YOU WON’T FIND ME, OR MOST of the guys in this book, sitting around a circle in everyday life, sharing stories from the front lines. I might not like to talk about my battles, but I do like to read war stories, especially ones from before my time. Charlie Rangers, by Don Ericson and John L. Rotundo (Random House, 1989), has long been one of my favorite books. My dad gave it to me. It is the story of men who served in the Vietnam War in companies that were attached to regular units, like the 101st Airborne Division or the 82nd Airborne.
These guys were basically out there fighting the Vietcong on their own. These Rangers faced incredible disadvantages, but they used their wits, their skills, and a fighting spirit, and they relied on each other to win. Charlie Rangers does not shy away from the gory details of battle. I remember being intrigued by the mechanics of military fighting when I read it. At that time, I thought that a person would die if he got shot at close range. Maybe I got that idea from movies—I don’t know. In Charlie Rangers there are several instances when Rangers continue to fight even after getting shot multiple times. That might have been the first time I got a hint of what the concept of “never quit” really means to a Ranger.
I grew up taking it for granted that you need to push through pain. My dad was a football coach at Adams State University, Brigham Young University, Oregon State University, and Colorado Mesa University. I grew up playing sports and attended Colorado Mesa University on a football scholarship. I thought that was pretty tough. I wouldn’t understand true pain until I became a Ranger. But I started to get a glimpse of real toughness in Charlie Rangers. These guys were bleeding from bullets and still fighting. They willingly put their lives on the line, over and over again, to execute their mission. I really believe that I first began to think about the word brotherhood while reading that book. Rangers develop brotherhood by bleeding together.
Some people think that you can build brotherhood by going through a six-month course or academy, but there is a difference between the camaraderie such courses often create and brotherhood. You can build teamwork in a class, but teamwork is not the same as brotherhood. You might even suffer a bit together, as we did in Ranger School, during those times when we were not able to eat or sleep. But even though we were relying on each other under adverse conditions, we were not brothers in Ranger School—not yet. When I was a private in basic training, toward the end of the course we were allowed to go out to the PX for a couple of hours if we had earned the right to do so. A bunch of us might go out as a group and walk a mile to the PX together to get what we called licky-chewies—snacks. Maybe we were learning to know and trust each other in social situations, but what we were doing was essentially going out and having fun. Our true brotherhood developed only after we had put ourselves on the line and risked our lives to save others’ lives, against tremendous odds.
Another Vietnam-era story that I admired was We Were Soldiers Once… and Young by Lieutenant General Harold G. “Hal” Moore, Retired, and journalist Joseph L. Galloway (Random House, 1992). That story, largely about the Battle of the la Drang Valley, and the role of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, is another detailed piece of military history right from the front lines.
Hal Moore seemed like a confident, likable guy who didn’t take any shit. He was a lieutenant colonel and commander during the period he wrote about in this book, and when I thought about the decisions he made, I was deeply impressed by his leadership and his willingness to fight alongside his troops. He had to make some tough decisions on the fly, and he was skilled at adapting as his situation changed. It also seemed like he was willing to delegate and rely on others, but he didn’t ask anyone to do anything he wasn’t willing to do himself.
It’s an interesting contrast to another book from the front lines that I also like a lot, Black Hawk Down (Grove, 2010), because that story takes place during 1993 in Somalia, and some of the people making critical calls were watching the action from a drone feed.
In We Were Soldiers, the leader was on the ground. It makes a difference, and I encourage everyone to read both of those excellent books for their authentic, thoughtful perspectives on selfless service and what it is like to be on the front lines.
Even though I loved Charlie Rangers from the start, I don’t think I truly understood or appreciated its lessons until after I started deploying and began losing friends. When I think about how Rone and Bub died in Benghazi, I realize that Charlie Rangers verifies, across time and space, what I have learned about brotherhood. My buddies may be injured or dying all around me, but I have to continue to fight. Rangers never quit.
When I became a Ranger, I committed to putting myself at risk against any and all kinds of odds, even if they seemed insurmountable. The sixth stanza of the Ranger Creed says, “Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.” That’s not lip service. I took an oath to continue to fight even if I might be the last man standing. It doesn’t matter if I might feel scared: I am going to do it anyway, because the people next to me will be counting on me, just as I’ll be counting on them. It doesn’t matter whether we like each other.
The person next to me might be someone I have never met before we marched together onto the field of battle. It doesn’t matter, because if we are Rangers, we are going to be brave together. Rangers are willing to protect each other and to die for each other—that is brotherhood. Charlie Rangers helped me start to think about what Rangers actually did and what I might be signing up for.
I thought Rangers were the toughest thing out there, and I wanted to be one of them. Rangers had strength, endurance, and the ability to fight. I admired the scroll, the tab, and the black beret because I knew what they represented. (The Army has changed the berets for the 75th Ranger Regiment to tan today. I’m still trying to get used to it.) I couldn’t wait to become proficient in weapons systems. I wanted to put on a ruck (in civilian terms, a backpack loaded with gear that might weigh between fifty and one hundred pounds) and march thirty miles. I knew I wasn’t going to eat or sleep much for three months and figured Ranger School was going to be the hardest thing out there, but I was ready and willing.
It proved to be harder than I had thought it would be. One of the things I loved about it was that we did our own planning and did so much ourselves. We were learning every aspect of combat and small-unit tactics up to a battalion level. It was challenging, and even though it was tougher than I had expected, I was happy because I was pursuing a goal that had meaning to me. My suffering and my work had a purpose.
