Ranger tab with an Iceberg Device

The Army has a way of deciding what you’re good at before you ever get a vote. One Thanksgiving, our command sergeant major decided he wanted a Ranger scroll carved out of ice for the battalion dinner. Nobody knew why, and nobody wanted the job. I was the newest private, which made me the perfect candidate.

Two days later I was on a plane to Fresno, California, to attend something called the Academy of Ice Carving and Design. I thought it was a prank. It wasn’t. The place was real: a full workshop stocked with chainsaws, chisels, and instructors who treated frozen water like marble.

For forty-eight hours I lived in a blur of cold air, loud tools, and bad decisions. I learned just enough to be dangerous, how to trace a pattern, how to keep the surface from fogging, how to move a 300-pound block without losing a foot. My hands were nicked, my ego slightly inflated, and my liver already negotiating surrender.

On my last night in town, I went to a bar with a few locals. Fresno nightlife wasn’t exactly Times Square, but after two days in a freezer, neon lights and jukebox country felt like Vegas. I met a girl who said she’d never met a soldier who could sculpt. She laughed when I told her the Army had made me an artist. We talked, drank too much, and I remember her saying she was that kind of girl. Later she texted that she was outside my hotel door.

I saw the messages the next morning. Whatever version of me she hoped to meet was already sleeping soundly in the arms of Jim Beam. My head felt like a crew-served live-fire range, and I still had to produce a perfect Ranger scroll out of ice by noon.

I stumbled into the shop, hands shaking, eyes half-shut, and started hacking away at the block. My breath fogged the air; my hangover fogged everything else. Somehow, muscle memory and stubborn pride took over. When I finally stepped back, the scroll gleamed under the fluorescent lights, clean lines, perfect curve, a little blood frozen near the edge for authenticity.

The instructors clapped. I tried not to vomit.

Back at battalion, I thought the nightmare was over. Then they told me to make another one for the real event. No fancy tools this time, just a chainsaw, one chisel, and a sarcastic “good luck.” I was rewarded a case of beer, and I did what Rangers do: adapt, improvise, swear under my breath… got drunk again, sliced my hand open on a chainsaw, and still finished the job.

At dinner, the command sergeant major stood behind his gleaming ice scroll like it was the Ark of the Covenant. He nodded once and said, “Outstanding.” That was it. Weeks of frostbite, blood, and bourbon distilled into one syllable.

Looking back, it’s still one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever been asked to do, and I’ve jumped out of planes in the dark for a living. But that’s the Army for you. One minute you’re training to close with and destroy the enemy; the next, you’re attending art school in Fresno because someone in charge wants to show off at Thanksgiving.

I used to think those detours were meaningless. Now I see them as the real test: doing something you’ve never done, hungover, under pressure, with zero context and making it work anyway.

So yes, I earned my Ranger tab. But somewhere in the fine print, there’s also an iceberg device.

RLTW. Sometimes it’s the wrong way, but we’re damn good at course correction.