After he graduated from West Point, Walt had his heart set on being an Air Force pilot. But he failed the eye exam. It was a huge disappointment when he wasn’t allowed to fly, and he had to settle for going into the Army. Months later, he found out that his vision had improved considerably. He had just been suffering eyestrain from all the studying, and it disappeared when he was away from the books. But God used this disappointment with the eye test to change the course of Walt’s life. Naturally, he couldn’t see through the disappointment into the future, to see how God would use him in the Army and prepare him to serve Him in a different capacity.
Fresh out of West Point, Walt went to Fort Benning in western Georgia and learned to be a paratrooper—to jump out of a plane in full fighting gear with a parachute on his back. He started out jumping off thirty-four-foot towers with a harness attached to him. He learned the crucial tuck position so that he wouldn’t get whiplash when he jumped out of a plane and the winds hit him at one hundred miles an hour. But that was an easy course compared to what followed.
Next he went to Ranger School. There Walt learned hand-to-hand combat and went through challenging obstacle courses. The Rangers are the Army’s most elite, trained to act and react effectively under intense combat stress. The goal of Ranger School is to develop leaders who are mentally and physically tough and self-disciplined. Surrender is not a word in the Ranger vocabulary. The training is so realistic that a trainee might lose his life. Several rangers drowned during training a year after Walt was there.
Whenever a dangerous mission needs to be accomplished swiftly, the Army calls on the Rangers. A Ranger mission is typically behind enemy lines. It is obviously dangerous and might involve raids, ambushes, prisoner snatches, or disrupting enemy communications and supplies. The classic WWII Ranger mission was to scale the cliffs of Normandy and knock out guns that would be firing on the Allied landing craft.
After the classroom training came the jungle phase and then the mountain phase of Ranger School. For the jungle phase, they went to northern Florida to learn how to fight and survive under harsh conditions. It was winter and temperatures were sometimes below freezing. Walt got an average of two hours of sleep a night and half a meal a day during the three-week jungle phase. Rangers had to function far beyond their natural stamina and abilities.
During the jungle phase, Rangers learned to cross rivers using a special technique. Each six-man team picked its best swimmer to cross the river with a rope tied around his waist. He found the tallest, sturdiest tree and tied the rope as high as he could. Then the men on the other shore pulled the rope tight and tied it around another tree. These team members then “monkeywalked” across the rope, carrying the swimmer’s clothes and weapons to him.
Walt, unfortunately for him, was the best swimmer of his team. He had swum competitively at West Point and had turned down an opportunity to train with the Olympic team in the Pentathlon event. But right now, northern Florida was experiencing a sudden cold spell, and the wind-chill temperature was seventeen degrees. Standing in front of the swiftly flowing Yellow River, he suddenly wished he weren’t such a good swimmer.
It was an exhausting swim as he bucked the current and hauled the rope, but he completed it successfully. His only comfort was knowing that one of his teammates would do the return swim when it came time to repeat the technique back across the river.
But when the time came, all his teammates insisted they couldn’t make the swim. “I’m no good, Walt. I’d never make it,” they all said. So again, Walt started swimming across the Yellow River—believing he would probably be killed.
By this time, he had been in the freezing water for five hours, and he was overcome by the cold current and exhaustion. He was swept down river where another team was doing the same drill. This is it, he thought. I’m going to die. But at that moment he saw the other team’s rope. He reached up, grabbed it, and slowly worked his way to shore.
An instructor, immaculately dressed, was standing on the shore, waiting to chew him out for doing the drill incorrectly. As Walt stood shaking in the freezing water, relieved to be alive, the instructor yelled, “Ranger, stop shivering! It’s all in your mind!”