Imagine a 100-foot cliff overlooking the English Channel on the northwestern coast of Normandy outfitted with a series of German bunkers and machine gun posts.
That’s Pointe du Hoc on D-Day in World War II.
The men who climbed that seemingly impregnable wall — with machine gun fire all around — were the men of the iconic Ranger Regiment.
The 75th Ranger Regiment is still America’s advance-strike unit today, and more than 20 of their number were in Wyoming on Monday, brought here by Pace-O-Matic for Cheyenne Frontier Days and the annual Military Monday celebration.
Military Monday is a longstanding tradition at Cheyenne Frontier Days to honor and salute the brave men and women who have fought — and are still fighting — to keep America free.
There’s a parade of military vehicles from throughout the United States, and a gigantic military flag is unfurled in the Cheyenne Frontier Days arena. Military veterans also get free tickets for the occasion, with the idea being to put a lot of veterans in the stands for the special displays and activities.
560 Years Of Military Service, 60 Years of Combat
The 22 people who served with the Ranger Regiment and attended Cheyenne Frontier Days have, between them all, 560 years of military service, including 60 years of intense combat experience.
That includes Pace-O-Matic CEO Paul Goldean, who served in the 75th Ranger Regiment for five years in the late 1980s.
Bringing in other members of the 75th Ranger Regiment to this year’s Cheyenne Frontier Days was particularly special for him because of that.
“I enlisted in 1986, which kind of ages me,” Goldean said. “And there was no conflict at the time, so I went with the Rangers because that was the best potential at the time for being in conflict.”
Pace-O-Matic, the developer of Cowboy Skill games in Wyoming, has honored many military groups over the years by bringing them to experience Cheyenne Frontier Days.
One of the reasons Goldean said he likes Cheyenne Frontier Days for that is because the event just exemplifies all things Americana, and Americana is something he and other members of the military particularly appreciate.
The motto of the 75th Ranger Regiment has been “Rangers, lead the way!” since the rangers successfully scaled and took Pointe du Hoc on D-Day in World War II. That motto is a point of pride for a unit that tends to draw warriors who feel a deep sense of commitment to America.
“They joined to protect the ideal that is America,” Goldean said. “And so, the least we can do is, with the same intensity, honor them for what they do.”
Unity Is The Way To Make America Great Again
Members of the 75th Ranger Regiment told Cowboy State Daily what they love most about Cheyenne Frontier Days has been seeing Americans come together.
“This morning, we went over to the pancake feed, and just to experience that as Americans — that unites us,” Kurt Schmid told Cowboy State Daily.
Schmid has 41 years of service with the 75th Ranger Regiment’s Army Special Forces. He was awarded a Silver Star for actions in Mogadishu Somalia in 1993 and Legion of Merit for a distinguished service career.
“That was just a great time,” Schmid said about his CFD experience. “To see people uniting together that way. That’s what America should be.”
Cheyenne Frontier Days is “pure Americana,” Kurt Fuller said.
Fuller has 35 years with the 75th Ranger Regiment, six of them in combat in Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Haiti, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is in the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame.
“Cowboys and cowgirls and military people are a natural fit,” Fuller said. “Because we share the same values. That’s what makes it so comfortable to be at a rodeo with people who are in the cowboy culture. They value honor and self-sacrifice and self-discipline and hard work. All the stuff that made us successful in the military is what makes them successful out there in that arena.”
More unity is something members of the 75th Ranger Regiment told Cowboy State Daily they would like to see more of in the country.
“It’s not about Democrats, Republicans or Independents,” Phil Pich told Cowboy State Daily.
He served with combat deployments in Panama, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq and retired as a Command Sergeant Major E-9. “It’s about the United States. We have become separated, divided, but we need to come together. If not, we won’t have a country.”
Experts In The Art Of The Quick Strike
Rangers are well-known as the advance strike team, coming in very quickly to secure an area that will be the lead point of an invasion.
“We learned to take away a country’s international airport and do it very, very quickly,” Fuller said. “We Rangers parachuted into Grenada and took the airfield at Point Salinas. They parachuted into Panama and took two airfields, and they did that simultaneously.”
That was the typical type of mission Rangers took on before 9/11. After Sept. 11, 2001, the Rangers took on a new type of bread-and-butter mission — the raid.
