# Day to day life in the 75th



## WillardKurtz (Jan 11, 2008)

I was wondering what it is like for some one in the 75th? That and how it differs from lets say the 82nd.


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## Boondocksaint375 (Jan 11, 2008)

Good question. I think we have a couple guys on here that have been in both units to answer your question.


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## WillardKurtz (Jan 12, 2008)

I really thought more people would be up for talking about all this.


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## 275ANGER! (Jan 12, 2008)

Been a Batt Boy from the beginning, I know nothing about the 82nd.


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## WillardKurtz (Jan 12, 2008)

Well what was it like in a Ranger battalion?


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## 275ANGER! (Jan 12, 2008)

What asshole, motherfucker, cocksucker! You think I am your friend, how about throw in Sergeant and stand at fucking Parade Rest when speaking to me, asshole! 


Just Kidding sending a PM shortly.


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## WillardKurtz (Jan 12, 2008)

Wow I almost shit myself until JK came up, lol. Oh and I suggest you post it so that anyone that would like to know could read it.


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## rangerpsych (Jan 12, 2008)

Life is better than anywhere else. Perform and be rewarded. Fuck up and be castrated.

Good equipment
Good chow
People that want to be there (for the most part)
Leaders that typically have a set
Joes that aren't pussies.

hrm, think i hit it up bout right.


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## WillardKurtz (Jan 12, 2008)

What do you mean by "Life is better than anywhere else"?


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## RetPara (Jan 12, 2008)

I was at Regt in the beginning.  There were only about a dozen NCO's and Officers that didn't have a Bn history.  In fact I was the Senior Tabless Bitch at the time.  (No one else would take the job.)  Comparing it to the 82nd was close.  Since I have to classify myself as a professional staff puke I have to say it was THE most difficult staff I EVER worked on.    I have wondered for decades now what the original marching orders for the command group were.  

A lot of the TTP's that the Bn's had developed for doing things from the way they wore their uniforms and gear to other minutia were tossed aside for the new 'Regt Standard'.  This became for lack of better term; ultra conventional in many ways.  

We had an attrition rate of 60% for SSG and above that first year (please bear in mind that most of these 60% were NCO's and Officers that came up from a Bn) .  The Sgt and below attrition was higher... a lot higher.  It really made for a really hard environment to work in.  The daily routine was pretty much the same; first formation, PT, Work Call.  We jumped, went to the range (not near enough, but then you can never go the range enough.)  

I have no doubt serving in the Battalions was very different (and probably a HELL of a lot more fun).


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## 275ANGER! (Jan 13, 2008)

Alright so I have thought this over trying to best give you a glimpse of Battalion life.  I really think that the day to day stuff is like any other Infantry Unit but life is better.  Had many people in my time come from other units and they are like little kids in a candy store :eek:


*Rangerpsych  * was right about Battalion


rangerpsych said:


> Life is better than anywhere else. Perform and be rewarded. Fuck up and be castrated.
> 
> Good equipment
> Good chow
> ...



The only gripe is that the chow has gone down hill in 2/75, fucking Eco.
Chow was great at one time.


The individuals make Ranger Regiment what it is.
Yes we have a larger expense account than other Units and that adds to the fun but the fact that you have leaders that are leaders.  We also get specialized training not offered to other units.  Some people have put it this way the Regular Army is about a 1 to 2 years behind Regiment and Regiment is about 1 year behind higher echelon units. Regiment is the Standard for the Army they are always leeching off of us.
In Regiment your day revolves around training and training.  You will become one with your weapon and become proficient with multiple weapon platforms. You will learn your job and that of everyone else.  You can spend a day shooting a Company size load of ammunition in a Platoon (we have burned through some stuff in a couple of hours).  Sometimes I thought we had a Brigades worth of ammo.  I can always tell you what time I had to report to work but could never tell you what time I was getting off.  It was no secret, we work until shit needed to get done gets done.  There are gonna be days that you will see no end in sight. This is no Fucking 9 to 5 job.  Strong work ethic.
So it is pretty much like this: PT, Training, Sleep and Repeat.

You read what I told you and hopefully you have a better understanding from that and what was said here.


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## pardus (Jan 13, 2008)

275ANGER! said:


> What asshole, motherfucker, cocksucker! You think I am your friend, how about throw in Sergeant and stand at fucking Parade Rest when speaking to me, asshole!
> 
> 
> Just Kidding sending a PM shortly.



