Foot marching became a hallmark of the Ranger battalions and would be a vehicle I used repeatedly during my career to develop discipline, physical endurance, and mental toughness in soldiers I led. It was more than just walking. Because foot marches were executed as tactical movements, we maintained a five-meter interval between Rangers and forbade talking. The pace was fifteen to eighteen minutes per mile—just short of a trot but faster than an amble—stopping for ten minutes each hour to briefly rest or change socks.
That left a man to his thoughts for hour after hour, particularly at night. In long marches, little pains grew as the hours passed and the pack, never less than fifty pounds, began to feel far heavier after the first twenty miles. To avoid blisters I’d paint my feet with tincture of benzoin before rolling my socks on. The effect was to temporarily “glue” my socks to my feet. It prevented blisters but left me for three years with oddly yellow ankles. In summer shorts, I was a sight.
The Rangers were hard men and took pride in it. Things were done to an exacting standard and anything less was derided. Planning was detailed to the point of having fun poked at us by other units, but it created a culture of demanding precision that over time proved infectious across the wider special operations community. To this day senior leaders seeking competent, meticulous planners will specifically ask for a Ranger.
Discipline went to extremes. It was a popular idea that before being captured by the enemy with secret documents, a spy or soldier must destroy them, sometimes by eating them. In 1988 during a training exercise, one of our Rangers was captured while carrying a radio frequency and call sign book. When his captors briefly turned their backs on him, he attempted to eat it, although in this case it was the size of a small paperback book. His captors detected his action but didn’t try stopping him. They sat back and laughed until he did too. At least he tried; Rangers always did.
In the spring of 1989 I witnessed an extraordinary demonstration of leadership in which not a single word was spoken. That March, the 3rd Rangers conducted a battalion change of command on Fort Benning’s large parade field. The afternoon on which we assembled was cold and rainy. Rather than move the ceremony indoors, someone decided we would continue as planned—leaving the entire battalion, about five hundred Rangers, standing in formation in the drizzle waiting for the ceremony to start. The bleachers and individual chairs arranged for the spectators were empty as people waited inside nearby Building 4, the schoolhouse of the infantry since 1964, where my father and brother had trained for Vietnam.
Then, about twenty minutes before we were meant to start the ceremony, a single uniformed individual emerged from the building, walked across the soggy grass, and sat in one of the wet chairs facing the Rangers. It was a special operations commander, Major General Gary Luck. As the rain fell steadily, he sat there, he looking at us, every Ranger eye on him. He didn’t wave or call out. He didn’t order us into rigid attention. He simply sat still, under the same rain that fell on us.
At one point, someone sent a young soldier running from the center with an umbrella that he tried to hold over Luck. But with a reassuring pat on the shoulder, the general sent the soldier away. He sat at least a hundred yards from the formation, but I never saw a commander closer to soldiers than he was at that moment.
I spent my final year in the 3rd Rangers as the battalion operations officer, a job I had held before in Korea and at Fort Stewart. Much of the final year was focused on potential operations into Panama against dictator Manuel Noriega. We conducted several detailed rehearsals, and in June 1989, right before I was due to depart, tensions led us to deploy and posture personnel in the United States and Panama in anticipation of imminent operations. Like others in the battalion, I thought I might finally experience combat. I didn’t. The decision was made not to act at that time, and my tour with the Rangers ended a week later.
I spent four years in 3rd Rangers, culminating a series of troop assignments in the 82nd Airborne, Special Forces, Korea, the 24th Mech, and now the Rangers. These years had kept me interested and later proved invaluable. I’d also seen the Army climb out of the hole it had found itself in after Vietnam, restoring its professionalism and pride. And I was lucky enough to have been a part of a dramatic evolution in both the mechanized infantry and special operations force as each grew and adapted to emerging missions and technology.