By Spc. Angelina Tran
Alabama National Guard
FORT MOORE, Ga.— Surrounded by friends, family, mentors and peers, U.S. Army Capt. Allison Miller, a logistics officer for the Alabama National Guard’s 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne), became the first female Alabama National Guard soldier to graduate from U.S. Army Ranger School.
The ceremony, Dec 6, 2024, at Fort Moore’s Victory Pond included a demonstration of the skills the elite soldiers had been taught and tested, in addition to each graduate receiving their Ranger tab for the first time. Army Rangers hold a rare degree of tactical expertise and are considered among the U.S. military’s most proficient battlefield experts due in part to the rigorous training undergone at this school.
Miller’s dream of Ranger qualification began when she first read a similar story to her own, about the first two females that went through Ranger School.
“It was shortly after I joined the Army,” Miller said, “in the summer of 2015… It was 1st Lt. Shaye Haver and Capt. Kristen Griest, I was reading and following their story. It really inspired me to give it a shot, that it is something manageable to do.”
Col. Steven Witherington, Miller’s former administrative officer in the 20th Special Forces Group support battalion, attended the graduation ceremony and said he was impressed by her attitude from day one.
“When she first applied to come into the Group Support Battalion, she was against a stack of about nine candidates for one position,” he said.
“Her resume stood out and during the interview, she just nailed everything. She had the right temperament, the right drive, the right attitude, the right dreams, the right background, and she spoke for herself,” Witherington said. “Since that time, she has only continued to strive for excellence, pushing the boundaries on everything that traditionally has been a man’s only world and proven to the Alabama Guard and also the U.S. Army; that it is not just for men to be strong, lethal and contribute to combat arms, but it can also be done by the ladies as well.”
Lt. Col. Charles Dillbeck, another former commander who attended, expressed how determined Miller was to achieve her dream.
“She actually called me out of the blue and was very aggressive with wanting to pursue a position within the 20th Special Forces Group,” he said with a laugh. “Anyone who has the courage, the tenacity, and the mindset to call and really lay it on the line like that is definitely someone that we knew we wanted in the unit.”
The intensity of Miller’s drive to earn a shot at Ranger School—and eventually Special Forces Selection—made her a standout candidate, Dillbeck said.
“It’s one of the easiest decisions to make and you just support somebody like that and you just cultivate their needs or desires, and just work with them to make it happen,” he said.
Miller said she’d been preparing for Ranger School since 2020, which was also her final year of law school.
Miller at the same time was assigned as the unit’s first female Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems platoon commander, including leading that platoon on a successful deployment.
“She has been succeeding the entire time that we have known her in the organization and she has been an inspiration to all the other soldiers as well,” Dillbeck said. “It’s said in the Ranger Handbook, it’s not for the weak or fainthearted. When you see someone like that and see her perform, she backs it up. She trains amazingly hard…she’s out there outperforming 99% of the Army.”
Miller said her road to Ranger School was filled with tries and retries, as she took the Ranger Training Assessment Course three times before passing.
“To be 100 percent honest, the pre-ranger preparation was harder than the actual course,” she said.
Her main motivation to keep going, she said, was that every time she went, she made it further and further in the course. “It was always like a steady or a constant improvement, and just knowing that it was doable and it was manageable, it was just a matter of getting through it.”
Miller said that some elements of Ranger School are particularly difficult for someone of her small size, such as a ruck march, which required her as the team’s radio officer to carry nearly 100 pounds of additional weight through steep terrain.
“There were several days through mountain phase, I was like ‘dang, I don’t know if I’m going to make through this,’” she said. “And then I just took it one step in front of the other, one day at a time, one task at a time, and then before you know it, it’s done.”
Dillbeck credited that never-quit attitude with her success.
“It’s her mindset, just her sheer force to do these things,” he said. “I think when you have the physical capabilities, the determination, the discipline to back it up, then there is no limit to what you can achieve… I do believe that she will be our first female Green Beret.”
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