Two women have passed Ranger School and are scheduled to graduate at Fort Benning on Friday morning, making them the first female soldiers to earn the coveted Ranger tab and complete the most difficult training the U.S. Army offers, it was announced late Monday.

The Army has yet to identify the two women, who are both graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A third woman, also a West Point grad, is currently in the mountain phase of Ranger School.

Sue Fulton graduated in 1980 in the first West Point class to include women. She said a classmate, Lillian Pfluke, petitioned the Secretary of the Army to be allowed to attempt Ranger School in the 1980s and was denied.

“Almost 40 years after women entered West Point, women have been allowed to prove they have the stuff to be combat leaders, and they succeeded,” said Fulton, now the chairperson of the West Point Board of Visitors, an oversight board that reports to President Barack Obama. “For me and for many women graduates, this is a powerful moment — we are so grateful to these extraordinary women for their achievement.

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“They have validated the principle that every soldier should be allowed to prove themselves based on their abilities rather than their gender — and we salute these two women, along with the third woman still in the mountain phase, along with every soldier who has taken on the challenge to become an Army Ranger.”

Passing Ranger school does not automatically mean the women will be allowed to serve in one of the Army’s three elite Ranger battalions, including one at Fort Benning. In fact, many male soldiers who wear the Ranger tab on their uniforms never actually serve in one of the three Ranger battalions.

Even soldiers with a Ranger tab must enter the Ranger Selection and Assessment Program to earn the right to wear the scroll of a Ranger regiment.

Currently, women are not allowed to serve as special operations, infantry or armor forces, which are considered the most dangerous combat jobs. They are, however, allowed to serve in a number of support jobs such as medics, military police and intelligence officers that are sometimes attached to combat brigades.

In 2012, when then Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno was pondering whether to open Ranger School to women, he said his commanders were looking at whether the Army should open up infantry and armor jobs to women.

Ralph Puckett, 89, a member of the Ranger Hall of Fame who says he has “that Ranger tab tattooed on my heart,” told the Ledger-Enquirer in 2014 he’d had numerous conversations with non-commissioned officers in Fort Benning’s 75th Ranger Regiment about the possibility of women joining their ranks.

“Everyone,” Puckett said, “individually answered, ‘Sir, it’s OK with me, if they maintain standards.’”

Col. David G. Fivecoat, commander of the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade based at Fort Benning, has been the officer charged with overseeing the first class to include women. He says he’s insisted throughout the process that the difficult standards not be lowered in any way to make it easier for women to pass the course.

“All the women did the exact same thing as their male counterparts,” Fivecoat said during the Florida swamp phase.

The two women slated for Friday’s Ranger graduation were among 400 soldiers, including 20 women, selected to start Ranger School on April 19. It was the first Ranger class in Army history to include female candidates.

Exactly 67 percent of that class — 251 men and 17 women — have been dropped from Ranger School so far.

And only 97 from that class — all men — have graduated and earned their Ranger tab. Of those 97 soldiers who’ve already earned their Ranger tabs, just 37 of them went straight through without having to recycle or repeat a phase. Those 37 graduated on June 15.

In the first class to admit women, one of the 20 women was an administrative drop and didn’t start training. The other 19 women reported for the physical assessment and after the first week, which included a number of mandatory requirements including a 12-mile march carrying a 50-pound ruck sack in under three hours, the number of women was cut to eight.

Those eight female soldiers failed the first patrol phase at Camp Darby on Fort Benning and were offered an opportunity to recycle or repeat the phase. All eight failed the Camp Darby patrol phase for a second time in late May.

The Army announced on May 29 that five of the eight women were being dropped and the remaining three had accepted an offer to start the course over from the beginning.

Two male soldiers received the same invitation and decided to go home.

That changed the game, Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade Command Sgt, Maj. Curtis Arnold said.

“By accepting the Day 1 recycle, they absolutely validated their place here,” Arnold said. “This is tough, physically and mentally demanding training, and a soldier has to earn that Ranger tab. ... What it said was they were here to earn it, that this was not a sideshow and there was not an agenda.”