WASHINGTON — A female Army Ranger competetd for the first time in the annual Best Ranger Competition, and her two-soldier team finished the grueling three-day event over the weekend in 14th place overall.
Capt. Seth Deltenre, left, and 1st Lt. Gabrielle White, from the Maneuver Center of Excellence in Fort Benning, Ga., compete during the Malvesti obstacle course in the 2025 Best Ranger Competition on April 11 at Camp Rogers in Fort Benning.Â
First Lt. Gabrielle White, and her teammate, Capt. Seth Deltenre, were among the 16 teams that made it through the final events, where Ranger teams compete for accolades as the best of the elite military force. All together, 52 teams competed and all of the others were made up of only male soldiers.
The two Rangers on the winning team were 1st Lt. Griff Hokanson and 1st Lt. Kevin Moore — both are members of the 75th Ranger Regiment. White and Deltenre are based at the Army Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Female soldiers were not allowed to be Army Rangers until 2015, when the Army opened Ranger school to women. In August 2015, two female soldiers completed the Ranger course for the first time. Later that year, the Defense Department opened all combat jobs to women.
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Until this year, no female soldiers entered the Best Ranger Competition at Fort Benning. Soldiers participating must all be Army Rangers, and they compete in more than 30 events.
Capt. Seth Deltenre, left, and 1st Lt. Gabrielle White, from the Maneuver Center of Excellence in Fort Benning, Ga., compete in the "Run-Swim-Run" event during the 2025 Best Ranger Competition on April 11 at Victory Pond in Fort Benning.Â
According to the competition, soldiers must move more than 60 miles during the three days, with little rest. It includes helicopter missions, physical fitness tests, land navigation, weapons qualification, obstacle course and other tests.
While in previous years the Army would likely have noted the historic first in a story or press release, that won't happen this time.
Under President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the department has banned anything that touts diversity, equity and inclusion. And in the recent purge of the military's online websites and social media postings, mentions of historic firsts by women and minorities were largely eliminated.
White, 25, is a Black infantry officer assigned to the maneuver captains career course. She graduated from the Military Academy at West Point in May 2021 and completed the Ranger School in April 2022, according to Christopher Surridge, an Army spokesman.
According to the Army, 154 women graduated from the Ranger School as of January 2025.
Rangers led the way in the D-Day landings 80 years ago
Rangers on the front lines of Allied campaign
These new Ranger battalions than their conventional counterparts. While they fit under the same organizational framework, they lacked the heavier weapons and internal artillery capabilities of a standard American infantry battalion.
As the Allied campaign pushed across northern Africa and into Italy, the Rangers found themselves consistently on the front lines of the Allied advance, where fighting in prolonged conventional battles they were neither designed nor equipped for.
Rangers for D-Day
Like the rest of the D-Day force, the Rangers prepared for the operation without knowing when or where it would take place.
The newly organized 2nd and 5th Ranger battalions arrived in England in January 1944 and, alongside the more than on the British Isles, started preparing for the Normandy landings. The Rangers (pictured training with British Commandos, above), completed the murderous Commando training course in Scotland, famous for its grueling hill runs and use of live ammunition, spent weeks practicing amphibious landings along the English coastline, and scaled the towering seaside cliffs near Swanage more times .
On the fateful morning of the Normandy landings, the Ranger battalions were split into three groups with .
Task Force A, three companies led by Lt. Col. James Rudder, was assigned the most difficult mission: Pointe du Hoc. Using rocket-propelled grappling guns, rope and specialty fire ladders, the Rangers needed to climb 90 feet of sheer rock face under German fire, take the cliff top and destroy a group of 155 mm German guns overlooking the landing beaches.
Task Forces B and C, the remaining Rangers, were insurance. Depending on what happened at the cliffs, these Rangers had to land and fight across Omaha Beach and either rescue a faltering cliff assault or support the 29th Infantry Division in clearing the beach and taking the critical town of Vierville.
The fight at Pointe du Hoc
Rudder's Task Force A had a rough start: A wrong turn in their landing craft put them 30 minutes behind schedule. The 225 Rangers finally started their climb well after sunrise and were met with intense German fire from above. Many of the first men to reach the top only did so with their hands and knives – their ropes had been cut.
But 30 minutes after they started climbing, the Rangers had reached the craggy and blasted top of Pointe du Hoc. Numbering barely 70, they found no functional German guns, which had either been destroyed in pre-invasion bombardments or moved by the Germans just days before.
Landing on Omaha Beach
By the time the 800-plus Rangers of Task Forces B and C landed on Omaha Beach, they had not yet heard from the delayed cliff assault team amid the chaos of the morning's fight.
Within minutes, concentrated German machine gun fire devastated the men struggling up the beach. Nearly half of Lt. Col. Max Schneider's force were killed or wounded as they made their way onto the beach. The rest hid behind a low seawall. Brig. Gen. Norman Cota approached the gathered troops. After a short and heated discussion with Schneider, the Rangers heard Cota yell something about needing to get troops off the exposed beach.
His order became the current 75th Ranger Regiment's motto: "!" Using , the Rangers cleared a pathway through the German barbed wire, and the assault up the beach began anew.
Famously reenacted by Tom Hanks and his fellow on-screen Rangers in 1998's World War II epic "Saving Private Ryan," the Ranger attack kick-started one of the first major breakthroughs of the morning. Before long, American soldiers were face to face with German defenders and opening large gaps in the defenses on their way to taking the beach and pushing inland.
A few among many
Like most of the troops on D-Day, the men of the 2nd and 5th Rangers experienced combat for the first time on those beaches and cliffsides. They paid a heavy price for the Allied victory: who set out for Normandy were killed, wounded or missing. Overall, on the day of the invasion, with 5,000 more wounded.
The Rangers were a small part of the overall operation, but they epitomize the strength, adaptability and determination of every service member who stepped foot on those beaches, piloted those landing craft, flew air support or toiled on an off-shore warship.
Four decades after D-Day, U.S. President Ronald Reagan visited Pointe du Hoc and of the 2nd Rangers who had climbed the cliffs. He honored them – and every other young man :
"These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war."
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Rangers led the way in the D-Day landings 80 years ago
