Colombian Lancero
School Roots

La Escuela Militar de Lanceros (The Lancero School) in Colombia is the most-respected Ranger Course in Latin America since its inception in 1956. The Lancero School, like the U.S. Army Ranger School, provides junior officers and enlisted men with the skills and attributes needed to be strong tactical leaders throughout the Colombian Army and in the Lancero Group that does special reconnaissance and direct action missions for the Army divisions. The Lancero badge is a mark of distinction worn by military leaders throughout the Americas.

The purpose of this article is to explain why and how two U.S. Army Ranger officers, initially on temporary duty (TDY), developed the Lancero training program for the Colombian Army in the mid-1950s. That initiative between Colombia and the United States resulted in one of the longest one-on-one professional military relationships. It ranks in the top three (duration) Military Professional Exchange Programs (short term PEP Program) in the U.S. Army, and has done more to instill professionalism in the Colombian Army than has any security assistance program. However, even the “can-do” Captain Ralph Puckett Jr. was not sure that he could get a Ranger course “off the ground” after his first six months in Colombia.1

As a Second and First Lieutenant, Ralph Puckett, U.S. Military Academy, Class of 1949, recruited, organized, trained, and led the Eighth U.S. Army (EUSA) Ranger Company in combat. It was the first Ranger Company to fight in the Korean War. Lieutenant Puckett was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroic actions against the Chinese on 25–26 November 1950. After his combat tour Captain Puckett served in all phases of the Ranger Training Program at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the Mountain (Dahlonega, Georgia) and Florida (Eglin Air Force Base) Camps. These assignments prepared him for duties in the 65th Infantry Regimental Combat Team (RCT) in Puerto Rico, and his subsequent mission to establish a “Ranger” training program in Colombia in 1955.2

The 65th Infantry officers, NCOs, and soldiers of the traditionally Puerto Rican unit were being integrated into units throughout the U.S. Army in the post–Korean War days. The regiment was also losing some outstanding, combat-experienced NCOs and soldiers as the Puerto Rican “insulares” were replaced by U.S. soldiers referred to as “continentales.” The 65th Regimental commander ordered Puckett to establish two training programs to prevent degradation of combat readiness. One was an Orientation School [basic combat training (BCT) refresher course] for incoming privates and privates first class. The other was an NCO Academy. The Academy’s five-week course, which Puckett patterned after the Ranger School, was designed to prepare soldiers to become NCOs and improve the skills and leadership of junior NCOs.3

At the same time, the Colombian Army generals were selecting five lieutenants to attend airborne training and Ranger School at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning and the U.S. Army Mission in Bogotá was requesting an American Ranger–qualified officer for a six-month temporary duty (TDY) assignment to Colombia. Puckett was selected for the assignment shortly after the first class graduated from the NCO Academy.4

On the way to Colombia, Puckett spent a few days at the U.S. Army Caribbean Jungle Warfare Training Center in Panama. He needed to establish rapport, explain his mission, assess requirements for suitable training areas, collect relevant lesson plans, and the current program of instruction (POI).5 Since no U.S. Army School of the Americas existed, all training material was in English and Spanish-English military dictionaries simply did not exist.

Colonel Robert G. Turner, the U.S. Army Mission commander, had recently been Director of the Weapons Department at the Infantry School. Turner explained the mission to CPT Puckett. According to the Colombian president, Lieutenant General (LTG) Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, Ranger training was “to develop to the maximum, by practical field training, the potential for military command and leadership of selected company-grade officers and noncommissioned officers throughout the Army in order to improve the leadership and training capabilities of all units.”6

“He did that in ten minutes. Then, Turner said, ‘Get to work.’ The Colombian officers that were to help me were months away from finishing Ranger School. Nothing was mentioned about a training site. That’s when I realized that once again it was up to me to make it happen … much like the EUSA Ranger Company mission in Korea,” recalled Puckett. “It quickly became apparent that logistical support was going to be a problem. Although the president, General Rojas Pinilla, was enthusiastic about the training, the senior Army leaders at the time were not. A twelve-week POI [six weeks of individual Ranger tactical skills training followed by six weeks of unit training in the mountains and jungle (three weeks of each)] was whittled down to eleven weeks. But, the real challenge was a training site. A U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Mathew Santino and I spent several weeks roaming the country to look at possible locations for the new school.”7