LMAO, I  was reading  this and I was :doh: oh man I have to moderate and do all that crap now... lol


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## The91Bravo (Jan 13, 2008)

pardus762 said:


> LMAO, I  was reading  this and I was :doh: oh man I have to moderate and do all that crap now... lol



My pulse jumped a few beats till I got to the end.. lol




My opinion of the 101st.  (not 82nd, but it is still the best Airborne Division in the world. (ok, ok.. no parachutes, but real long ropes)

When I got to the 101st, I was a little disappointed.  First of all, I expected this friggin high speed low drag hot mo fo division, that I dreamed about since I was a kid.  So I get there in Feb 93.. roll in the front gate and see the division headquarters..... a two story white painted wood building that was smaller than my grandmother's house.. I think WTF???

That was the first opinion.

Then I get to my unit HHC 2/327 Inf aid Station.

more modern three story brick quad barracks building that our aid station occupied the bottom floor (most of it anyway)

nothing special...

The field time rocked.. especially since we did not have to drive three hours to get to the back 40 like we did at Ft Lewis goiing to Yakima.  The gear was mostly first line and we usually got shit that trickled down to other divisions after us...

nothing special...

So then my grandfather died, I had to travel to Maine for the funeral day before Christmas eve 2003.  Did not back nothing but a small carry bag, and wore my class A's.  Got to the connecting flight, in PA or NY somewhere... I never had to buy a drink.  Got to Maine.. kids lookin at me with my few ribbons, EFMB and AA wings... And that little patch with the Eagle on my shoulder... 

That was something special...  made me proud to be in my division.

The typical days were sick call motor pool details, etc But I truly enjoyed my time.  Spent 12 years in, wish I could have stayed longer.. but the 65' freefall and the broken foot, hip, rib and four shattered vertebrae did not assist career progression..

Did  a short time of RSE (Ranger Support Element) for 2/75 in 1990, and them are some crazy mother fuckers, I tell you what...

Archery practice in the hallway of the barracks.. and jumping off the third floor ledge into the trees... nut jobs.. all of em.. But I am OH so friggin glad that they are US troops, and fight for those things I hold dear...

That is my :2c:

its all I got..


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## Boondocksaint375 (Jan 13, 2008)

I wouldn't say that the day to day stuff is like any other infantry unit, aside from keeping up with the basic fundamentals (ie. rucking, land nav, battle drills, etc etc). I wouldn't call life in the 75th easy by any means, considering the standards you have to maintain both physically and mentally. To top it off, we were either training, deployed, or on RF1, which left very little time to fuck around. Days in garrisson were always different for the most part.

This is from my squad/team experience, other squads experiences may differ slightly:

PT would be done Monday-Friday at around 5:30. Monday was considered deathrun monday..lol (although I believe everyday we ran to get to the pool, stadium, etc etc). Tues and Thurs I believe were rucking days (squad based, and it was basically running with a heavy ass ruck forever) Aside from that, the PT was always different. We might run doughboy stadium or Cardiac hill with our P-Masks (gas masks) one day, and the other end up swimming/drown proofing/lifting weights/climbing ropes. It basically depends on how gung ho your squad leader/team leader is and what school they are prepping for hahaha. 

At like 8ish, I believe we ate breakfast at what I consider the worlds greatest chow hall. 

After you got cleaned up and all that, you met up in your squad AO. Where you might do something cool, or something stupid (admin shit). You might spend all day and night at the range (you can't leave until you shoot expert), jump, fast rope, practice CQB (+mag reloads, squad level drills, door breaching, yada yada yada), prep for a night training mission, or something else. I always felt it was a constant learning experience because we did different shit all the time. Some days you really didn't do anything but clean your weapons and sit around planning team level assaults on other squads (basically we would ball up ...or attempt to ball up another squad until the last man standing tapped out or got choked out...always fun). 

After the day was over (this is in garrison remember) most people ended up in the gym again anyways. Since PT in batt can pretty much make or break you, you always have to be at your best. If you fall out of runs or anything else physical, it could pretty much make life miserable for you. 

I guess its hard to give you an insight into batt life without you actually being there, as things change daily, people leave and new people arrive. We had a generous budget so we got to do a lot of interesting things. If you want to learn more, pass RIP and experience it for yourself.


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## WillardKurtz (Jan 13, 2008)

Wow this is really pretty informative, but it really sounds like you can't know till your there.


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## pardus (Jan 13, 2008)

Pretty bloody intense, thanks Boon.


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## Ravage (Jan 13, 2008)

Looks like a hell lot of fun


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## WillardKurtz (Jan 13, 2008)

Hmmm what about a regular infantry unit or a paratrooper unit, are they more like a 9 - 5 job or what?


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## RetPara (Jan 13, 2008)

Scale the intensity down from the Battalions down some to the 82nd.  In the Rgr Regt and the 82nd there has been a mission for a couple of generation to have the Initial Ready Company in the air in 12 hours or a Bn (read as task organized task force in the 82) in the air in 18 hours.  

