Friday recorded history for the U.S. Army Rangers as its first two female graduates emerged.
Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver dominated the well-known male arena of the Army Rangers.
After weeks of grueling physical training across woods, mountains and swamplands, the two received their tabs as part of Ranger Class 08-15 at Fort Benning, Georgia. This was not only an accomplishment with them, but it marked a historic moment in the integration of women in the U.S. military, according to CNN.
At the beginning of the class in April at Fort Benning, 381 men and 19 women began the course. After being forced to train with minimal food and little sleep, those who moved forward had to learn to operate over multiple terrain.
Part of their physical fitness test was to do 49 pushups, 59 sit-ups, a 5-mile run in 40 minutes, six chin-ups, a swim test, a land navigation test, a 12-mile foot march in three hours, several obstacle courses, four days of military mountaineering, three parachute jumps, four air assaults on helicopters and 27 days of mock combat patrols.
In the end, after 62 days, only 94 men and two women remained.
Maj. Gen. Austin S. Miller, commanding general for the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence addressed the critics during the outdoor ceremony. People had questioned whether or not the standards for the known rigorous course were lowered for the two female Rangers. But he strongly pointed out that the two Rangers exceeded every requirement, the same set of requirements for all Rangers.
“When they question those standards, what I do is to invite them back to Fort Benning, Georgia,” he said.
He added, “There was no pressure from anyone above me to change standards.”
“Clearly, these two soldiers are trailblazers,” Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told reporters Thursday. “And after all, that’s what it means to be a Ranger. Rangers lead the way.”
Griest, of Connecticut, is an Airborne-qualified military police officer. Haver, a Texas resident, is an Apache helicopter pilot. The two Rangers are hailed as pioneers for passing the strenuous course in the very first year the Army has opened it to women, on a trial basis.
“We felt like we were contributing as much as the men, and we felt that they felt that way, too,” Griest said.
The two Rangers felt the heavy pressure of setting the stage for future generations on top of the pressure from the regimen itself.
“For me, the biggest accomplishment was that it was a goal I had for so long,” Griest said. “It was always just about trying to get the best training that the Army can offer us.”
Haver said it was “definitely awesome to be part of history.”
The women in her class “came to Ranger School as skeptics, with our guards up, just in case of the haters and naysayers, but we didn’t come with a chip on our shoulder with anything to prove,” Haver said.
She added, “I think the battles that we won were individual. … We were kind of winning hearts and minds as we went.”
The male counterparts in during the course were equally supportive and appreciative of the efforts put forth by the two female Rangers. There was no discussion as to whether or not they could pull their weight, but instead, it was an overall effort of everybody in the training if they could pull their weight together to make it through.
“You’re way too tired and way too hungry to really honestly care,” one soldier said of the female classmates. “At the end of the day, everyone was a Ranger.”
“We’ve shown that it’s not exclusively a male domain here,” Miller said.
The Pentagon describes Ranger School as “the Army’s premier combat leadership course, teaching Ranger students how to overcome fatigue, hunger, and stress to lead soldiers during small unit combat operations.”
