Hard Truths by Congressman Mike Waltz

Author:Congressman Mike Waltz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

8

DETERMINATION

I stood on the edge of a dark trail in a pitch-black night, taking a quick drink from my canteen. I had found two points already in the Ranger School land navigation course, and despite my exhaustion, I was ahead of schedule. Things were going well. And then I saw a shadowy figure approaching, emerging from the night, drawing very near. It was a fellow soldier.

“Hey, man,” he whispered.

We weren’t supposed to say a single word to each other. I thought for a second to keep walking into the woods, but after a few seconds, I whispered back, “What’s up?”

“I’m lost,” he said quietly, waving his map. “I’m screwed. Real quick, can you point out to me on the map where I am?” I sidled up to him as he turned on a faint red pin light. With a piece of pine straw, I silently pointed to the nearest road intersection.

Out of nowhere, a white flashlight clicked on and shone in our faces. A voice rang out: “What the hell is going on here, Rangers?” A hand emerged from behind the beam of light and snatched both our maps out from us like the hand of God. I don’t know how long the Ranger cadre had been standing there in the dark, but it was clearly long enough to hear us speaking when we shouldn’t have been.

For the land-navigation portion of Ranger School, aspiring Rangers had to get through some of the densest and remotest terrain in the American South. Between points A and B are dense forests, steep hills, and the dreaded “draw”—ravines so thick with walls of vines that there were times when I would take off my rucksack and heave it forward to crush the vines just enough to take a few steps. Before you even set foot on the course, Ranger School instructors ensured that you were already at a mental rock bottom, thanks to sleep deprivation. You are also at a physical rock bottom, thanks to food deprivation combined with hours on end of torturous exercises. The training cadre then loads you up with a rucksack and sets you off in the dead of night with evaluators lurking in the shadows, watching every move.

At the start, we were given one rule: no talking. The intent was simple: every man had to show what he knew and what he could do, without help.

The evaluator’s voice boomed. “You’re done!” he said. “Walk up this trail until you see the trucks, get in the back, and wait.”

I stood there blinking in shock for a few seconds at how quickly this had just happened. I walked back up the long trail and got on the truck to be transported back to barracks. I had a long time to think about what had just occurred. I was feeling sorry for myself—sorry for getting caught, sorry for being sent back. I was feeling angry at the man who was dumb enough to talk to me and equally angry at myself for

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