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Ranger competitors get surprise language test

Fort Benning, Ga. — Saving critically wounded helicopter crewmen, grenade throwing, and a language and demographics test were three of the tasks soldiers completed during the second day of the Best Ranger Competition.

The annual event that draws Ranger-tabbed soldiers from across the Army began in 1982 and has increasingly reflected the skills soldiers have used and honed in almost eight years of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But not everything is second nature, and it’s not easy to take a written test when you’ve been running, shooting and climbing non-stop for 36 hours.

This year marked the first time a language and demographics test was part of the competition, and soldiers scored at about a 50 percent rate on the 20 questions in each test that called for answers such as matching English and foreign words, naming a city’s population and what the dominant religion is in each country.

The two-man teams had a choice between taking the Iraq or Afghanistan test and had 10 minutes to complete it.

“The words were the biggest stumper,” said Sgt. 1st Class Junior Holi, who proctored the tests. Of the 20 questions on the test, he said, soldiers got a little better than half correctly and did poorest on matching 10 words to their meaning in languages spoken in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the other side of the field, the Ranger First Responder Test, by far the biggest attraction at the all-day Ranger Day Stakes at Todd Field, brought with it a gruesome bit of reality with the use of raw lamb meat and bones to simulate traumatic injuries on the air crew’s bodies.

In the event, competitors rushed down a hill under simulated machine gun fire and began rendering lifesaving treatment while returning fire and taking cover from nerve-rattling artillery simulators.

The soldiers had to remove the bloodied, uniformed mannequins from the wreckage of a helicopter, take them up a hill to a simulated landing zone, call in coordinates and attach the flexible litter to a hoist in a timed event.

In addition to the language test, which was one of two mystery events at this year’s contest, competitors had to crawl into a dug-in machine gun position and fill out a range card, a task many had probably not done since they went through Ranger School.

“It’s a skill level one task every private knows and everyone who’s been through Ranger School has done,” said Master Sgt. Donnie Harper or 4th Ranger Training Battalion.

The sleep-deprived competitors from the 26 teams that remained out of the 49 that crossed the starting line at dawn on Friday slogged through the day’s stakes with no mishaps and prepared to face a second night in the field completing an orienteering test.

READ MORE:

• 26 teams still standing after grueling road march

• Injuries mark first day of Best Ranger

• Best Ranger kicks off at Benning