Fort Benning Blues

Chapter 23: Ranger Week

Twenty~Thrce Ranger Week Only we can preventforests. -Ranch Hands, Agent Orange Operation Motto After turning blue, everything was relaxed, and we took advantage of the new freedom. We could walk through the company area, strutting with our new white scarves just as we had seen the other senior candidates do all along. We could walk (0 the companies still in the basic phase and try [0 terrifY the candidates there. Our last few weeks in the classroom were fairly standard., mainly review of material all leading to the last major event, the culminating OCS assignment called Ranger Week, which was a week in the field simulating actual conditions. That meant a week sleeping outside and eating C-rations, long marches through the Georgia countryside [0 test map-reading skills, night patrols, chopper rides to LZs marked with smoke grenades, calling in air and morfar support, all with "aggressors" made up of enlisted men assigned to Fort Benning. It wasn't really like the reallhing, because we were all playac{~ ing and knew it, but no one wanted to screw up and make a fool of himself. We were Out in the field for seven nights and eight days and each assignment lasted two days before a roeation. I started out as a squad leader, was in charge of the platoon for twO days, then had two days as a simple grunt, and spent the last twO days as a squad leader. It was a fairly simple schedule, no company-wide tasks. Budwell and I were to be shar~ ing a tent for Ranger Week We trucked out to the southeastern corner of the post to start our first day's activities, a six-mile hike through the boonies. A six~mile hike on a road was a fairly easy task, but six miles through pine forests and heavy understory, up and down riparian gullies, was a job, and it was going to take all day. We were also on full alert, marching as a company in single file with a man on point and another on drag and everyone on the lookout for the aggressors. We were also supposed to be aware of tripwires and camouflaged pits layered with simulated punji sticks. We had been led to believe that all of this would be real-world, and maybe it was, because we didn't find anything that first day. But we moved at a snail's pace with whoever was on point checking every inch carefully before moving. By noon I think we had only gotten about a mile, and we still had five more miles to go to make base camp. At lunch we had (Q set our perimeter guards, and Budwell, Garrett, and I ended up on the west side of the company in a heavily wooded area. We selected a spot near a large loblolly pine and sat with our backs to the company , looking out through the trunks of the pines toward the Chattahoochee. The rusr-colored pine needles made a natural table doth for our C-rations. I had a small container of Sterno that I used to warm up a can of beefstnv. For the first rime I could appreciate the Chattahoochee Valley. The pine forest was varied with longleaf, loblolly, and slash covering the landscape . The dogwoods, redbuds, and trour lilies were beginning [0 bloom in rhis early spring. Budwell seemed distracted as we sat, which was strange for him, because he usually was one of the most easygoing men I'd ever met. "What's up, Hugh? You thinking about the Easter egg hunt you missed?" Budwell sat quietly for a moment before responding. "I'd almost forgotten that it was Easter, but it's an appropriate time for what I'm thinking about-