THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 8, 1995 TAG: 9503080497
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TIM WEINER, THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: FORT BENNING, GA. LENGTH: Long : 171 lines
Second Lt. Spencer D. Dodge, president of the West Point class of 1994, was chest-deep in a muddy backwater of the Yellow River in the Florida Panhandle last month, lost in a fog, freezing to death.
He and 101 fellow students in the Army's Ranger training class 3-95 were in the last days of their nine-week course. They had starved in the desert and frozen in the mountains. Most of the men had lost 30 or 40 pounds. They were exhausted.
On Feb. 15, Companies A, B and C set out on the Yellow River in three groups, paddling black rubber rafts for four hours to a checkpoint. Bravo and Charlie arrived first. Their eight instructors, all sergeants, ordered them into the cold water to string a rope guideline to a hummock of cypress and sweet gum half a mile away.
The rain-swollen river was 6 feet high and rising as Dodge, carrying a 60-pound rucksack and a rifle, waded into the swamp. The sergeants said to push on. He began to shiver uncontrollably as the heat of his body flowed into the water. His mind lost its focus. The cold stopped his heart.
A full moon rose, followed by a thick fog that shrouded a night of confusion and fear on the Yellow River, with flares and helicopters and angry walkie-talkie noise.
When dawn came up on Feb. 16, four men were dead: Dodge, Capt. Milton Palmer, 2nd Lt. Curt G. Sansoucie and Sgt. Norman Tillman.
All had volunteered to undergo one of the military's toughest training courses, an ordeal that Army leaders proudly consider to be the moral equivalent of war.
The Ranger course, the Army says, is designed to induce fatigue and hunger, mental and emotional stress, to take men to the breaking point. It is not supposed to break them.
Based on the statements of soldiers who were there, it appears that the instructors, whether by confusion or dereliction, left their men in the cold water for too long, and, in doing so, let them die of hypothermia - the physical and mental collapse that begins when the body's temperature drops below 95 degrees.
The water temperature that night was as low as 52 degrees, only 2 degrees above the allowable minimum. Under some conditions, death by hypothermia can occur within an hour when people are immersed in water that cold.
Some Ranger trainees had been in the cold water for six hours - twice the recommended limit, Army officials said - by the time the exercise was called off, close to midnight Feb. 15.
The instructors could have altered or stopped the exercise at any point. They did not.
The Ranger trainees have a buddy system, in which one man is supposed to look out for another. It broke down in the fog and cold.
Over the past six years, seven soldiers have died in training for every one killed by the enemy in combat, Pentagon statistics show. People die in the Army at the rate of once every four days.
But the deaths of the four men, the worst accident since the Rangers' training brigade was formed in 1951, has raised two questions:
Does the Army have proper training standards?
If so, did the Ranger instructors meet them?
The Rangers' river training has been suspended, pending official inquiries by Fort Benning's commanders and the Army's Inspector General, Criminal Investigation Division and Safety Center. They are unlikely to be concluded before May, Army officials said.
The investigations are likely to result in more stringent procedures to prevent future deaths. The loss of the four soldiers, Defense Secretary William Perry said, ``argues that we should have even more substantial safeguards against this kind of accident.
Despite the deaths, the Rangers are sure to fight to keep their harsh training. They take pride in the course, which makes them, according to their creed, ``a more elite soldier.''
A former Ranger commander, Gen. Wayne Downing, the leader of the Pentagon's Special Operations Command, spoke for many of the Rangers when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that ``intense training to develop and maintain the capability to fight wars'' is imperative.
But by the same token, he said, ``good units don't kill their people - in combat or in training.''
Three hundred and thirty-four Ranger candidates arrived in December at Fort Benning, a huge Army base entered through Victory Drive, a seedy strip of pawnbrokers, topless bars, tattoo parlors, fast-food restaurants and used-car lots.
Four described their training and the night of Feb. 15 on the condition that they would not be identified, because of the Army's criminal investigation, in which they are witnesses.
In the first week of intensive physical tests for the trainees, Class 3-95, 161 were cut from the course. Others dropped out after a 15-mile quick march preceded by a parachute jump.
More quit after the ``worm pit,'' a miserable crawl through mud and freezing water. After 15 minutes in the cold slop, one soldier began to suffer from hypothermia. He became incoherent. Told to touch his nose, he pointed to his chest. He did not make the cut.
The desert phase was 16 days in the farthest reach of West Texas. They worked 20 hours a day, slept in the rough, rose at 4 a.m. to face ambushes and raids by a squad of soldiers trained to play the role of their enemy. They had two of the Army's infamous prepackaged meals a day. Several of the men acquired a zombie glaze. Still more quit or were told to leave.
Then came the mountain phase, 17 days in the Georgia Appalachians in late January and early February, climbing icy rocks with bare hands, marching three miles straight uphill in an hour, carrying 60-pound packs. There were a few cases of frostbite, and more drop-outs. By the time the river phase began Feb. 6, more than half the original class was gone.
At Eglin Air Force Base on the Florida Panhandle, the men went to Camp James E. Rudder, a rudimentary 44-year-old outpost with an alligator for a mascot. Amid scrub oaks and fire ants, they undertook more courses on raids and ambushes, search-and-attack missions, tracking human quarry. More 20-hour days, more skimpy rations, more misery.
The river was next.
All week, a cold rain had fallen and the river was running high.
The trainees and Army officials who described the events of the 15th said that A company arrived at the checkpoint about 4 p.m., roughly a hour behind the first two companies. An instructor carried a 6-foot stick to measure the depth of the river. When he plunged it into the water, it went all the way in.
``The water was much too high, so we didn't get off,'' said Cpl. James M. Barry, a trainee who did agree to be identified. Alpha moved down the river to find a shallower site. None of the company's men was lost.
A deep creek cut through the swamp where the B and C companies stood. As darkness and fog surrounded them, the water kept rising. First one trainee, then two more became numb and disoriented. In all, eight of the 64 members of B and C companies would suffer from hypothermia.
The instructors called for a helicopter about 5:30 p.m. to evacuate the first three, all of whom would survive. They kept the others working on the rope guideline. The hovering helicopter dropped a sling for the stricken soldiers. Blasts of air from the chopper's rotors further chilled the men in the water.
By 9 p.m., five more trainees began losing control of their minds and bodies. At this point, say several of those present, the command of Bravo company became equally confused.
Palmer, who had been through the course in 1991 but dropped out after he became frostbitten in the mountains, was incoherent, singing tunelessly to himself. Then the singing stopped.
Deeper in the swamp, Sansoucie and Tillman were stricken. By the time their instructors found them, the fog was too thick for the helicopter to find them.
In the confusion, no one noticed that Dodge was lost.
The 98 men who survived the course graduated Feb. 24 at Fort Benning. The dead soldiers' Ranger insignia were presented to their buddies. The graduates stood in formation, gaunt and grim as they recited the Ranger creed.
``I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy,'' the men chanted. ``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.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The commander of Fort Benning, Ga. - Maj. Gen. John W. Hendrix -
pins the Ranger insignia of one of the dead, 2nd Lt. Spencer D.
Dodge, onto Staff Sgt. Charles Irving during Ranger graduation at
the base. Dodge died during the last days of a nine-week training
course.
Graphics
JOHN CORBITT/Staff
THE TRAINING PROCESS
SOURCE: The New York Times
KRT
ARMY RANGER TRAINING
SOURCE: News reports
[For complete graphics, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT MILITARY ACCIDENT GENERAL
FATALITIES U.S. ARMY HYPOTHERMIA by CNB