Culture: The Big External Influence 61
the newbies he entered training with, and how and why the Ranger
culture submerged when they were on duty:
The first day I got to my Ranger unit, I was with a
group of people who were “home.” Up until that point, I
was in training, so I was always carrying my bags with me.
I didn’t have much in the way of personal clothing—maybe
one pair of jeans and a T-shirt. But these guys who had
been in the Ranger unit for so long had settled in and made
a home, with clothing and other personal items. I looked
around and there was a guy in a cowboy hat, another one
in biker leathers, one guy looked like a preppie from back
East, another had on a T-shirt picturing a heavy metal band,
another guy came across as a hillbilly. They spent their off
hours doing wildly different things. Socially, they didn’t pre-
tend to have anything in common. I was dumbfounded by
the differences between them.
Though these differences were sharp, they became
irrelevant when we were on a mission. When we put on
our Ranger uniform and beret and heard Captain Thomas
say, “This is your objective,” we were a team.
Ranger training and culture.. .translate into patterns
that are more focused on practical, measurable outcomes...
Because culture involves choice, a person can suddenly change
his body language in response to culture shock. Part of the change
may be mimicking what appears to be accepted gestures, and part
of it may be subduing what comes naturally because it seems out of
place. Take for instance the habit of crossing the legs to make