General Rojas Pinilla ultimately decided on a flat bluff above Melgar, on the Río Sumapaz, about a hundred and twenty kilometers south of Bogotá. He was familiar with the area because his family had a coffee finca (plantation) nearby. In 1958, the Batallón Colombia (veterans of Korea) relocated from Bogotá to the new base being established at Tolemaida. The commander of the Colombian Army Schools Brigade, Brigadier General (BG) Rafael Navas Pardo, selected Major Hernando Bernal to command their Ranger School. This was unusual because all other military schools were headed by colonels at the time. Colonel Turner, the Army Mission commander, realized the significance of this maneuver. The Army was putting the onus for getting the school “up and running” on the Americans, namely CPT Puckett. While it was a priority for the president, General Rojas Pinilla, it was not for a Colombian Army that consisted of only eight to ten battalions at the time. Hence, one of the five Colombian lieutenants selected for parachute training and Ranger School at Fort Benning to cadre the new school was “milked off” by Lieutenant General Pedro A. Muñoz, Colombian Army commander, to serve as his aide-de-camp. By then, Puckett was already into his second six months of TDY in Colombia.

Once the training site was fixed, CPT Puckett compiled a list of equipment needed. “It had everything from machine guns to toilet paper. We had literally nothing. I went to the Army Mission in Bogotá every week to ‘beg, borrow, and steal’ necessities—and to insure that the U.S. Military Advisory Assistance Group (MAAG Colombia) requisitioned equipment from the U.S. Army in the Canal Zone and to solicit support from the Colombian Army,” remembered Puckett. “When the four Ranger-qualified Colombian lieutenants arrived, our focus became the development of the POI, lesson plans, training sites, field exercise objectives, rehearsals—all those things required to set up a school from nothing. I cannot say that we concentrated on one thing. Impossible as it sounds, we focused on everything. In the midst of the frenzy to get the school established attitudes changed,” recalled Puckett.8

“In the beginning the Colombian lieutenants often said, ‘We can’t do this or that because we are poor. We do not have the training facilities, sites, and aids that Fort Benning has.’ Their time at Fort Benning had spoiled them. I countered the excuses by suggesting ‘field expedients.’ They started using their imagination and became innovative. We had no bleachers for classes. After building up a large mound of dirt, they terraced and packed it down, and then sodded it with grass to prevent erosion. We didn’t have sawdust to cushion the ground in the hand-to-hand combat pit so they improvised with corn husks. They made stick figures from tree limbs, dressed them in old uniforms, and stuffed them with corn husks (like scarecrows) to serve as dummies for the bayonet assault course. I was so proud of them and their ingenious solutions. This attitudinal change just seemed to happen all of a sudden. They began to live what is today the Lancero motto, ‘Para los Lanceros no existe la palabra ‘imposible,’ (for Lanceros the word ‘impossible’ does not exist),” said CPT Puckett.9

After nine months of “pushing and pulling,” Major Bernal and the four instructors were ready to conduct a cadre training course with twelve lieutenants and sergeants to validate the eleven-week program of instruction. The American Ranger captain attended all training and accompanied the reconnaissance and combat training patrols into the mountains and jungle. Since quasi-guerrilla bandit groups roamed the rural areas, the Batallón Colombia aggressors carried live ammunition.

Just before classes began, Puckett solicited an appropriate Colombian name for their course from the Ranger-qualified lieutenants and sought ideas for a distinctive badge. Rather than copy the U.S. Army Ranger name and insignia, he emphasized the need to make the program truly Colombian. He felt that calling it the Colombian Army Ranger School was too American. Likewise, Commando was too British. Unaccustomed to being asked for advice or input, the Colombian cadre lieutenants provided little help. Nonplussed, the self-starting Ranger turned to the U.S. Army awards regulation for ideas.

By modifying the Combat Infantryman Badge (CIB) he came up with an acceptable design. After providing some history on American Rangers and explaining their methods of small unit tactics and training, Puckett asked an English language instructor at the War College for help. “Did Colombia have any comparable forces in its history?” Indeed, they had. The elite cavalrymen in General Simón Bolivar’s army during the South American wars of independence from Spain were the Lanceros from Colombia. They had cleared the mountain passes in the Andes for “El Liberador” (the Liberator). MAJ Bernal, the school commandant, agreed with Puckett’s ideas and recommendations and carried them to Bogotá. In the meantime, since the course name was linked to the ancient cavalry weapon, Puckett got to work on the bayonet assault course—where infantrymen wielding rifle-mounted bayonets practiced using their weapons like old-fashioned ground lancers, which they did regularly in Korea. From the specifications for an obstacle course in a U.S. Army Engineer manual they built the site.10