“That is an offensive operation,” Fuller said. “But you’re not going to stay on that piece of terrain after you’ve secured it. You’re going there for a specific purpose and then you’re leaving immediately. And the raids that we did after 9/11 were all focused on finding the key leadership of terrorist networks.”
Among the 22 members attending Cheyenne Frontier Days is one who participated in 1,500 raids, Fuller said.
“A lot of the stuff that we did, we can’t talk about,” Fuller added. “But we got very good at it.”
The Quiet Professionals
Rangers pride themselves on being the “quiet professionals,” Robert Girsham told Cowboy State Daily. He’s in the 7th Special Forces Group with the First Ranger Battalion.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to say about what they’ve seen happening to the country they love.
“We need to start shaping ourselves up a bit,” Girsham said. “And I feel especially passionate about this topic, because my fourth great-grandfather served in the Virginia Militia during the American Revolution, and I’ve had (family) who served in every war since then.”
It should be “we the people” over everything else, Kurt Schmid said.
“This polarization thing going on right now in the country is not healthy,” he said. “Politicians are spending way too much time talking about the things that divide us, instead of the things that unite us as a people.”
That’s something Kurt’s brother, Lee Schmid, who is also a Ranger, has seen happening for years. He worries that outside forces are involved in trying to deepen the divide, more so than might have happened on its own.
Regardless, though, of what the agent of polarization is, he wants to see more people coming together over common ground.
“(Polarization) makes us not what we were, not what our foundation was based on,” he said. “There are other good places in the world, but the idea of America and what it stands for — there’s no better place in the world to lead.”
Would Have Been More
Originally, there were 30-some names on Pace-O-Matic’s list to attend Cheyenne Frontier Days, but a worldwide cyber outage forced many airlines to cancel flights.
That made it impossible for some of the veterans who had been invited to get to the event this year.
Pace-O-Matic has made bringing veterans to Cheyenne Frontier Days a tradition the past four years they have been a major sponsor for Cheyenne Frontier Days.
The trip is 100% free for the veterans. Pace-O-Matic pays for their travel expenses, meals and hotel rooms, as well as tickets to the rodeo and events.
Rachel Albritton, communications specialist with Pace-O-Matic, helps coordinate bringing all the veterans in for Cheyenne Frontier Days.
“This is not just a treat for them to come and be here,” she said. “But it’s also so representative of the values that they hold dear. The reasons why they enlisted, the things that they are fighting for when they enlisted — they are still so passionate about all of that.”
Instant Kinship
Patrick Montgomery, who served as a sniper for the 75th Ranger Regiment’s First Battalion, has met a lot of Rangers he didn’t know prior to coming to Cheyenne for Frontier Days.
What struck him is the instant sense of kinship he feels with all of them, even the ones he’d never met until now. There’s just an immediate bond of brotherhood between these men because they all know what it means to be in the 75th Ranger Regiment.
“These guys offer such a unique perspective on why America is still the greatest country on Earth,” Montgomery said. “And these guys have all had perspectives in countries that most people never want to go to and have done things that — young men, back in the day, you’d look up to the guys from like World War II who climbed the cliffs at Point du Hoc, and I mean, those guys just had, pardon my French, but balls of steel.”
Listening to fellow Rangers’ stories has been the best part of the trip for him.
“Like, I wanted to come down here and just listen,” he said. “Because they offer what I think America desperately needs right now,” he said. “We’re kind of at this crux as a country right now, where a lot of people have lost faith. But I think it’s the grit that is made up in this room that will get us back in the right direction.”
Not only does he feel a sense of pride having been part of such an organization, but he feels a renewed faith in America because such men exist.
“All of these guys have done some of the same stuff out there on the battlefield,” Lee Schmid said. “But there are some guys who are picked out to get an award. A Bronze Star, Silver Star, Medal of Honor. But you talk to them, and it wasn’t about them, it was about the people to the right and left of them that got them where they are, being recognized.”
That concern for the brother to the left and the right is a rod of iron that has helped to make America great, Schmid said.
“All of these guys here are retired,” he said. “But if something happened today, all of us would volunteer to go back just to protect those ideals and what America stands for.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
