Day to day life in the 75th

  • Thread starter Thread starter WillardKurtz
  • Start date Start date
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.
 
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!
 
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.
 
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.
 
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?
 
TactiKill said:
I see you mentioned water proofing as one of the potential day to day activities as a Ranger
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
Click to expand...

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") :D
 
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
 
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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