Breaking The Barriers: Two Women Graduate From Army Ranger School

Two women will make history by becoming the first female soldiers having graduated from the Army’s exhausting Ranger School.

Yet under existing military rules, no women – even the two about to graduate from Ranger School – can serve as infantry or tank officers, or to try out for the Ranger regiment, which has its own selection process.

The class began in April with 19 women and 381 men. Graduates also had to perform a 12-mile foot march in three hours, complete three parachute jumps and four air assaults on helicopters as well as endure 27 days of mock combat patrols.

This was the first year the Army opened the course to women on a trial basis.

The progress of the two women has been closely monitored by the military community, where women in combat are still a divisive issue.

Ranger School has a 40 percent graduation rate. But senior Army officials have insisted that is not the case, and opened Ranger School to media for a few days during each phase to underscore the point and allow Ranger instructors and others involved in their evaluation to speak.

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”.

The women said they don’t want special treatment. “An expert in short-notice combat deployments, the Ranger Regiment is a rapidly deployable strike force and is the largest special operations combat element in the U.S. Army”.

Many military men continue to believe that women lack the strength to fight and survive in the harshest conditions.

But Army officers say it is not uncommon for male students to have to redo as many portions of the course as the women have.

But 1st Lt. Shaye Haver of Copperas Cove, Texas, and Capt. Kristen Griest of Orange, Connecticut, not only completed the rigorous, two-month course, they had to restart portions of it after failing to pass two prior attempts.

“Having a Ranger-qualified female doesn’t take anything away from our Army or the tab that I wore”, Perry said.

It is a 62-day course on leadership and small unit tactics that pushes Ranger students to their mental and physical limits by forcing them to operate on minimal food and sleep.

Dunwoody joined the now-disbanded Women’s Army Corps in 1975, at a time when women hadn’t been integrated into other parts of the Army.

Davidson said when she went through training to be a pilot, it was essential to her and her female peers that they be held to the same standards as men.

“Why shouldn’t anybody who can meet these (standards) be accepted?” They were required to undergo demanding physical tests and simulated combat.

For all of what these women and all their fellow soldiers in Ranger training have accomplished, this is just a step, though a significant one. There will be more women in another Ranger class that begins in November. Advocates, however, argue that women have already proven their value in combat-related deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.