Free My Men are My Heroes by Nathaniel R. Helms

that many soldiers argue is the toughest training course in the Army. Kasal was selected from his battalion for the assignment for his hard work.
    â€œRanger School impressed me mostly because all the people I saw had problems,” Kasal says. “SEALs had a high dropout rate. Navy SEALs don’t do well at Ranger School. They think they are the best and when they get there, they have a problem keeping their egos in check. They are not team players and Ranger School is all about teamwork, leadership, attention to detail. That is what Marines are good at, what Rangers are good at, but SEALs aren’t. They are more individual types.
    â€œArmy Rangers wear a shoulder tab showing they are Rangers. In the Marine Corps we don’t wear anything. It is just more training, another tool to put in your toolbox. Some Marines put a Ranger tab underneath their pocket. I never did. Number one it is not regulation, and number two I am not a Ranger; I am a Marine. If I was going to wear a tab I would wear one that said I am a Marine.
    â€œThe Marines at the school formed together to support each other. For example, you are supposed to go down the ‘slide for life’ and yell ‘airborne.’ We would all yell ‘Marine Corps.’ When you do push-ups you are supposed to say, ‘One Ranger, Two Ranger.’ We would say, ‘One Marine Corps, Two Marine Corps.’ The instructors would get on us but it actually motivated us. The Ranger instructors expected that; they knew we would never forget we were Marines.”
MOUNTAIN TRAINING
    Not content with merely knowing how to sneak into places, swim, and assault and destroy the enemy from either land or sea, Kasal chose to attend the Marines’ eight-week-long Winter Mountain Leadership course in Bridgeport, California, to be a Winter Mountain Leader instructor.
    â€œWinter Mountain instructors learn scout skiing, learn how to be a skiing instructor for a unit. You learn winter survival, winterbivouacs, and tactics, so if your unit ever deploys to a winter mountain environment, you can be the expert,” he says. “When I got there I had a hard time learning to ski. They told me I was going to be kicked out, sent back without graduating unless I learned how to ski. I tried real hard and became one of the best skiers there.”
    The following August and September, Kasal took the Summer Mountain Leader course. He thought it was a little bit easier because it wasn’t so cold. He learned rappelling, rock climbing, assault mountain climbing, medevacs, and gorge crossing.
    â€œAssault climbing is where you start at the bottom of the cliff and are the lead climber,” he says. “You climb first setting up the ropes. When you get to the very top, you anchor the rope off so the other Marines will have a rope to use. I loved doing that.”
    The school’s finale was glacier crossing and ice climbing on 14,000-foot Mount Shasta. Kasal had to march back down the mountain to graduate.
    From mountain climbing school, he returned to Pendleton to Delta Co., 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, the famed “China” Marines of old. Kasal was the platoon sergeant of 2d Plt., D Co., 1/4, a sergeant E-5 holding a staff sergeant’s position. Things remained essentially the same until 1/4’s WESTPAC deployment in August 1990. Although Marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors were dying in minor skirmishes and quick, testy firefights all over the world, the United States was officially at peace.
DESERT STORM
    On June 20, 1990, the 13th MEU and Battalion Landing Team (BLT) 1/4 deployed for a routine WESTPAC training in the Philippines when Saddam Hussein decided to send his minions for Kuwait’s oil. The battalion got the word almost as soon as President George H. W Bush declared Hussein’s invasion would never stand.
    â€œWe were training in the jungle when we got a call to return to the ship,” Kasal says. “When we pulled