Best Ranger Competition reduced to 24 teams after 17-mile road march

A 17-mile road march knocked out half of the 48 teams Friday night in the 33rd annual David E. Grange Best Ranger Competition at Fort Benning.

Of the 24 teams that made it to Day Stakes for more shooting, climbing and other skills at Todd Field, team No. 33 was in first place with 1st Sgt. David Floutier and Sgt 1st Class Joshua Rolfes of the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade on post. Second place was held by team No. 31 with Capt. Michael Blanchard and Brian Slamkowski of the Maneuver Center of Excellence. Third place went to team No. 47 with Capt. Robert Killian and Staff Sgt. Erich Friedlein of the Army National Guard.

From the leading team, only 15 points or less separated three teams in the contest. The team rankings were posted after the 5-mile Spartan race that started on Decker Field with 23 obstacles.

Retired Sgt. Maj. John Burns, the coach for the three remaining National Guard teams, is pleased with his soldiers performance after losing one team to cramps just after noon on Friday.

“Overall, I think the competition is going really well and the teams have done well,” he said. “We lost a team on Friday unfortunately to some cramping and stuff like that. One of the soldiers didn’t start training with us until two, three weeks ago.”

Burns said his teams are sitting in a good position for the competition that ends Sunday. He said the team of Killian and Friedlein was expected to do well in the Spartan race. Killian was a Spartan world champion last year.

“It’s a team competition,” he said. “It’s new to the competition.”

The competition is named in honor of retired Lt. Gen. David E. Grange Jr. , a veteran of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. He spent part of the morning talking to soldiers he served with in Vietnam while looking over the competition.

“It’s always great,” the 91-year-old said of the competition. “It’s getting greater every year.”

With three women now wearing the Ranger tab, Grange said women should be learning some things about taking care of the Army in the logistics field, intelligence and training.

“I think it is great if they are going to be involved,” he said. “It’s important they know what actually goes on down in those units. I would have liked to have those two girls who graduated from the Ranger course in the 75th Rangers in the support battalion. They could be intelligence officers. I think ladies make better intelligence people than men do because they are very meticulous.”

The general said women have good memories, too.

Retired Col. Hugh Elmore, who graduated from Ranger School in January 1987, thinks about how fortunate he was to go straight through the course in 59 days. He gave some credit to a sergeant first class who pulled him to the side one day and said people were depending on him.

“You can’t fail,” he said.

During a 30-year career, Elmore said he had 13 combat deployments, which included Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan and even Mexico. He retired after leaving Iraq in 2013.

“I could not miss this,” said Elmore, who now lives in Washington. “Certain things you don’t forget.”

Bob Passanisi, one of the original members of Merrill’s Marauders, drove from New York to watch his first Ranger Competition. As a member of Merrill’s Marauders, Passanisi served with the first American troops to fight the Japanese on land in Asia during World War II. Traveling almost 1,000 miles, the soldiers marched farther on foot than any other fighting unit. Using tactics similar to modern-day Rangers, they captured the airstrip at Myitkyina, Burma, and opened up an allied supply line into Asia.

“I’m very, very proud and thankful I was able to be here and watch this,” he said. “I think the guys in competition are just out of this world. They deserve every benefit they could get.”

Compared to his days in the Army, Passanisi said soldiers today are doing the job they committed to in the military.

“In reality, it took me a lot of years before I started to think of myself as being special,” he said. “ I just felt we did our job and so do 15 million other guys. It’s mostly other people that make me feel that maybe we did something special.”

Passanisi, 91, was with Jonnie Melillo Clasen, the daughter of retired Master Sgt. Vincent Melillo who died at age 97 on Christmas Eve. Melillo of Columbus was an original member of Merrill’s Marauders.

Many Americans supporting this country should be aware of what’s going where they live, he said.

“Too many people don’t know that freedom ain’t free,” Passanisi said.

This story was originally published April 16, 2016 at 3:22 PM with the headline "Best Ranger Competition reduced to 24 teams after 17-mile road march."