US Army captain becomes first female nurse to graduate from the Army’s elite Ranger Course

For US Army Capt. Molly Murphy, the hardest part of the Army’s grueling Ranger Course was the very first day.

For US Army Capt. Molly Murphy, the hardest part of the Army’s grueling Ranger Course was the very first day. “I did not sleep at all the night before, I was so scared, way in over my head,” she told CNN. Murphy, who currently works as a pediatric intensive care unit nurse at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, graduated from Ranger School on July 19, becoming the first female Army nurse to ever complete the course. Over roughly 60 days of the school the Army hails as its “toughest course,” students “train to exhaustion,” completing arduous physical and mental exercises across three intense phases, taking them from the mountainous terrain of Georgia to the swampy conditions in Florida. As of Wednesday, 143 women have graduated from the US Army Ranger Course, also called Ranger School, since the first women graduated in 2015, the Army told CNN. Murphy’s accomplishment is all the more notable given her nursing background, which stood in stark contrast to the majority of her Ranger School counterparts who served in combat. “I was like, ‘I did these tactics eight years ago at ROTC, and I thought I would never hear the word “ambush” ever again, I am so lost,’” Murphy recalled, laughing. “But I’m a very good note taker, super type-A, you know, like any critical care nurse is. And so I was just writing everything anyone said down, and I had this, like, crazy notebook that the boys would flip through whenever they were freaking out.”