Every day is holiday; every meal is a feast
If you open your eyes in the morning and you are still breathing, then you are alive. Every thing else is a bonus.
Part of my training as an Infantry Officer required me to go to Ranger School, which is suppose to primarily be a leadership school for combat soldiers who want to join the Army’s elite light infantry fighting forces known as the Rangers. It was an unwritten rule that every infantry officer had to earn the coveted Ranger tab or he wasn’t worth his weight in salt as a leader of combat troops.
When I went through Ranger School, it was a 68-day course. There was the Benning Phase, The Mountain Phase, The Desert Phase and the Jungle Phase. Ranger courses run all year long, I drew the unfortunate short straw of having to attend during the winter months. I have never been so cold in my life (well except maybe the time I nearly froze to death in a snow storm when I was 14).
One morning we were huddle together like seals trying to stay warm. We had on our Gortex winter jackets and we were still cold. A Ranger instructor came strutting out of his warm command post, a big smile on his face. “Take the Gortex jackets off men. It ain’t cold out here. It’s 80 degrees out! Cold is a state of mind.” We groaned and shuffled and did as we were told.
The Ranger instructor stood over us and said: “Men when or if you make it through Ranger School, every day will be a holiday and every meal will be a feast.”
I didn’t believe him at the time. In retrospect, I now understand what he meant. And whenever I’m having a bad day, I smile to myself and say, “Every day is holiday; every meal is a feast!”
Part of my training as an Infantry Officer required me to go to Ranger School, which is suppose to primarily be a leadership school for combat soldiers who want to join the Army’s elite light infantry fighting forces known as the Rangers. It was an unwritten rule that every infantry officer had to earn the coveted Ranger tab or he wasn’t worth his weight in salt as a leader of combat troops.
When I went through Ranger School, it was a 68-day course. There was the Benning Phase, The Mountain Phase, The Desert Phase and the Jungle Phase. Ranger courses run all year long, I drew the unfortunate short straw of having to attend during the winter months. I have never been so cold in my life (well except maybe the time I nearly froze to death in a snow storm when I was 14).
One morning we were huddle together like seals trying to stay warm. We had on our Gortex winter jackets and we were still cold. A Ranger instructor came strutting out of his warm command post, a big smile on his face. “Take the Gortex jackets off men. It ain’t cold out here. It’s 80 degrees out! Cold is a state of mind.” We groaned and shuffled and did as we were told.
The Ranger instructor stood over us and said: “Men when or if you make it through Ranger School, every day will be a holiday and every meal will be a feast.”
I didn’t believe him at the time. In retrospect, I now understand what he meant. And whenever I’m having a bad day, I smile to myself and say, “Every day is holiday; every meal is a feast!”
posted by Clay Lowe at 06:09
2 Comments:
When I first started work as an apprentice, 22 years ago, we had a field supervisor who used to say "I've been bollocked by admirals". Because he was rather pompous and self important, we used to laugh at it and the other things he used to say, but years later I realised the importance of his words. As a teenager in the navy, he had been literally bollocked by admirals. After that, there was nothing that anyone could say that would get him down.
When were you in Ranger Training? My son is now a captain in the Army and he went through Ranger Training at Fort Benning about 4-5 years ago. He is currently stationed at Fort Lewis in WA and will be redeployed ti Iraq in about 8 months, 2 months before he was scheduled to be discharged.
I accept your agreement for a link exchange.
You have now been added to my blogroll.
I'm not sure which of your blogs you wanted to exchange with. I picked this one because of the frequency of updates and this post. My site is http://mondaymorningpower.blogspot.com
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