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) |
