77^th Ranger Support Unit
PO Box 1282 Pontiac Michigan 48341

AFTER ACTION REPORT - STANDARD FORM

DATE: 15 October 1982
ACTION NUMBER: 82-77-16
LOCATION: March to Marble Head 29 AUG 1980 to 30 AUG 1980
SUBMITTED BY: Ranger Student Hannibal
DESCRIPTION OF ACTION:

I was asked to give my impressions of the events that occurred during the march to Marble Head and back. I have tried to include everything I could remember and have been as detailed as I can per instructions. As ordered, I did not include any names and only used my call sign above.

My first year at the Island was pretty overwhelming. I was constantly hungry, tired, and in pain. I lost 15 pounds in just two weeks. The temperature was in the 80’s in the afternoon and got down to the 30s at night and in the morning. It also rained 10 of the 15 days we were there. [overstrike] Hypothermia and heat exhaustion were possible in the same day.

It was very stressful wanting so badly to pass the course, yet knowing I could be failed at any time. The rumor that the staff would fail 50% or more of a given class to maintain the standards went around more than once. There was no need to yell or berate us. A ranger only needed to say something like “Do you want to go home, airman?” to get their point across.

During the second week, we prepared for the three-day field exercise to Marblehead. We knew we had to march out to Marblehead and back, but the staff gave us no indication of how far we would be marching. They only told us that we we would be away for three days with no resupply. We would have to carry everything we thought we needed for that time. During the divvying up of the team gear, I got stuck with a roasting pan! I have no idea what they thought we were going to use it for. I suspected that they just wanted to increase my load.

Our starvation rations and insufficient water intake up to this point ensured that we were in no condition for a march of this magnitude, but that was what we were going to do. We had only eaten two good meals in the last 9 days. Most of us were surviving on one canteen of water per day. We were a mess even before we took our first step.

One of the smart things that I did was eat the hard boiled egg I was issued as soon as they gave it to me. Other cadets tried to pack it for later. One of my buddies actually put it in his pocket! It wasn’t boiled all the way through and became an oozing “Salmonellic” mess down his uniform blouse. I wasn’t any smarter than him, just hungrier.

The team was also issued a homemade trail mix in a zip lock bag, a piece of fruit, and some other stuff that I don’t remember. I think we got peanut butter and jelly sandwiches too. Staff told us that C-Rations and LRRP rations were too expensive.

The bus took the teams and our gear part of the way, but then we had to march. At first it was fun. We sang jodies and told jokes. This was the first time in over a week we weren’t expected to be running, and we were enjoying it. As the day dragged on, it became hotter and hotter.  There was no rain that day so the heat just kept building. Most of the time the trail we were following led through open fields so we had the sun beating down on us. The march just kept going and going and going. Every hour or so, we would come to a halt for a five minute break.

It was evening when we arrived at the first bivouac site. It appeared to be some kind of corral in the middle of nowhere, and it smelled of horse manure. As we began to set up camp, I noticed no one was making shelters. Most people just pulled out their sleeping bags, crawled into them, and fell asleep. As the assistant team leader, I made sure my team was settled in and ate something, and then I ate a few handfuls of trail mix. I did not bring my sleeping bag, so I curled up under my unlined field jacket. I was very happy not to have guard duty that night. I was awakened by the cold several times that night. In the morning, I felt exhausted as I got up to start marching again.

We actually made good time and arrived at Marble Head just before noon. It had started out a beautiful morning. Sunny with lots of fluffy clouds. Around 1100 it started to get darker and the temperature began to drop quickly. We were all very familiar with what it felt like when it was about to rain on the Island by now. The cadets who brought ponchos were grabbing them. I hadn’t brought one so I just pulled my field jacket off of my pack and put it on.

As we arrived at the cliffs of Marble Head, a light misty rain started. We were ordered to climb down the cliff face and eat on the beach. DI being what it is, the “beach” was a collection of sharp rocks about the size of phone books. It looked like someone had broken up a street and dumped all the concrete here. There was no sand or dirt until you got close to the cliff face.

