This article first appeared in the chapter "People Who Never Were - Yet Live Today" -- profiles of fictional characters -- in "The People's Almanac Presents the Twentieth Century: The Definitive Compendium of Astonishing Events, Amazing People, and Strange-But-True Facts " (Little Brown, 1995), p. 488.

In the 1980s, John Rambo became the exemplar of the American fighting man: a veritable one-man army whose can-do spirit was a shining symbol for the country's willingness to overcome "the Vietnam syndrome" of the seventies. But for Rambo himself, life was always a struggle.

John J. Rambo was born in 1947 in Bowie, Arizona, of mixed German and Native American heritage. His family was poor--often unable to buy food--and his mother died when he was young. His father was an abusive alcoholic who once tried to kill his son with a knife. Rambo ran away that night, but not before shooting his father with a bow and arrow, nearly killing him.

At seventeen, Rambo enlisted in the U.S. Army, figuring he'd be drafted soon anyway. In the service he received extensive psychological testing and--despite much evidence to the contrary--was found to be normal. Rambo was recruited for the Green Berets by his friend and mentor, Colonel Samuel Trautman, who often called Rambo the best student he'd ever had: "He's a man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke." Besides learning to to kill with guns, knives, and his bare hands, Rambo was cross-trained as a medic and learned to speak Vietnamese, fly helicopters, and survive in the wilderness with only a knife.

During his three-year tour, Rambo was credited with fifty-nine confirmed kills and was decorated with two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, four Purple Hearts, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The seminal event in Rambo's military career was a guerrilla mission behind enemy lines, where his unit was ambushed and Rambo was shot in the leg and captured. At the jungle prison camp, Rambo was tortured with a knife and kept in a ten-foot hole, but he never revealed any information to his captors. As a prisoner, Rambo was required to do heavy labor an was deprived of sleep and food. But, as Rambo himself later recalled it, there was not much they could do to him that his instructors had not already put him through. He eventually escaped by giving himself dysentery: his guard left him alone to go get help and Rambo had his chance to run.

Despite his many honors, Rambo ended his service with a nervous breakdown and "a job greasing cars," according to Trautman.

Rambo had trouble adjusting to civilian life. He couldn't find steady employment and spent several years as a drifter. In 1982 he was arrested for vagrancy in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, where he was beaten by local sheriff's deputies. In a flashback-induced rage, he broke free and escaped into the mountains. After one of the deputies was accidentally killed, Rambo tried to surrender, but the undisciplined lawmen shot at him anyway. Rambo used in jungle-warfare know-how to repulse his pursuers. When some 200 state police and National Guardsmen joined the manhunt, Rambo became a celebrity outlaw.

Trautman arrived to ask Rambo to surrender: "We can't have you out there wasting friendly civilians." Rambo replied: "There are no friendly civilians."

Though he was presumed dead after the abandoned mine entrance he was hiding in was blown up, Rambo escaped and proceeded to vent his famous rage on the town with an M-60 machine gun. He did, however, finally surrender at Trautman's behest.

Rambo's story might have ended there--with Rambo doing hard time in prison--but in 1985 Trautman offered him the possibility of a presidential pardon if he would parachute into Vietnam to search for POW/MIAs. Rambo agreed, but asked: "Sir, do we get to win this time?"

Rambo disdained high-tech gadgetry ("I've always believed that the mind is the best weapon"), although he did seem to get a lot of use from M-60s and his special explosive-tipped arrows, which could down a helicopter with a single shot.

With Co Bao, his beautiful Vietnamese contact, Rambo quickly found the camp and freed one of the prisoners. But the U.S. government handlers--Trautman excepted--didn't really want Rambo to find any POWs (they had hoped that he would find an empty camp so that the whole messy POW/MIA issue could finally be put to rest); they aborted the mission and allowed Rambo to be captured. Co rescued Rambo from interrogation by a sadistic Russian commander. Rambo then slaughtered scores of enemy soldiers before escaping to Thailand with the freed POWs in a Soviet helicopter. On landing, he let out his patented warrior's howl as he shot up the mission's headquarters with his M-60.

Trautman asked Rambo not to hate his country. Rambo replied: "Hate it? I'd die for it. I want what every other guy who came over here and spilled his guts wants--for our country to love us as much as we love it." With that, Rambo headed into the jungle.

Three years later, Rambo was living in a Thai Buddhist monastery, where Trautman found him and asked him to join him on a mission to aid the rebels in Afghanistan. Rambo refused to go...until he heard of Trautman's capture by the Soviets. (Coincidentally, the Soviet began pulling out of Afghanistan the same month Rambo went in.)

Joined by mujahedin rebels, he pulled off a daring rescue, but as Rambo and Trautman made their way on foot toward the border, they were blocked by what seemed to be the entire Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan. Just when things seemed bleakest, a mounted horde of mujahedin came to their rescue. As the Soviets retreated, the mujahedin asked Rambo to stay and help their struggle. Rambo's last words were only, "I have to go."

--A.B.C. [Andrew B. Cohen]