Retired Army Col. Ralph Puckett pens his memoir: ‘Ranger’

When it came time to title his memoir, retired Army Col. Ralph Puckett, along with co-author Dan Crosswell, boiled down the distinguished military career and life of the respected Columbus resident into a single word.

“Ranger.”

The new book, which the 90-year-old Puckett started more than 15 years ago and recently finished with the assistance of Crosswell, is published by the University of Kentucky press and is currently available for pre-order on Amazon. It will be available for wide distribution next month.

“Originally it was called “Codename Ranger” because that was his handle in Vietnam,” said Crosswell, who holds the Col. Richard R. Hallock Distinguished University Chair in Military History at Columbus State University. “And it emerged, and it became very clear, when Gen. (David) Petraeus wrote what was supposed to be the forward and now is the afterward. He is “The Ranger,” and so it was a no-brainer at the end.”

Puckett has been “the Ranger” since 1950 when, as a young lieutenant fresh out of the U.S. Military Academy, he was given command of an Eighth Army Ranger Company and led them into battle during the Korean War. More than two decades after his retirement he was appointed honorary colonel of the 75th Ranger Regiment headquartered at Fort Benning and remains active with Rangers and other soldiers assigned to Fort Benning.

Boiling the book’s title down to “Ranger” took some convincing, Crosswell said.

“Let’s say, it took some arm-twisting,” Crosswell said.

Being a Ranger, the most elite and highly trained of the Army’s combat force, is the most important thing he has ever done, Puckett said.

“Every chance I have when I’m talking to a group of Rangers, or to those who are just about ready to enter Ranger School, or preparing to go there, I talk about how important that is, and that they have to live up to that title, because Ranger, to those who know anything about it and particularly to me, means a lot,” Puckett said. “And so, that was my call sign in Vietnam, it’s been my moniker in different places since then. And I really felt that I was trying to live up to what I thought that a Ranger should be, and is.”

The title is appropriate and the book timely, said Maj. Gen. Eric J. Wesley, commander of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning.

“Once in a generation we will have a legend come along,” Wesley said. “The beauty of Col. Puckett is he’s a living legend. ... He manifests this legend in who he is, his leadership and his behavior. At some point, we are all going to pass on, and the importance of putting it in a book is he’s taken that legendary status and created the legacy that outlives him.”

The book was done at the urging of Puckett’s wife, Jean, and his family.

“... I really started the book — primarily it was almost a diary form,” Puckett said. “And I was doing it just for my children and grandchildren, so they would know something about their ancestors, their forebearers.”

It is Puckett’s second book. He previously wrote “Words for Warriors,” a self-published series of short essays about specific military tasks, missions and objectives.

“It’s focused on the military, although it fits any enterprise,” Puckett said. “It focuses on combat, administration, training, supply, development of leaders, what have you.”

“Ranger” is vastly different from “Words for Warriors,” Puckett said. The most recent book tells Puckett’s story of service and sacrifice from his early days growing up in Tifton, Ga., to the present in a candid and at times blunt manner.

Puckett had been working on and off on the memoir for years when he met Crosswell, a 63-year Canadian and military historian who had previously published “Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith,” a World War II-era military leader and post-war diplomat.

Crosswell was thinking one thing and Puckett another when the professor asked the retired officer if he would consent to do an oral history.

“He said he had no interest in that, but he had begun writing this memoir,” Crosswell said. “So, I, in a weak moment, said that I’d be happy to have a look at it. And that was the gestation of our partnership.”

Puckett describes it this way: “That was one of the luckiest days of my life meeting up with him, because he’s an expert at it.”

Crosswell and Puckett spent many hours over two years expanding and perfecting the manuscript, which the colonel was doing at the urging of his family. Puckett’s original plan, before Crosswell came into the picture, was to self-publish it just as he had done with “Words for Warriors.” Crosswell’s Bedell Smith book had been published by the University of Kentucky Press.

“It’s an autobiography with a lot of help and a lot of recommendations and improvements by Dan to turn it into something more substantive than it was when I was doing it,” Puckett said.

No chapter is more candid than the one detailing the end of Puckett’s Army career in 1972. He had grown frustrated in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, which he outlines in a chapter entitled “The Fort Carson Blues.”

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point graduate talks about his exit from the Army after a 22-year career and two wars to take a job with Outward Bound, an international, non-profit, independent outdoor-education organization.

In that chapter, Puckett describes the meeting with Gen. John Bennett in which the colonel announced his intention to retire.

“After he told me to be seated, we exchanged a few pleasantries then I said, ‘Sir, I am retiring July 1st,’” Puckett wrote. “After a short silence he asked me why I was taking that fateful leap. I had no pat explanation just that Outward Bound offered me a job as the national programs coordinator.”

Puckett then described the scene that took place next.

“He expressed his surprise and genuine regret that I was leaving the Army,” Puckett wrote. “Then he reached into his drawer and extracted a document containing a long roster of colonels under consideration for promotion to brigadier general. He then went down the list and asked whether I thought each officer named was better than I. He expressed his opinion on each of them. At the end, I ranked ‘ahead’ of all but two.”

The general then asked Puckett how he would feel when many of those officers on the list became lieutenant generals and corps commanders.

“I replied if I served on active duty long enough I hoped that, if deserving, I would make general but that had never been my goal,” Puckett wrote. “The general asked me to hold the paperwork until the last minute — 60 days before the requested effective date. He probably expected that I would be on the next promotions list and see the light. I thanked him for his time, courtesy, and concern. As I saluted and turned to leave, he said, “Ralph, you may be able to accomplish more for our youth and this country in Outward Bound than if you remained in the Army.”

It was important to get that part of the book right, Puckett said.

“That was very difficult for me,” he said. “I like the Army — I love the Army. I love what it stands for. I felt I was part of it, it was part of me. It’d been my whole life for 22 years. It was very difficult. I knew it would be a big change.”

That chapter also reflects most what Puckett loved most about being a soldier.

“I also knew that I didn’t want to do what was staring me in the face, in the military,” he said. “I didn’t want to spend the next several years of my life on some staff doing important work, but something that didn’t interest me. I jokingly say, and I still say it, if I could have been a company commander all my life, I’d still be in the Army. And I joke that I’m going to be reincarnated as a Ranger company commander.”

This story was originally published March 16, 2017 at 3:47 PM with the headline "Retired Army Col. Ralph Puckett pens his memoir: ‘Ranger’."