06/03/2026
Fielding a new generation of excellence! 🪖🎖️🇺🇸
Army Pfc. Mace Veit knew completing four of the Army’s most distinguished training courses in less than six months, including the rigors of Ranger School, would be tough.
Constant testing. Brutal fitness standards. Lack of sleep. He knew he was ready for all that.
What Veit didn’t expect was the growing number of funny looks he’d get from fellow soldiers as he moved from school to school.
“I definitely have explained the path of my career, I guess you could say, more times than I can count, to students and instructors,” Veit told Task & Purpose this week, laughing slightly at his unusual position. “It is pretty crazy, because a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, how’d you get all these schools? I’ve been waiting 10 years to get this one’ or something.”
On May 22nd, Veit graduated from Pathfinder School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and, as a 19-year-old private first class, he will pinnned on his third hard-to-get skill badge — and that’s on top of his Ranger tab.
After graduating high school a year ago, Veit has been to boot camp and advanced individual training as a cavalry scout (where he was an honor graduate), and then beginning in January, he attended Ranger School, Airborne Jump School, Air Assault, and Pathfinder.
Notably, Veit passed all of Ranger School’s notoriously taxing phases on his first try, a 62-day speed run managed by less than 20% of students who attempt the course.