So in the Division you rotated between support, training, and Ready Force cycles.  Since the Regiment don't do support they had a training and mission cycle.  With the 3rd Bn added that came to training, training, and mission cycle.

With the Division Support cycle did entail ass and trash details around post, Funeral Detail that covered NC, Southern Va, and other areas.  But also the spt cycle units would fill out deploying units as needed and load out the DRF 1, 2, and 3 Bn's.  A lot of this entailed heavy drop rigging, ammo details, and the like.  DRF Bde's could expect one Bn fly away ERDE and a Greenramp Race per cycle. 

In Germany there was a lot of PT to 5 PM days, but not in Division.  In Germany the local training areas didn't really lend it self to heavy force training.  So troops are gone a lot to Graf, Hoefehls, and other garden spots of Europe.


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## WillardKurtz (Jan 13, 2008)

Wow not many forums where people would actually leave insightful and more importantly true info.


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## Charlie (Jan 13, 2008)

It's a hard life and very true that you have to be at your PT best or you will be out. Even injured people are given only a short time to heal before they have to be replaced, it is critical that the unit be at full strength all the time.
I was a gifted runner so I never had issues but I saw many a poor fool struggle and the world of hurt would be brought down on them. I was very glad never to have done remedial PT or ruck runs or training.
I am sure other infantry units have groups of people that excel the same as Rangers, but I would bet not on the scale that the Regiment excels as a whole.
TIB was everything and being a Batt Boy made you even more special. Privates and Spec-4's have more responsibility than SSG's in other units. I mean when the task order came down and PFC Jones was assigned something it got done and done right, he didn't need to be babysat.
We had (or have) a high turnover rate for a reason, being high tempo, high pressure makes a person grow up pretty fast. I would say that after 4 years of duty a Ranger was more confident in himself than just about anyone else.
While it is a extreme test of ones self, lot of times fun, much of it sucked. I mean being cold/hot, wet, tired and carrying a load of crap on your back can only be fun for so long. Laying for hours in a ambush while bugs eat you alive but afraid of moving for fear of giving your position away starts to suck eventually and it wears you down.
I'll add I thought our chow hall was the best outside of some of the AF bases we went to.

That all being said I wouldn't have traded my time in and what I got to do for a free ride in another unit. 
Rangers are the best because they train to be the best and are instilled by heritage to be the best, they will not let a fellow Ranger down.


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## car (Jan 13, 2008)

I was a platoon sergant and a first sergeant in the 82nd. It's a hard life, but worth every damned minute.

I can remember waking up one payday Friday morning with the flu. Puking, shitting....etc.  I went to work at 0500, like always. My platoon sergeants and company commander tried to tell me I didn't need to make the run that morning.

"Are you fucking kidding me? Let my company run down the street on payday without me?"

So I ran.....and I puked about every mile. but I ran. When I run into the guys now, most of them say, "Hey SGM!  Errrrrrrrrrrrp!" Great times!


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## RetPara (Jan 14, 2008)

One thing that puts the Regt and the 82nd apart from other units is lifestyle.  Lifestyle is the only way to describe it.  Pushing yourself physically past the point where commonsense would say stop to most others and may be just a way point is the norm.  Its what would be called an extreme lifestyle.  People fall by the way side in such an environment and many people fail to understand it.


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## Paddlefoot (Jan 14, 2008)

Boondocksaint375 said:


> At like 8ish...



lol

That sounds like something you'd hear from a socialite debutante in New York society.


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## XiXo (Apr 12, 2008)

OK, so my memories of life in the 82d (and this was 01-05, before the restructure into BCT's):

Your brigade rotated through cycles, and your days were determined by what readiness standard you were on.  Mission cycle, you stayed on 2 hour recall and did a lot of ranges and squad level training close to home in Area J, as well as a monstrous amount of PT  (when people say all you do in division is run, they're not too far off).  Training cycle, you spent damn near every waking moment in the field.  But it depended on your leadership - we had a brigade commander that would start field problems on Wed-Thu, and we would finish up Tue-Wed-Thu every week, spend a day re-fitting, and go back out.  We had another commander who's philosophy was to jump in with a month's worth of shit and stay gone.  THen for anyone who was ever in division, you remember DRF 7.  This was the bitch cycle, where you supported all of post doing post cleanup, OPFOR for whoever was on training cycle, etc.  A lot of bullshit admin shit.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, our days were also in at 0530-0600, but you never knew when you were coming home.  Life was by no means easy, but I had probably the best four years of my life there, and learned things about life and myself that I will never forget.