We all replenished our canteens from the water of False Detour [overstrike] Channel Passage, mixed it with Iodine or Halazone tablets, and made whatever we had for lunch. I ate more trail mix, and I think I had a can of fruit cocktail or pears. Some people started fires to cook their food, but I was just too tired to go looking for firewood. I would have liked nothing more than to take off my boots, but I was worried about my feet swelling up and not being able to get them back on. I had been very lucky as far as blisters go, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t screw up my feet. I didn’t know enough at the time to realize I was doing the exact wrong thing. I should have stuck them in the cold water to ease the swelling and clean them.

The staff didn’t eat lunch with us. They seemed to be discussing something, and they didn’t look happy. I must have dozed off because I was awakened by my team leader as he ordered us to gather all our gear and get back to the top of the cliff. The cadet staff had decided that it was too dangerous to rappel with all the rain. When I heard this I looked around and for the first time realized there was a hard drizzle hitting my cover. I was so tired, and so used to getting rained on, that I hadn’t even noticed it.

The staff had decided that because rappelling was no longer an option, we were going to march all the way back to camp that day. They figured that they could make up some time lost in the schedule earlier in the week. Two staff members, including my team leader, would go on ahead with stripped-down gear. Their objective was to move fast enough that they got back to camp well ahead of the column. That way they could send the bus out to meet us.

The effect on morale was horrendous. Not only were we not going to learn to rappel, which was the highlight of Ranger School, but we had been looking forward to a relaxing afternoon in the field. Our moods became as dark as the sky that was dumping gallons of water on each of us.

Once the column was organized and all the gear accounted for, we started off. Even though I was just a student and the second youngest cadet on my team, as the assistant team leader I was in command of Bravo while my team leader rushed back to camp. There was no experienced cadet team leader to correct my mistakes. We hadn’t even brought a senior with us, so I was pretty much on my own when it came to the welfare of my men. I was really glad that my team would be placed between the other two teams that still had rangers leading them.

As we trudged through what can only be described as a downpour, something interesting happened to the trail. On most parts of the Island, the soil is only a couple inches thick. Below that is dolomite rock, which is similar to [overstrike] limestone. As the rain continued to fall, we found that the thin soil became a loose mud. This resulted in our column walking on slippery rock as we slogged through this mess. The pounding our feet were taking from marching on the uneven rock just made our lives that much more miserable.

After a few hours, I began to close in on myself. My a thinking became fuzzy and I developed a kind of tunnel vision. My field jacket had become soaked and heavy, my boots were full of water, and I could feel a burning in my toes and left heel. The crotch rot that most of us had all been fighting for a week began to take its toll as well. I was feeling very sorry for myself at that point.

We halted for five minutes every hour. It got so hard to get up that I started leaning against a tree or another student during the breaks. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stand back up. On the third or fourth halt, I leaned against a tree and waited for the order to move again. Had one of my guys not fallen over from exhaustion and knocked me over, I wouldn’t have known the column had started moving again. I had fallen asleep right on my feet.

Soon the breaks were coming every half hour, and then every twenty minutes. At each break, rangers and students alike would just collapse where they were. Even the ranger staff was feeling the effects of the exhaustion, hypothermia and dehydration.

I don’t know about everyone else, but all I could think about was that bus. I looked for it around every turn in the trail. I prayed to God to give my team leader and his ranger buddy more speed. I also prayed for the strength to continue on. I am not a religious person normally, but I prayed none the less. I just asked for the strength to get through this.

When I had prayed, I was thinking of maybe the rain stopping, the bus arriving, or my finding some sudden burst of energy. What I hadn’t counted on was that my salvation would come in the form of the Alpha Team Commander.

Alpha Team was in front of us, and they had the best team leader at the school. There was a reason for that: They had all the hard cases and problem children. The team commander had done wonders with them over the last week or so, but they were coming apart at the seams now. This march had just been too much. In front of me, two Alpha cadets were dragging their sleeping bags behind them. I had envied them the night before when I had been freezing my cookies off, but now I was pleased with my decision to leave my bag at base. Their bags had come undone from their field gear and were now full of water. They must have weighed 20 pounds each.

At this point in the march, some of Alpha team was behind us. They had fallen behind and into our team and then even farther back. My team had all stuck together through no effort or ability of mine. They were just good troops.

I saw the Alpha Team Commander walk past me. He was wearing two sets of webgear, one on his front and one on his back. He was also carrying some other gear I couldn’t identify. I was impressed. There was no question of leaving anyone behind. There was no thought of quitting and waiting for the bus. He kept them going by easing their loads and taking on more than any of them had to. Whether he shamed them or inspired them, they were all still in the column somewhere. He certainly inspired me.

