Several sources reached out to SOFREP this week to report that a female student was discovered to be pregnant while attending Ranger School. The pregnancy is reportedly the result of intercourse with a male student that took place prior to the two beginning Ranger School at Fort Benning at Camp Darby which is the first of the three phase course, the other two being Mountain Phase in Dahlonega, Georgia and Florida Phase at Eglin Air Force Base. The pregnancy was not discovered until mountain phase.

The male student is currently continuing the course, while the female student had to be released and will hopefully have another chance to attend at a later date.

The Army would not confirm or deny this information when contacted by SOFREP. Ben Garret, the spokesman for the Maneuver Center of Excellence told us:

Ranger Class 07-18 began on May 20, 2018, and is scheduled to graduate on July 20, 2018. There were 359 students who reported for the first day of the class and, after the class progressed to Camp Darby, 112 recycle students joined the class. Currently, there are 234 students in the class. Students have been relieved from Ranger Class 07-18 for the following reasons: 138 students did not meet the standards in the Ranger Assessment Phase, 97 students did not pass academic requirements, six students were dismissed for administrative reasons, and 10 students were dropped from the course for medical reasons. Details about academic, administrative and medical releases are personal in nature and protected by the Privacy Act and HIPPA.”

Citing privacy concerns appears to be the Army’s way of avoiding questions that it does not want to answer as this was also the case when we recently asked for an official comment on Spenser Rapone‘s Other Than Honorable discharge from the military.

Ranger School is reputed to be the toughest course in the Army and as a combat leadership course, it was only open to men until 2015 when women could begin to apply. The decision to allow women to attend the school was controversial within the Ranger Training Brigade and within the Infantry in general. Since that time 12 female students have graduated the school and earned their Ranger tab.

*CORRECTION: an earlier version of this article inaccurately stated that the Ranger School student in question became pregnant while attending the school and that her boyfriend was dropped from the course.  The article has been subsequently updated to correct these mistakes.

Lead image courtesy of DVIDs.