As with any unit, the leadership can make it great or make it horrible.  We had a CO we went to NTC with once who marched us across the same ridge line of the Tiefort mountains 8 times one night - took 14 hours and 19 km to make a 3 km movement.  I was an RTO, so I heard all night "...roger this is A6, just tell the men we have 2 more clicks..."  But I've also had commanders who would walk down the halls at 1300 on Thursday and tell everyone he didn't want to see them until PT Monday morning...it all depends.

Were we as highspeed as the 75th?  No, even though we though so at times.  But we could sure whip the shit out of any leg unit that showed up.  I've heard it's gotten better over the last several years, but then again, any unit that doesn't improve with the lessons of war is a unit I don't want to be a part of.


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## Looon (Apr 12, 2008)

Who is willard Kurtz?


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## Boondocksaint375 (Apr 12, 2008)

A banned member.


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## AWP (Apr 12, 2008)

Ranger Luna said:


> Who is willard Kurtz?



Who is Keyser Soze?


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## TactiKill (May 8, 2009)

I see you mentioned water proofing as one of the potential day to day activities as a Ranger, so I was wondering how good of a swimmer do you need to be in order to serve in the 75th?

If you're only a moderate swimmer will they afford you the time and resources to get up to speed, or is it best to wait and enter once your swimming skills are very good?


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## 275ANGER! (May 8, 2009)

TactiKill said:


> I see you mentioned water proofing as one of the potential day to day activities as a Ranger



Well if your at 2/75 "water proofing" is a daily thing, damn Pacific Northwet.

All joking aside, you just need to pass the minimum in the swim test. The swim test is used to gauge survival more than anything, they want to make sure when conducting a waterborne operation you won't panic and drown. Boon was referring to pool PT which like any PT there is a suck factor and if your a weak swimmer it won't be so fun. It sucks even more if you have a CDQC qual'd Squad Leader, fucker just about drowned all of us.

On a side note I remember when prepping for a water jump they added a 25m underwater swim without breaking the surface in the CWST, I am not sure if this has been standardized.


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## Boondocksaint375 (May 8, 2009)

275ANGER! said:


> On a side note I remember when prepping for a water jump they added a 25m underwater swim without breaking the surface in the CWST, I am not sure if this has been standardized.



It really should be.  25m isn't nearly as tough as the standard 50.  

My SL had a thing for the anaerobic pool workouts and wearing dive belts in the pool (not to mention that one pond we swam across at FT Benning because it "got in the way of our run")


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## TactiKill (May 8, 2009)

Is this what you guys have to do?






I don't think my swimming is that good yet, but if that's what it takes I'll learn. Also, what's the free time like compared to the rest of the Army? Since the Rangers are always on call it seems like it would be a lot harder to go out of town to visit family for any relatively long length of time.

thx


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## Dirty Harry 375 (Jul 30, 2009)

I only skimmed through some of the comments bout Bat life. It definately varied though depending on what part of the training cycle you were in. For the administrative weeks or training deployments or range weeks it was all different.
Admin - Usually in formation at 0630 and have first formation. Then it was PT time from then untill 8 or 9 depending on what the squad wanted to do.. There could be Barracks PT (go and sleep coz everyone was still drunk). A death run to sweat out all the alcohol. Squad or team combatives or boxing in the gym. Ruck marches out to the airfield or the ever fun river run (great in mid summer).The gym and cardio room was always popular as well. Then there were the morning platoon football games, ultimate frisbee, basketball, or even racketball. Then there was always the RBA run or the run with buddy carries.. Then Chow Time.
Those days were always followed up with equipment maintenance, different accountability inspections, team level training (weapon skills, glass houses, gun team crew drills). After Lunch there was usually the squad or platoon vs platoon brawl in the locker area. (usually ended up with a few privates zip tied, covered with shaving cream, and stuck in an empty locker). 
Range - Those days were always a good pt session in the AM. A quick breakfast. Then draw all weapons, load of all vehicles, get out to the range to open it and set up. Then it was shoot your ass off with all the ammo. Or like the weeks of night shoots it would be come in to work at like 930 or 10, get all gear together, eat lunch, move out to the range. Then shoot and do squad based training untill it was dark enough for lasers and nods and shoot all night.
There were always different scheduals where you were coming and going like crazy with either training missions, shoot houses, or jump events.. Too many different situations to explain. It definately was one of those things you had to experience.


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## jtprgr375 (Jul 30, 2009)

Looon said:


> Who is willard Kurtz?




 I think he was a worldwide holdover.


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## Boondocksaint375 (Jul 31, 2009)

lol, yeah that sums it up.


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## Centermass (Jul 31, 2009)

Looon said:


> Who is willard Kurtz?



You really need to quit chasing mice and get out more......>:{


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