The long walk to Marsjmerket: Soldiers find strength, resilience in 18+-mile ruck march

Chalk 5 expanded quickly in numbers as the morning darkness of Sept. 19 hid long lines of Soldiers with rucksacks waiting to get a number. A small team of 100th Training Division organizers had anticipated that the group of unregistered ruck marchers would likely be their largest, so they planned for the walk-ons to start last in the individually timed 18.6-mile Norwegian Foot March. Soldiers, Civilians and family members standing at the front of each line signed in or registered and weighed their rucksacks, which had to be a minimum of 25 pounds.