The underlying principle of Lancero instruction was based on the premise that to learn, one must do. From “Day One” of the course until graduation, Lancero students would “do, do, do.” Practical exercises were planned on terrain similar to where the guerrillas operated—the jungle, the wet plains (llanos), and the mountains. Mental and physical stress from continual observation and evaluation accompanied the twelve- to fourteen-hour daily training days. Peer ratings maintained a competitive spirit and identified natural leaders.11

During the first six-weeks phase the students received marksmanship training in basic infantry weapons—from the M-1 Garand rifle to light machineguns and mortars. They practiced map reading and land navigation, communications, combat formations and small unit tactics, learned troop-leading procedures and operations orders, and rotated through leadership positions while doing river crossings, mountaineering, and small boat training. Hand-to-hand combat and bayonet assault was incorporated into physical training. Survival skills, field expedient methods, demolitions training, and mortar and artillery call-for-fire techniques were rounded out with how to present classes to soldiers. Physical training (PT) started and ended every day. Students ran to instruction at a “double time” just as the Americans did in parachute training.12

Without a pause, students entered a second three-week phase of field exercises, day and night. Like the U.S. Army Ranger School “slide for life” confidence test ending in Victory Pond at Fort Benning, the Colombians installed a pulley and high wire cable to traverse the Sumapaz River from a hundred-foot cliff launch site. A second personal confidence test entailed climbing the girders of a high suspension bridge, and on command, jumping off into the same Class III level river. Daily night reconnaissance and combat patrols against Korean War veterans from the Batallón Colombia dominated the period. The final two weeks of training consisted of long-range patrols culminating in tactical exercises in the mountains and jungle. Travel was always done at night. Students established “hide sites” during the day and attacked “guerrilla” sites prepared by the cadre—the following evening.13

CPT Puckett with the twelve officers and NCOs that validated the eleven-week Lancero course POI were awarded the first Lancero badges in April 1956. Ranger CPT Ralph Puckett was “honored to be the first awarded the Lancero badge. It was pinned on by General Navas Pardo. Proud? You bet! I was pleased with what we had accomplished … but I was not satisfied. There would always be improvements to be made. But, la Escuela Militar de Lanceros had been established.”14 It had taken Puckett twelve long months of “pushing and pulling.” Fortunately, both armies recognized the value of a keeping an American Ranger officer presence at the Lancero School. CPT Puckett was replaced in Colombia by another Ranger officer from the 65th Infantry RCT.

First Lieutenant (later General) John “Jack” R. Galvin had helped Puckett establish the NCO Academy for the 65th Infantry RCT and the Antilles Command at Salinas, Puerto Rico, in 1955. While serving there, Galvin had improved his fluency in Spanish and kept abreast of CPT Puckett’s progress in Colombia. He wanted to be Puckett’s replacement at the Lancero School. By then, the Army Mission saw the merit in keeping a Ranger-qualified officer at the school. The position was changed from TDY to a two-year PCS (permanent change of station). Instead of being an advisor, 1LT Galvin became an instructor—teaching map reading, leadership, and hand-grenade skills—and accompanied Lancero student patrols as an evaluator— to share the class workload with the four Colombian lieutenants.15

“When I began to share the instructor load with the Colombian Lancero officers, we became co-equals. I then became part of the Lancero instructor team … just like being another lieutenant platoon leader in a rifle company. Because we were all bachelors during the week—living together in a farmhouse, and facing the same instructor issues—we, as peers, could discuss the quality of the POI, tactical exercises, ranges, and the realism, and solve mutual problems. Despite my Spanish, we got along well. We sat around a formica table at night, exchanging English for Spanish words, talking small unit infantry tactics and soldier skills, and sharing cultural experiences. They explained La Violencia and I talked about New York City and daily life in America because their impressions were based on movies and time spent at Fort Benning, Georgia. Eventually, I became ‘one of the guys,’” remembered General Galvin.16

The Batallón Colombia, then serving as the Presidential Guard, provided one company to serve as aggressors for the Lancero School. Galvin served as the aggressor force coordinator for the company supporting the Lancero School at Tolemaida. A good part of his time was spent promoting the Lancero program to senior Colombian officers on behalf of BG Navas Pardo, who became the padrino (sponsor/benefactor) of the school. Galvin reminded each that the Colombian Army gained effective small unit leaders, but most importantly, the example set by each Lancero infused every combat unit with the aggressive Lancero spirit, “Para los Lanceros no existe la palabra ‘imposible.”17 Another aspect of his job entailed working closely with the Army Mission in Bogotá to insure that training was supported.

