Rank: Captain
Years served: 8 years in Field Artillery
commissioning year: May 2010
email: nick.rackley@yale.edu
I started ROTC at Penn State Altoona in 2006 as a 4-year scholarship recipient. We trained under SFC Rickman, who inspired me to actually want to be a leader in the Army (and a Ranger), instead of just a kid trying to pay for college. I moved to main campus for my junior and senior year, and distinctly remember a lecture in 2009 where then-PMS LTC Runey warned us that President Obama had ordered a surge in Afghanistan, and we were going to be part of it. This can be filed under “obvious foreshadowing” in the story of my life.
Upon commissioning in 2010, I did a quick stint as a Gold Bar Recruiter over the summer, went to Field Artillery Officer Basic, and then immediately deployed with the 101st Airborne Division as a replacement Fire Support Officer to the violent East Paktika Province in Afghanistan. I was attached to an infantry company that was generally tasked to air assault to wherever something bad was going on. I felt completely insecure about the fact I controlled literally all of the company’s firepower. Apparently, I was good at hiding this sentiment, as the Soldiers of the company commented how confident I was calling for fire. We got in a lot of fights, and the biggest fight I got in reminded me of a STX Lane I did during an ROTC lab. A bunch of Taliban had abandoned their backpacks, and people in our patrol were loudly kicking them. I remembered the STX lane where a senior ROTC lane walker blew us up for messing with some backpacks, so I told everybody to stop messing with them. Some of the backpacks ended up having 155’s in them, and its funny for me to remark that I thought that ROTC lane was so stupid when I went through it. The moral is to take ROTC seriously, because even if it’s just senior cadets teaching you that have never been through anything… the cadre advising them have! Like any good STX lane, we got ambushed at the end of it, where I was blown up by a hand grenade and received the Purple Heart.
I deployed again with the 101st Airborne Division as a Field Artillery Platoon Leader in 2013 to what was at the time the second most remote base in Afghanistan (COP Chamkani). Although it was a highly kinetic area, we were really well prepared, and ultimately destroyed an extremely effective enemy rocket team, and their Junior Varsity Mortar team counterpart through our counter-fire. No friendly forces on our base died from enemy indirect fires that deployment, and I am a lot more proud of my meritorious Bronze Star from that deployment than I am my Purple Heart, as I know that 9/10 artillery platoons in our position wouldn’t have got the enemy fast enough.
I finally went through Ranger School after that deployment and served as a BN FSO and then Battery Commander in 3CR at Fort Hood. None of that was very interesting compared to the beginning of my career, and my (new) wife was a very reluctant fan of the military lifestyle, so I got out of the Army in 2018.