Ranger Awards ceremony
ROS sends us a link to a local news station in Savannah which reports the awarding of scores of medals to members of the 1st Bn 75th Rangers at Hunter Army Airfield;
10 Silver Stars, one of the highest awards for valor, and 16 Purple Hearts, honoring those wounded in action, were among the medals earned by almost 80 Rangers with the First Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. In a deployment last year, they conducted 900 missions and killed or captured more than 2,000, yet none of the Rangers seek singular recognition.
“It’s for individual valorous achievement, but I think it is more of a collective achievement because we have had so many across the whole Battalion,” said 1SG Michael Eiermann, 1/75 Ranger Battalion, Silver Star recipient.
Two Silver Stars were also awarded to families of fallen Rangers.
Category: Military issues
Sua Sponte
Hell yeah some good news!
Going to show my ignorance here a little but the medal counts seem a little strange. There has got to be a lot more Purple Hearts than just 16 if there were 10 Silver Stars. I assuming that many of the Purple Hearts were awarded in theater. Just for curiosity’s sake, no insult intended here but for those with more experience in these matters, what kind of ratio would you expect across the battalion for a year’s deployment. I’d just like to get a handle on how many awards the battalion may have received.
That is battalion-level, or did you mean a larger timeframe?
This battalion on this deployment. Starting from the 10 Silver Stars that were awarded, is there any data that would give an estimate as to how many Purple Hearts would be awarded. I understand each combat engagement is different but for a battalion size group over a year’s time, I would think that would provide sufficient statistics for a valid projection. This question is just the geek in me talking, I’m still marveling over the 10 Silver Stars in the battalion.
RLTW!
Roger that BV!!
RLTW
To put things in perspective: A Ranger battalion has somewhere around 600 authorized personnel (I found one source that says 575, but I don’t know if that’s current or not; but I believe that’s close). This means that about 1 in 60 assigned personnel in that regiment received the Silver Star, and about 1 in 40 were WIA.
Brave and competent men. I salute them.
In the news video it looked as though the presenting officer had a marine corps cap on…that seemed odd.
RLTW
Am I wrong in having the opinion, as an ‘outsider,’ that U.S. Army Rangers (as in, having served time in a Ranger Battalion) are the finest light infantry soldiers in the world?
RLTW, indeed.
@9, apparently a USMC Officer was invited to make the presentations. As the Regiment falls under USASOC, which falls under USSOCOM, I suspect the Marine is assigned to the staff in Tampa.
@11 Nods..Thanks…figured it had something to do with that.
@10 I would agree, putting my bias aside, that is what they do best, at times I worry that they may get drawn into special ops to much as operators but I think one can say they are the best in the world as far as light infantry units go!
‘Hold until releaved’
RLTW
That “Marine” is ADM McRaven(SEAL), 9th Commander of SOCOM, and as such, head of all SOF.
VADM McRaven was awarding the medals.
Also, Ranger Battalion’s are very small and they don’t deploy forward in one single area they cover the entire country and often operate every single day for the entire deployment, not excluding weekends or holidays. And it’s no mystery as to how much combat our soldiers see over there, Rangers are supposed to be the premier light infantry unit. There is nothing these men can’t or won’t do. There are probably more men standing in those ranks that deserve recognition, but either their medals haven’t been approved yet, or someone somewhere determined their actions weren’t deserving enough.