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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (May 2, 1986)
11 — Capt. Gerald Collins instructs Rudder’s Ranger's on the proper techniques for urban assaults. Collins is a military advisor to Rudder’s Rangers continued from p.8 Those who accept the chal lenge pay a price beyond the physical and mental effort re quired to get through a field training exercise. The exercises also take up a lot of time. Sophomore Mike Richardson savs this is the major disadvan tage of being in Rudder’s Rang ers. “Most of the training is on weekends and your friends will sav let’s go out and do some thing and you say, c No, I can’t do that because I’ve got to go out in the field for three days,” he savs. “It would be a lot easier (not to train), especially when you’re out in the woods and you’re really tired, cold and hungry and you’re thinking, ‘My friends are at the (Dixie) Chicken right now. It’s hard, sometimes, but that’s all part of In the rough-and-tumble world of Rudder’s Rangers, the introduction of women to the organization came as some thing of a shock. Women were introduced to the organization three years ago and Collins and Roberts both smile when they recall the effect of females on ranger Company. “When they first came in, the organization was in turmoil, tipsy-turyv,” Collins says. “But they (the women) stuck it out, gutted it out, did everything that was expected of them and they proved themselves.” Roberts says they didn’t slack up on the women and agrees that they have proven them selves, especially Linda Dawn Simmons, who Roberts savs may be the number one grad uate from this year’s summer camp. Senior Robert Ford agrees, al though he was surprised to see women in Rudder’s Rangers when he joined as a junior. “You think of Rangers as be ing the baddest guys in the Ar my,” he says. “When I walked into the first meeting, there weren’t but a couple of them (women), but I still said, ‘What are these women doing here?’ I couldn’t believe it.” “Then I learned that they can pull their weight, and as long as they pull their weight, then I’ve got no problems with them at all. Some of them are better than the guys. Dawn Simmons is going to embarass a lot of guys at summer camp. She’s good, she can pull her weight.” Linda Dawn Simmons joined Rudder’s Rangers because she wanted the extra challenge of adventure-type training. As one of the three women who broke the all-male barrier, she’s seen some changes since the day she went to her first meeting. At that time, she says, she barely knew what a Ranger was, but a senior in the Corps that she knew and admired was in the Rangers. He got her inter ested in finding out more and took her to a meeting. Simmons says the senior in troduced her to the Rangers and told them she deserved a fair shake. According to Simmons, that’s exactly what the Rangers did. “We never got left out of any thing or were discriminated ^against in any way,” she says. “This is probably the only orga nization in the Corps that I’ve felt that way in. The rest of the organizations in the Corps are veiy discriminatory.” Rudder’s Rangers is about to undergo another change fairly soon. Capt. Collins and Sgt. Roberts are leaving this sum mer to take on new assign ments at bases located in Eu rope and Asia. Capt. Bvran Stephens, now an assistant ad visor with Rudder’s Rangers, will assume many of Collins’ and Robert’s duties and is now gearing up for fall. Collins says he’s ready to get back into the regular Army where he’ll be dealing with troops and day-to-day military situations. But Rudder’s Rang ers will always remain a bright spot in his memory. “To me, they’ve been an oasis of sunshine compared to some of the other jumdrum-type du ties that we have to do here,” he says. “I would much rather spend a day out on a Saturday with my Rangers than I would sitting in my office pushing pa per, filling out reports'and crunching numbers/