Rangers Are Not the Only Heroes
Being a Ranger is a hard-core choice, but it’s not the only valid choice. There are so many worthy goals and different ways to be heroic. I don’t have to look far to find examples from my own family. My grandfather, Joaquin Garcia, came to the United States from Mexico on a work visa before I was born. He became a citizen and a patriot. He came to this country for opportunity, and he worked hard to leverage what little he had.
By the time I was born in 1971, my grandparents had established their own farm. My brother and sister and I loved to stay with our grandparents on their farm. There, we learned how to hunt and we learned what it meant to work hard. We would wake up in the morning at eight o’clock and my grandfather would already have been out working in the cornfields for hours, planting, tilling, harvesting, and weeding. I could see him out on his tractor all day long. It was not easy work, and he did it seven days a week until he became paralyzed in a car accident in his midsixties. I never saw him take a day off before the accident. Our grandmother, Rose Garcia, was constantly in motion, weeding, cooking, cleaning, and working hard.
At that point, the farm was large enough that my grandparents employed farmhands and migrant workers, and my grandfather wanted to provide opportunities and assistance to other immigrants and their families. I grew up playing baseball in the fields of the farm with some of the children from those new immigrant families, and I witnessed how respectful my grandparents were to the people in their care. My grandparents had a mission: to make that farm work and to be successful, and they did not lose sight of it. They were grateful for the opportunities they found in the United States. I absorbed the example of their work ethic, their independence, their patriotism, and their sense of service and responsibility to others just by watching them. They set their examples through their actions.
I try hard to live up to the example set by my grandparents. For instance, I continue to work out very seriously because I know it is vital for the kind of work I do. When I am training or when I am out contracting, I want people to see that I maintain my body and my skills and I want them to trust that they can depend on me. I’ve been teaching over the last few years, and running a tactical training program when I’m home in Nebraska. I do miss the brotherhood and the work that I did when I deployed downrange (military-speak for working in a combat zone) in the Middle East, South America, and Africa, so training seems like a way to keep using my skills, to keep contributing, and to connect with like-minded people. I’m very conscious of setting an example and instructing through my actions as well as through my words.
People sign up for these courses primarily to learn how to shoot or to improve their shooting. I shoot and train right alongside them. If it happens to be freezing in Omaha, Nebraska, or Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Sherman, Texas, or wherever I am teaching, you can bet I’m going to be sucking it up right alongside everyone else, with my gloves off and my fingers in pain. When other instructors are taking the lead, I am going to be doing physical training on the side, and I always let students know that they can work out with me in their downtime and that it will help with their training. If an instructor is sweating or freezing alongside me, I find it motivating.
No one is required to do physical training with me. Most people practice shooting in a static situation, where there is no stress or fatigue. In my experience, life does not usually require static shooting. If you are called to fire a weapon in a real-life situation, you will be lucky to be able to stand still and you will probably be under tremendous stress, with adrenaline coursing through your body. It is inherently dangerous to shoot a gun. If we can simulate a degree of healthy stress and fatigue through physical training and still teach someone how to get properly positioned on a firing line and shoot properly, I think that person will be better positioned for a real-life situation. So I think it is a productive challenge to help students experience duress, just enough to push them to overcome it, but not so much that it causes them to make mistakes that would put themselves or anyone else in danger. It’s a fine line, because I don’t want anyone to get hurt in training. But I don’t want them to get hurt in real life, either. Being able to handle yourself during sensory overload is a great advantage if you have to fight. Training with the Ranger Battalion stressed me out to the point that—even today—my whole world slows down and opens up when I am in a high-stress environment. It is unlikely that anyone I am training will have to face the kinds of battlefields the Rangers train for, but they can be safely stressed to be tougher and better prepared if they are ever under intense duress or find themselves in an extremely stressful situation.
As an instructor, I am the example. I am a more effective instructor if I can do what I’m telling students to do, and if students see me working alongside them. I’m not showing off. I don’t need to show off. I want them to know that anything is possible.
Sometimes it helps to clarify your goals by looking to the stories and examples of others.
Think about people you have admired. There may have been leaders, teachers, or mentors who have played a role in your own growth, or there may be real people whom you have observed from a distance, or there may be still others whose stories have been dramatic enough to be told in books or movies that moved you. It doesn’t matter where you find them. Reflect on what you admire about these people and let that guide you in establishing your goals and clarifying your values.
It might be easier to keep working toward your goals and living up to your values if you are clear about where they are coming from. I feel blessed to have been raised in a family of hardworking men and women of action. My father has always been a man of his word, he has always had integrity, and he is the man I have always aspired to be. His example inspires me. My mother has never given up, even as she has experienced multiple health issues as she has gotten older, including a double mastectomy. She is still the head of the household and is one of the toughest people I know. My maternal grandfather’s example helped set the values for my family and helped me understand what it means to be an American. He believed that Americans who work hard always have the opportunity to change and improve their lives.
I am trying hard to live up to the examples of my parents and my grandparents, and to be an example to others. I haven’t always gotten it right, and I feel blessed to have had the freedom to learn from my mistakes. I have been lucky. Know that you are in good company: so many people are working quietly, fighting their own battles, trying to improve their own lives, and endeavoring to be of service to others. Their examples are instructive and inspirational.