Background: I was a Marine infantryman from 2009-2013 with two deployments.  I loved what I did, especially during OEF, but the transition to peace time Marine Corps was too much for me.  I joined the Marines to fight, not for uniform inspections and all of that other peacetime nonsense.
Going through college, I've realized that war fighting is basically my main focus in life( I thought that would go away when I became a civie).

Inquiry: What is life like in a Ranger Battalion?  Do the Ranger chain of commands usually have their guys' backs?  What is the op tempo like?  Are the guys usually pretty good to go? Also, I have read  that it can be a pain to get into a sniper team, but ultimately I would like to end up there.

Thanks for the help.

All my information and insights are old, I was in 2/75 from March 88 thru November 91.

We had several former Marines in my company and most of them fit in very well. In general, I liked most of the Officers and NCOs, especially those that were "born and raised" in the Regiment, you could count on them to have your back.

We rucked and trained a lot, we were shooting when the Regular Army didn't have ammo, we were jumping when other airborne units couldn't get aircraft. If we weren't in the field, we were doing PT twice a day. The food was awesome the RDF (Ranger Dining Facility) was one of the best in the Army. The standards were extremely high, if you didn't keep up, they sent you to a regular unit. We had lots of 3 and 4 day weekends because of our training cycles.

We didn't do any post details or other bs, they kept us in a fenced and screened in compound, like animals, we were kept separate from the regular army.

During my first drill in the National Guard, I kept hearing people say "FTA"... I had to ask what that meant, I spent almost 4 years in 2/75 and had never heard anyone say "FTA", (fuck the army).

Hopefully, someone with more recent experience will chime in. In the meantime, get your tank and come visit the restricted forum.

Perhaps you should consider joining a SMU.

Life in Battalion? You're expected to perform to and exceed the standard on everything. Basically your year gets split up into three parts. A training cycle, a deployment and kind of a free section to do whatever. During the training cycle you'll go to ranges, shoothouses, squad and platoon live fires, shit like that. For the last 14 or so years you could expect to deploy once a year although that's slowing down some. There's some salty ass E7-E9's with close to or over 20 deployments. The rest of the year is made up of random training, recovery weeks, block leave, etc. The tempo can be pretty high, it's not unheard of to get sent out on training to another state for a month, come back for a week or two and then jet off again to some other state to do something for another 3-4 weeks. They balance it out pretty well though, lot of 3 and 4 day weekends, comp days stuff like that. You're usually off work by 1400-1500 most days if you don't have a range or something keeping you there all day.




The COC is solid, everyone has your back even if you fucked up as long as you didn't do something completely heinous. It's made up of the best dudes you'll ever meet, I would have no problem leaving a hundred dollar bill on the table of my AO and expecting it to be there when I got back. We share a brotherhood most people will never know or comprehend.




If you wanted to be a sniper you'd have to be in Batt on the line for 6-18 months and then you'd go to Ranger School. That could take 3 months or it could take a year depending on how hard you get fucked. After you get back from school, two things can happen. You can become a team leader or they'll make you a tabbed SAW gunner on the line somewhere. I'd say most guys have at least 6 months of team leader time before they are eligible to move from the platoon. Sometimes dudes go straight to snipers or recce after they get their tab but usually they put in time as a line or gun team leader first. You can either sua sponte a visit to HHC and ask to go to snipers or sometimes they send dudes around to poach guys from the line. But yeah, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.