z,” which in the military is ZULU. For whatever reason, I kept saying “ZEBRA,” and the instructor would say, “Please repeat transmission,” which meant I had made a mistake. Having time, I verified the correct letters and repeated it all with ZEBRA. “Transmit again.” I’m starting to get pissed as I’m not picking up what I’m doing wrong and the instructor at the table next to us says, very sarcastically “are there any circus animals in the woods of North Carolina?” I laugh to myself at my stupidity, finish saying it correctly with ZULU, we all have a good chuckle, and the instructor sends me on my way.
Of the 120 people who started the 12-mile road march for EIB, fewer than 60 completed it! Sometime after the turnaround point, I kept seeing green, yellow, and red chemlights on the side of the road. I had no idea what they meant. Come to find out later, they were using those to mark all the people who fell out. Green meant they were ok, but couldn’t go on any longer. Yellow was for those who were rough but needed an IV. Red meant pick this guy up and get him to the hospital immediately. One of my buddies fell out right before the finish line. He said later that he saw the finish line, didn’t know how much time he had left, and started running as hard as he could. The next thing he remembers is waking up in WOMACK (Fort Bragg’s military hospital) with four IVs in him! He was so dehydrated that he blacked out and woke up in the hospital like that. He recovered fine, albeit his ego was a little shattered.
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.
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