Last woman in Ranger School to repeat Florida phase

The last female soldier in Ranger School will repeat the final phase in Florida, the U.S. Army announced Tuesday.

The 140 soldiers, all men, who successfully completed the swamp phase at Camp Rudder will graduate Friday at Fort Benning. It is the first graduation since the first two women earned the Ranger tab on Aug. 21. Capt. Kristen Griest, a military police officer, and Lt. Shaye Haver, an Apache helicopter pilot, graduated after successfully completing the Army’s most challenging combat leadership school.

The remaining woman, who the Army has not identified, is a major and mother of two. She has been in Ranger School for nearly five months and was one of the 21 soldiers offered the opportunity to repeat the Florida phase.

On April 19, the Army began a gender-integration pilot program that included 19 women in the Ranger School class. Since that class started, the Army has announced that Ranger School is now open to anyone, man or woman, who meets the qualifications and wants to attend. Less than 3 percent of the Army’s soldiers have earned the Ranger tab.

The woman who remains in the school was part of that pilot program.

The initial week of physical assessment cut that to eight women.

On May 29, the Army dropped five of those eight women from the school after all failed the patrol phase at Fort Benning for a second time. Three of the women were offered an opportunity to start over from the beginning. Griest, Haver and the woman who remains in Florida took that offer.

After a three-week break waiting for the next class to start, the women began the course over on June 21. Griest and Haver went straight through without repeating any of the three patrol phases at Fort Benning, in the north Georgia mountains and Florida.

The woman still in the course repeated the mountain phase in early August. She moved to Florida not long after Griest and Haver graduated.

This story was originally published September 15, 2015 at 5:55 PM with the headline "Last woman in Ranger School to repeat Florida phase."