Two women are about to make history by becoming the first female soldiers to graduate from the Army’s exhausting Ranger School.
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The two female soldiers will be among 96 who will graduate Friday from the program at Fort Benning, Georgia.
The Army calls this a move to “assess female soldier performance” in the Ranger course as part of an ongoing effort dubbed “Soldier 2020”, which was designed to allow the Army’s most qualified solders to serve in any position where they are capable, regardless of their gender.
At a town hall meeting at Winthrop University in South Carolina, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was unequivocal in his support of women serving in combat roles.
One of the commanders of the Ranger course compared the graduation of the first women to breaking the four-minute mile. They will graduate during Friday’s ceremony at Ft. But since combat experience is crucial to career advancement, women often are blocked from leadership roles if they stay in the military.
Opening the course to women is part of an assessment that all services have been ordered to undertake to determine how best to open the infantry, special forces and other ground combat jobs by next year. In addition, it is a hard prerequisite for a solder to lead troops in the 75th Ranger Regiment of the Army, which is the premier light infantry unit.
The accomplishment marks a major breakthrough for women in the armed services at a time when each of the military branches is required to examine how to integrate women into jobs like infantryman in which they have never been allowed to serve.
Around a third of those attending the course have to repeat at least one of the three phases of training – woodland, mountainous terrain and swamp – which is known as being “recycled”.
Scott Brooks Two female soldiers are the first women to graduate from the rigorous Army Ranger School. Some argued that those ships, which are due to be phased out in coming years, would need millions of dollars in construction to add facilities for women and it wasn’t worth the expense.
“The feedback I’ve gotten with these women is how incredibly prepared they are”, said retiring Army chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno. There will be more women in another Ranger class that begins in November.
Those eight female soldiers failed the first patrol phase at Camp Darby on Fort Benning and were offered an opportunity to repeat the phase.
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For now, two women have proven that they have what it takes to enter the Ranger ranks.
