Pontiac Cadet Squadron 20001
PO Box 1282 Pontiac Michigan 48341

26 FEB 82

Dear Sir,

I was very surprised to hear that you are discouraging your cadets from attending Drummond Island. While I understand that there have been stories circulating around about abuse and extreme conditions, I can state for a fact that no cadet has ever been abused up there, and I would put our safety record up against any activity in the nation. I should point out that those stories are spread by people who have never attended Drummond Island.

Unlike many cadet activities, push-ups and other forms of physical punishment are not a part of the Drummond Island program. In fact, the only punishment even threatened is dismissal from the school. While there, Cadets are so motivated that expulsion is the only threat necessary. Drummond Island rangers believe in positive leadership from the front, not kicking people from the rear.

Everything on Drummond Island is designed to foster teamwork, esprit de corps, and personal responsibility. While there is morning PT, and we do have many physically demanding tasks throughout the three weeks, the bulk of the training is designed to mentally and emotionally challenge the cadets. We have worked hard to incorporate even the simplest tasks into the overall effort of training rangers. We believe by approaching the same ideas in many different ways and settings, we are much more effective in our effort.

A good example of this concept is the way we approach cooking. Unlike most field activities, seldom does a cadet on Drummond Island prepare an individual meal and eat it. Meals take about three hours out of the day between cooking and eating time. Since teamwork is central to the ranger creed, we don’t want our cadets to have that much time in their day without teamwork being center stage. Because of this, we run a full mess hall operation when we are on base.

Each team is assigned mess duty on a rotating schedule. In the past, when there were three teams, each team would prepare one meal a day. If you had breakfast on day 1, then you had lunch on day 2 and dinner on day 3. Now that the school has grown, each team will have mess duty about every other day or so.

This rotating duty makes scheduling other activities a bit harder since a third of the school is busy before and after each meal, but mess duty serves a very important role, and it is an integral part of the 77th’s training program.

Most of our students have never cooked more than a can of beans, but on Drummond Island, they have to prepare meals for the entire school. There is a lot of pressure to make a good meal since everyone else has to eat it. Nobody wants to be the team that served the bad meal of the day.

The team leaders never actually cook. They serve as supervisors in that they make task assignments, but they do not get directly involved with the actual preparation of the meal. This forces the students to rely on each other to get the food out. It also allows the officers to watch for the natural leaders who crop up to take control.

Each grunt has some kind of experience that is relevant to the task at hand. They have to learn to sound off when they know something, and they need to learn to draw out information from the shy grunts that are scared to speak up. This lesson is a very valuable one that can be applied to any task, from line searches to crash scene procedures to base communications.

My first year on the Island, I was the “Oatmeal King”. Although I was one of the young ones, I had been making oatmeal for breakfast every day before school since I was six. I knew, for instance, that you didn’t put the oatmeal in until you had the water really hot. Otherwise you can burn the oatmeal. I was also the only one on my team who knew that raisins were good in oatmeal and that we should serve it with brown sugar. As a result, Bravo made some of the best breakfasts up there.

Other cadets had experience making macaroni and cheese or the other foods we were ordered to prepare. Sometimes, none of us had any experience cooking a particular entrée, and we just had to improvise. One thing is clear, the food improved throughout the two weeks. Of course, we were also getting hungrier over the two weeks, so our opinions may have been a bit biased by our growling stomachs!

Now there is one rumor that I need to dispel right now. Many people have heard that we serve dog food to the cadets to demean them. This stems from a little joke played in 1980, but the true story is much more innocent and the actual events taught a valuable lesson, even if we did stop doing it after that first time.

Before the school in 1980, members of the staff painstakingly replaced tuna can labels with cat food labels. They thought that was just hilarious. I remember, as a student, opening cans and some ranger stating that “Purr cat food is high quality and practically the same thing as what you get in a tuna can. It really helped us with the budget since we eat so much tuna up here.” Later, they threw the cans into the campfire so that even more cadets could believe we had eaten cat food.

Why do that? It wasn’t hazing. I can honestly say that no member of the 77th ever hazed me, nor have I witnessed anyone else hazing ranger students. Even the cat food farce had a very real purpose other than just good clean fun.

Drummond Island is designed to break down the mental barriers that cadets build up for ourselves. The staff believe that the thing that holds cadets back (and everyone else for that matter) is the false limitations they place on themselves. Cadets fail because they don’t try. We are determined that rangers ALWAYS try.

The cat food, the rappelling, the long marches, preparing entire meals for 40 people, and all the rest are designed to get cadets to do things they never thought they were capable of, and to do them together. Doing those things enables them to see that they are capable of so much more than they had believed before.

This makes them risk takers and leaders who display initiative after they leave the Island. The graduates from the Drummond Island Ranger program are not afraid to make a decision or keep a commitment. We are people who believe there is always a way to accomplish any mission, and we aren’t afraid to try, especially if we have at least one other ranger backing us up.

You know many of the graduates from Drummond Island. I am sure you have seen how responsible, mature, respectful, and motivated we are. When we arrived on the Island, we were all scared little kids or irresponsible teenagers, much like some of your cadets. We came back much wiser and better people.

As you know, competition to attend Drummond Island is very fierce. The selection process is quite rigorous, but I believe several of your cadets are experienced and motivated enough to be selected. I also believe they have what it takes to graduate.

Sir, please reconsider your recommendations to your cadets. They value your opinion, and I really hate to see them miss out on this unique opportunity. If you would like to discuss the school in person, I would be happy to make arrangements to attend your unit meeting in the next few weeks. You can contact me at <number deleted>.

Respectfully,

<Name Deleted>
c/TSGT (CAP)