Looking behind my team, I saw that [overstrike] Charlie was in pretty bad shape as well. It appeared that the team leader did not have a good handle on his people. They were so spread out that they occupied the same amount of space the whole column had on the way to Marble Head. They were no longer a team. They were a bunch of individuals, each in his own little hell.

At the next stop, one of my teammates said he wasn’t sure he could go on. He had hurt his ankle a day or two before and was in a lot of pain. I was the smallest cadet in the team, so I knew I couldn’t do what the relatively huge and much older Alpha Team Commander was doing, but I knew I needed to do something. I was not going to let my team end up like Charlie. We were going to stick together.

I took a little of his stuff, and asked the rest of the team to lend a hand. When they didn’t move at all, I used what was left of my command voice and asked again. Soon we had lightened his physical load, as well as our mental one. The guys, who had been disappointed at our team leader “abandoning us” (and who weren’t crazy about having this 14 year old c/A1C in charge), seemed to pick up a little when I took charge of the situation. I think they might have perked up because they had been able to help their buddy out too. Unfortunately, I was too tired to recognize these facts then.

About an hour later, I was through. I knew I couldn’t go on. My feet hurt, my chest ached from the cold, my thighs had cramped up, my crotch and toes were on fire, the plastic internal mesh of my crappy green air force cap was rubbing my forehead raw, and I was so tired I could barely raise my head. I had always been good at keeping my eyes off the ground, but now I was constantly catching myself looking at my feet. It must have been worse for the guys who volunteered to wear the steel Army helmets that we used while rappelling.

I had completely closed in on myself. I was no longer living by the day, the hour, or even the minute. My focus had narrowed considerably. I was literally thinking “One more step, one more step, just one more…”. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t have the strength. I just kept raising one burning thigh and putting it down. Then I would raise the other and put it down. Every step became a conscious, agonizing effort.

I had seen this movie called “Tribes” that had this hippie who joined the Marines and turned his boot platoon upside down. It was a lousy movie, but it did teach me one trick. Whenever I was doing something painful or monotonous, I would think about some girl or some event that had been really pleasant. This had always worked for me during the mile run and the other hikes. I was so exhausted and miserable now that I couldn’t think of anything good or pleasant. My entire world had become my burning thighs, my battered aching feet, and the muddy water 6 inches in front of my next step.

Out of desperation, I started singing to keep my mind off the pain and depression I was feeling. I started with the school fight song. I got halfway through it when I noticed a few others on my team were singing too. Unfortunately, the song is short. I started with a longer song, and by the third verse, my entire team was singing. I think the song was “Your Son’s Coming Home In a Body Bag”. That was always a crowd pleaser.

The effect on my team was striking. Suddenly, my guys were straightening out their dress and cover. I saw one of them re-adjust his gear so that it was more comfortable. I looked back, and a couple of them were actually singing with smiles on their faces. Each of us had been pulled out of our private little hell for a little while. We were reminded that we weren’t in this alone.

As we all got into it, we started to pick up the pace. Soon we were overtaking what was left of Alpha team. Either the cadet commander or another officer came back and told us to stay in our assigned position in the line. I turned to him and said something like “Sir, let’s get this over with. Bravo wants to move.” I think he was probably too tired to tell me I was being an jackass.

Instead, he looked at my team, and then he started singing too. He moved forward and got the Alpha guys who were still there to start singing as well. The guys behind us took the hint and pretty soon the entire column was singing and everyone’s pace went up considerably.

Our burst of speed and energy didn’t last forever. Our physical and mental exhaustion was too great for that, but it did get us through the next hour. More importantly, we never came close to collapsing again.

For me personally, that hour was a crystallizing moment in my life. I had learned an incredible lesson in leadership. When things go bad, people want to be led. They want to know that there is someone in charge and that that person is doing something to make things better.

I did nothing special or heroic. All I did was start singing to keep myself awake, but that action had a profound effect on the entire column. The next day, I decided that whenever I’m not sure what I should do, I’m going to at least do something. That has to be better than doing nothing. Now I understand what Patton meant when he said: “I much prefer the wrong decision made on time to the well thought-out right solution that comes too late.”