Getting ammunition, equipment, and supplies was a constant battle. Because blank ammunition was critically short in the U.S. Army, innovative field expedient solutions were routine at the Lancero School. Cadre and students spent evenings carving wooden bullets to replace the copper-clad bullets for the M-1 Garand and German rifles. U.S. Air Force rubber survival boats were provided “in lieu of” engineer rubber assault boats. In the summer months, Galvin volunteered to serve at La Carrera, the summer training camp for Military Academy cadets, located in the mountains north of Bogotá. The U.S. Army Mission officers traditionally avoided duty at the equivalent to Camp Buckner for West Point. But there in the mountain camp, LT Galvin emphasized the need for a professional NCO corps, based on how important the NCO Academy in Salinas was to the 65th Infantry RCT. Without NCO training, the Lancero school was essential to developing junior officers and sergeants in the Colombian Army. His constant proselytizing for the Lancero School made LT Galvin well known throughout the Colombian military.18

Still, in two years, the chief of the Army Mission, Colonel Daniel Cheston, only visited him once at the Lancero School, shortly before the president, General Rojas Pinilla, came to the base near Melgar. Galvin introduced live-fire exercises in the final two weeks of long-range patrols. Carrying live ammunition in the field and conducting live-fire exercises instilled reality, reinforced training, and ensured the operational readiness of the Lancero students.19 By then, the graduation field exercise for the Lancero students consisted of combat patrols against local quasi-guerrilla bandits. The results from these Lancero patrols pleased the Colombian president sufficiently for him to reinforce the previous directive of BG Navas Pardo that all second lieutenants attend the course.20

When 1LT Galvin left Colombia in 1958, the Lancero School was annually producing 200 well-trained, extremely fit aggressive junior leaders for assignment to the combat units of the Colombian Army. The first permanent building had just been erected at the Tolemaida military base. By December 2005, more than 15,000 Lancero officers, sergeants, and soldiers had graduated from 290 courses. Over a hundred of these graduates were American officers and NCOs. Notwithstanding, it was still forty-five years after a U.S. State Department team recommended the formation of a 1,000-man Lancero battalion to fight insurgency and banditry, that separate Lancero companies were formed into a Lancero Group to support the Colombian Army.21

The mission to establish a Ranger program for the Colombian Army in 1955 evolved into the establishment of a U.S. Army Ranger officer exchange position at the Lancero School when it was approved by the State Department. The position became part of the Military Personnel Exchange Program (MPEP) managed by the U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, G-3/5/7, Executive Agent for the Department of Army. The Army PEP program (official short title) grew from one officer in 1944 worldwide to a peak in 1990 of 132 officers and sergeants. Today, there are 121 personnel in the Army PEP.22

Colombia now has three Army PEP personnel assigned. The Army Section Chief of the U.S. Military Group, Colombia (that replaced the MAAG, Colombia in the late 1960s), monitors two officers [a Special Forces, Ranger, and Lancero-qualified Spanish-speaking Captain at the Lancero School; a Special Forces, Ranger, and Lancero-qualified Spanish-speaking Captain trained in counter-terrorism as an advisor to the CCOPE (Comando Conjunto de Operaciónes Especiales) and the COESE (Comando de Operaciónes Especiales del Ejército), the miniature JSOC and USASOC commands; and a non-commissioned officer [a Spanish-speaking Infantry sergeant first class (SFC) that is Ranger-qualified to serve as an instructor at the Colombian Army Sergeants School (Escuela de Suboficiales)]. All three are serving two-to-three-year PCS assignments in support of the U.S. Army Security Cooperation Strategy.23 The longstanding tradition of U.S. Army Rangers and Special Forces attending Lancero School continues.

In March 2006, two U.S. Army Rangers were Lancero course students (SSG Fernando Monterossa*, Ranger Training Brigade, Fort Benning, Georgia, and SSG Jack Carney*, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Fort Lewis, Washington). CPT Roberto Goméz*, from the 7th Special Forces Group, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was serving as the Lancero PEP instructor. Today, the Lancero course is seventy-three days. Students must get at least a 70 percent rating in each phase to graduate as Lanceros. The final field test is a Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) exercise conducted in the Department of Amazonia in the llanos region of Colombia along the Ecuadoran border because it has a large Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas)] presence.24 The course standards are as high as they were in 1956, when CPT Puckett and the Colombian Army cadre class were awarded the first distinctive Lancero badges. While the roots of this fifty-year-old junior leader tactical training course contain U.S. Army Ranger blood, the Lancero program and its spirit are totally Colombian, “¡Para los Lanceros no existe la palabra ‘imposible’!”