that my mother liked him. Keith remembers me as a little kid wearing thick glasses.
And now here I was, learning that, indeed, military life was different from civilian life, and there was something like a secret rule book being passed around. Not only was there a defined hierarchy, there was an unwritten one, too.
Keith was in the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment, a part of special operations, which includes, among others, the Green Berets and Navy SEALs. Army Rangers are a light and quick force, an all-male commando unit that jumps out of airplanes. Theyâre the ones who went up Point du Hoc on D-Day; liberated Grenada; they were the subject of the book
Black Hawk Down.
Their unit compound is walled in, topped with barbed wire, and signage that says
Use of Lethal Force Authorized.
Which means theyâre allowed to shoot if you look suspicious.
The Rangers themselves had, it was rumored, the same general psychological profiles as serial killers. Hair-trigger tempers were encouraged. These men tended to settle personal disputes by hand, fighting in a sawdust fight pit, where the Gracie brothers had taught submission holds. When another soldier called a painting Iâd made crappy, my husband told him they could settle the question in the âpit.â The other Ranger refused.
Disputes between Rangers and non-Rangers, however, aroused the wrath of the entire Ranger Battalion, much like an older brother rising up to protect his little brother. Once, a Ranger dating a female soldier from another unit had gotten beat up by a group of men when he went to pick her up; his unit returned to the barracks in the middle of the night, locked the exits, and pummeled the entire group. No one reported it.
The main goal for a newbie like my husband was to go to Ranger school, a three-month-long course at Fort Benning, Georgia. Once you went through this, then you didnât have to be punished by doing things like clipping the grass with nail scissors. You would be promoted. Until then, you were treated sort of like a newbie at an especially unruly fraternityâexcept for the whole deadly weapons part.
Shortly after the wife incident, the entire battalion went away for a month to train. While everyoneâs spouses were gone, I tried to figure out where I fit in with the wives. Some rules were easy to comprehend. There are, of course, ranks in the military. Officers hold four-year college degrees and get saluted. Everyone else is enlisted. My husband, despite his college degree, had enlisted as a specialist, which meant that his pay almost qualified for food stamps, except that he got extra called âjump payâ for his jumping out of airplanes, pushing us just over the salary limit.
During our first year, Keith was away three-quarters of the timeâmy husband went to Panama, Germany, the East Coast, California, Nevada, and various other undisclosed locations for training. Though this was pre-9/11, when no one flew American flags and everyone believed we were safe, the Rangers were always ready to go at a momentâs notice. Sometimes my husband could not be more than an hour away from returning to base, in case he had to be deployed.
His job was a forward observer, someone who sneaks ahead and radios airplanes to tell them where to drop bombs. He came in first on the forward-observer tests, and was optimistic about his chances to go to Ranger school.
Meanwhile, Iâd just graduated from a liberal arts college in Claremont, an ivory tower of political correctness. As I was trying to navigate this new Darwinian world, I got a temporary job at a place that produced two weekly newspapers, one a city paper for Tacoma and one for the army. I did bulk mailings and entered classified ads. I intercepted a fax asking for reporters to fly on a C-141B; timidly, I asked the editor if I could go, and he said yes. I took Dramamine and was the only reporter who didnât throw up. Before long, I was
And now here I was, learning that, indeed, military life was different from civilian life, and there was something like a secret rule book being passed around. Not only was there a defined hierarchy, there was an unwritten one, too.
Keith was in the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment, a part of special operations, which includes, among others, the Green Berets and Navy SEALs. Army Rangers are a light and quick force, an all-male commando unit that jumps out of airplanes. Theyâre the ones who went up Point du Hoc on D-Day; liberated Grenada; they were the subject of the book
Black Hawk Down.
Their unit compound is walled in, topped with barbed wire, and signage that says
Use of Lethal Force Authorized.
Which means theyâre allowed to shoot if you look suspicious.
The Rangers themselves had, it was rumored, the same general psychological profiles as serial killers. Hair-trigger tempers were encouraged. These men tended to settle personal disputes by hand, fighting in a sawdust fight pit, where the Gracie brothers had taught submission holds. When another soldier called a painting Iâd made crappy, my husband told him they could settle the question in the âpit.â The other Ranger refused.
Disputes between Rangers and non-Rangers, however, aroused the wrath of the entire Ranger Battalion, much like an older brother rising up to protect his little brother. Once, a Ranger dating a female soldier from another unit had gotten beat up by a group of men when he went to pick her up; his unit returned to the barracks in the middle of the night, locked the exits, and pummeled the entire group. No one reported it.
The main goal for a newbie like my husband was to go to Ranger school, a three-month-long course at Fort Benning, Georgia. Once you went through this, then you didnât have to be punished by doing things like clipping the grass with nail scissors. You would be promoted. Until then, you were treated sort of like a newbie at an especially unruly fraternityâexcept for the whole deadly weapons part.
Shortly after the wife incident, the entire battalion went away for a month to train. While everyoneâs spouses were gone, I tried to figure out where I fit in with the wives. Some rules were easy to comprehend. There are, of course, ranks in the military. Officers hold four-year college degrees and get saluted. Everyone else is enlisted. My husband, despite his college degree, had enlisted as a specialist, which meant that his pay almost qualified for food stamps, except that he got extra called âjump payâ for his jumping out of airplanes, pushing us just over the salary limit.
During our first year, Keith was away three-quarters of the timeâmy husband went to Panama, Germany, the East Coast, California, Nevada, and various other undisclosed locations for training. Though this was pre-9/11, when no one flew American flags and everyone believed we were safe, the Rangers were always ready to go at a momentâs notice. Sometimes my husband could not be more than an hour away from returning to base, in case he had to be deployed.
His job was a forward observer, someone who sneaks ahead and radios airplanes to tell them where to drop bombs. He came in first on the forward-observer tests, and was optimistic about his chances to go to Ranger school.
Meanwhile, Iâd just graduated from a liberal arts college in Claremont, an ivory tower of political correctness. As I was trying to navigate this new Darwinian world, I got a temporary job at a place that produced two weekly newspapers, one a city paper for Tacoma and one for the army. I did bulk mailings and entered classified ads. I intercepted a fax asking for reporters to fly on a C-141B; timidly, I asked the editor if I could go, and he said yes. I took Dramamine and was the only reporter who didnât throw up. Before long, I was
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