Meet the women making Army Ranger history

When Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver receive their Ranger tabs, it will be "a monumental and joyous occasion" for them and the other 94 students graduating with them, a family statement issued Wednesday said.

Griest, of Connecticut, is an Airborne-qualified military police officer. Haver, a Texas resident, is an Apache helicopter pilot.

"Clearly, these two soldiers are trailblazers," Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told reporters. " And after all, that's what it means to be a Ranger. Rangers lead the way."

'Awesome to be a part of history'

The two women, who have been hailed as pioneers for passing the course in the first year the Army has opened it to women on a trial basis, spoke publicly about their achievement with modesty at a news conference Wednesday.

"We felt like we were contributing as much as the men, and we felt that they they felt that way, too," Griest said.

The pressure of paving the way for future generations was not lost on her, she said.

"For me, the biggest accomplishment was that it was a goal I had for so long," Griest said. "It was always just about trying to get the best training that the Army can offer us."

Haver said it was "definitely awesome to be part of history."

The women in her class "came to Ranger school as skeptics, with our guards up, just in case of the haters and naysayers, but we didn't come with a chip on our shoulder with anything to prove," Haver said.

She added, "I think the battles that we won were individual. ... We were kind of winning hearts and minds as we went."

Some of their male classmates said the two women at various points in the course were the only ones to volunteer to take on heavy weight of their male counterparts.

"You're way too tired and way too hungry to really honestly care," one soldier said of the female classmates. "At the end of the day everyone was a Ranger."

Major Gen. Austin S. Miller, commanding general of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, described the two female soldiers as "physically and mentally very capable" and said the standards of the course were not changed.

"We shown that it's not exclusively a male domain here," he said.

There's no question they've earned the tabs that will be pinned on them.

(CNN)