1st Lt. Mackenzie Corcoran, assigned to the 29th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 25th Infantry Division, poses with her Jungle, Sapper and Ranger certificates at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, June 6, 2024. (Johanna Pullum/U.S. Army)
FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii — In 1st Lt. Mackenzie Corcoran’s successful quest to become triple-tabbed by completing the Army’s challenging Jungle, Sapper and Ranger courses, she banished one thought from her mind.
“Once you start, you can never let quitting enter your brain,” the Hawaii-based combat engineer told Stars and Stripes in a Sept. 4 phone interview.
“You can never think about ‘quit’ because then it’s gonna always be there and it’s always gonna be on your mind, the thought of quitting,” she said.
Corcoran graduated from the formidable 62-day Ranger School in March. That followed the earlier completion of the daunting 28-day Sapper Leader Course at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., and the two-week Jungle Operations Training Course run by the 25th Infantry Division’s Lightning Academy at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
The tab trifecta places the 25-year-old soldier in rarefied air.
Corcoran is the 135th woman to earn a Ranger tab and only the 8th woman to be double tabbed with Ranger and Sapper, according to an Aug. 23 Army news release. The Army did not clarify the number of soldiers who have earned all three tabs, but the total is doubtlessly minute.
The Army allows only four elite service tabs to be worn on uniforms: Sapper, Ranger, Special Forces and President’s Hundred tabs.
Soldiers who have earned the Jungle tab can wear it only while assigned to Army units in the Pacific.
‘Classic Army brat’
Earning the tri-tabs was a curious accomplishment for someone who grew up wanting anything else but a life in the military — despite having an Army father and Air Force grandfather.
“I did not want to join the military at all, because, you know, the classic Army brat, I hated moving, hated leaving friends and stuff,” Corcoran said.
Then, the summer before her senior year of high school, she had an epiphany of sorts, realizing she needed the kind of structure and motivation found in the military.
“I think I could probably be the laziest person in the world if I wanted to, but I love that the Army makes me get up every morning and work out and do pushups and run,” she said.
Corcoran’s mother encouraged her to apply for an ROTC scholarship for college, and she ended up attending William and Mary in Virginia where she majored in chemistry.
For the first few years of college, she was “fully set” on going into the Army’s Medical Service Corp but changed her mind after a trip to Argentina during the summer of her junior year through the Army’s Cultural Understanding and Leadership Program for ROTC cadets, she said.
There, Corcoran rubbed shoulders with Army engineers, who clued her in that the field was not just for construction engineers but also “combat engineers who actually are blowing things up and working with the infantry side by side and stuff like that,” she said.
She was sold on the field and pursued it after being commissioned in May 2021.
‘I would never quit’
Corcoran was assigned to the 29th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks in January 2022. Within a week of arriving, she was given the opportunity to attend the Jungle school.
She jumped at the chance, saying “I’ve always been a big proponent of doing hard things.”
The training instilled in her the confidence that she could complete the much lengthier and more arduous sapper school, Corcoran said.
“You can definitely do more than you think you can,” she said of the training she experienced. “And so that’s what I love about those schools. It tests you as a person and who you are deep down to your core if you’re going to be that leader that people need.”
Corcoran regards the Sapper school as more difficult than the Ranger course.
Sapper training included seven days in the field patrolling during which soldiers were given only 60 minutes every 24 hours for sleeping or eating.
“You get two MREs, but you have maybe seven minutes to eat both of them,” she said.
“You know how long it takes — when your hands are cold, especially — to just open an MRE and eat it?” she said. “And then you’re trying to also maybe squeeze some sleep in there, maybe 20 minutes at most.”
Corcoran’s low point came during one of those rest periods as she sat beside a fellow soldier under a poncho as rain poured down.
“I want to quit,” the poncho mate confessed to Corcoran.
“And I was like, ‘No, we’re not quitting. You know, we’re three days away [from finishing].’
“I knew I would never quit,” she said.” I would be there as long as I needed to in order to get the tab. I wanted to show myself that I could do this.”
Your own biggest advocate
Rain also featured in her low point at Ranger school, where the cadre of soldiers huddled for three hours in pouring rain in utter darkness as they awaited the lightning to pass.
“It’s always the weather; the weather’s gonna dictate everyone’s mood,” she said.
Corcoran would like to serve in the airborne community in the near future, perhaps at Fort Liberty in North Carolina.
She maintains a philosophy that any young soldier can achieve what she wants by being her own biggest advocate.
“Whatever you want, put your mind to it, but know that you’re going to have to work yourself towards it, essentially,” she said. “No one’s going to give it to you.”
