Dec/Jan '81-'82 – HAAF, Savannah GA.
To get to the Battalion you had to pass RIP (for enlisted E-5 and below) ROP (E-6 and above) Not sure on that one but it doesn't matter because I was an E-1 which put me cleary taking the RIP route. Anyhow, we get there and get issued our camoflage fatigues and wait for the rest of the Battalion to come back off block leave for Christmas. Then we PT'd twice daily. We did hand to hand in the pit. Ran/crawled through the 'worm pit'/obstacle course. Which was sawdust dumped into a dugout pit, with barbed wire staked over the top of it. Except for times when it was really cold, it was flooded when we ran it. RIP instructors would piss in it before we made our run, just to mess with our heads. We learned our knots and all the other Ranger necessities before we we were shipped off to our companies. Of course we met Battalion standards for the Run and road-march. Run five miles in under 40 minutes and roadmarch 12 miles with full combat load in under three hours. Upon arriving at B Co. we immediately deployed to Texas for a month.
19 April, 1982 – Canoochee River, Ft. Stewart
Ranger Robert Fortucci and I had become friends during my brief time there at the Ranger Battalion. A fun kid from Boston. He was a chubby cheeked kid I always imagined got that way because he had a grandmother that would tweak them and ask if he'd been good that day. Anyways's we had a bunch of good times together before we lost him on the night of April 19th, 1982.
It was a river crossing. He was not considered a strong swimmer. Anyhow to compensate for this he had tied a double knot in his sling rope that he (we all) used to attach ourselves to the rope strung across the river. Unfortunately, the way he tied the knot, it came undone and clamped down on the river rope. Not being a strong swimmer he didn't know how to use the river current to plane himself up in it. Also, when the stronger swimmers got to him, they didn't know what kind of knot he tied. So, they lost time thinking they could simply unsnap him from the rope with his carabiner (we each carried one) that was ...
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1983 – HAAF, Savannah, GA
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Ranger Airborne 1st BN 75th INF B Company