CSM (R) Dan Ridgeway

Command Sergeant Major (Retired) Dan Ridgeway sat down with me for Heroes Live.

Upstate New York. Fifty miles north of Syracuse. Snider Road. Grandfather jumped Sicily with the 504. Father, 11th Airborne, Germany. Brother, 101st. Three goals: paratrooper, scuba, guitar.

He broke his back falling out of a tree raccoon hunting at eleven. Shoulder. Collarbone. Foot. Water moccasin. A .22 in the knee. The Army still took him at eighteen. He wanted artillery at Bragg. They gave him a Vulcan because of the back.

Korea, eighty-one and eighty-two. Camp Hovey. Camp Casey. Team Spirit. A fistfight that put him on a thirteen-day boat home. He reenlisted the day before ETS.

Ten years to get airborne. Jump school late eighty-nine. Missed Panama. He said everything happens for a reason. Jumpmaster. 459 on JMPI. One minor. A planted foreign object. Most rewarding course of his life.

Platoon sergeant. 504. Best Vulcan squad in Germany. Sub-thirteen two-mile. Sergeant Major Academy. Then CSM of 3-4 ADA, 2001 to 2003. He fought for that seat so the airborne expertise stayed in the battalion. I’d say being command sergeant major of Third of the Fourth. It does not get better than that.

His son is a fourth-generation paratrooper. Drone pilot. Alaska. Wings earned. Dan left ninety percent of himself in the Army. Gator hunting now. Scuba. A python in the Everglades. Silver lining type.

Battalion, pants dismissed. Sky Striker 9 out. Thank you, Sergeant Major. That is why we hit record. Get the story on tape before we are too old or too sick to tell it.