New York Minute

Monday, 24 October 1966

AUXILIARY FIELD SEVEN,

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE RESERVATION, FLORIDA

"Previous class said he's crazy," Ted Marcelle whispers to Kane as they ride in the open back of a deuce and a half truck through the flat Florida panhandle wasteland. Endless scrub, palmettos, stinking water, gators, mud and, of course, snakes, await.

According to the scuttlebutt from the last Ranger class to pass through, there is worse in human form.

Ted looks like hell. The left side of his face is blistered and swollen from poison ivy brushed against in the mountains of Georgia. It's covered in white Calamine lotion, but the medicine hasn't been helping.

"Doolittle trained his crews for the Tokyo mission here." Kane points at the cracking and weed infested long stretch of concrete: Auxiliary Field Seven.

Ted doesn't care about history. He's looking ahead. Literally. "You don't think he killed them?" Ted asks, indicating the bodies.

Fires flicker in barrels. An old truck burns. Soldiers wearing American uniforms are strewn about. The trucks carrying Ted, Kane and the rest of their Ranger Class roll through the ambush. A man wearing black pajamas stands in the far treeline, an AK-47 in his hands. As quickly as he's seen, he disappears into the scrub.

The Ranger students have all lost weight over the past six weeks of training at Fort Benning and in the mountains around Dahlonega, Georgia. They're battered, bruised, exhausted and despite a brief 24 hours respite before this phase, starving. Six weeks of one c-ration a day takes everyone down a step on the evolutionary scale. Many are regretting the steaks they'd gorged on during that short break, as it reignited the hunger. They'd reached the point by the end of the mountain phase where hunger is such a constant it's the norm. A partly deranged Ranger student trying to put imaginary coins into a tree believing it's a vending machine is viewed with little notice.

The same with exhaustion. They're surviving at the first, base level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: lacking food, water, warmth, rest, and shelter. Ranger School is breaking them down to see how they act and react under stress. War is chaos, war is confusion, war is exhaustion, war is man at his most primitive. Ranger School is the Army's attempt to get as close to that as possible without killing them, although students occasionally do die in the swamps, usually from hypothermia.

Kane had not been able to see his newly born son during the abbreviated break before this phase, because Taryn had gone to her parents in New York, rather than sit alone with Joseph in a squalid apartment in Columbus, Georgia for two months amongst all the rednecks. He'd talked briefly with her on the phone. Listened to Lil' Joe cry in the background. Felt the distance. The absence.

With a squeal of brakes, the truck abruptly stops. The Ranger students tumble in the cargo bay. It's deliberate, as the other trucks halt the same way.

"Get out!" A Ranger Instructor, RI, screams. "Get out!"

The students don't wait for the cargo strap in the back to be unhooked or the gate dropped. They've been in this situation before. They pour over the sides of the trucks, falling to the ground with their gear.

Kane hits hard, his rucksack twisting his back, his rifle almost impaling him. He scrambles to his feet. Ted is upright, weapon at the ready.

"Fall in!" the RI orders.

The Ranger Students assemble. Their numbers are less than the 212 who started six weeks ago. Injury has taken the unlucky, although most will be recycled, once they heal, and go through it again. Some have quit, an unthinkable and career-ending decision for an Infantry officer. Kane and Ted had watched a couple of classmates they'd thought competent simply give up.