John Rambo Biography

John Rambo, was born on July 6, 1947 in Bowie, Arizona, to a Native American (Navajo) father (R. Rambo according to the last film) and an Italian American mother (Marie Drago). However, in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Marshall Murdock states that Rambo is of Native American Italian/German descent. Rambo enlisted in the United States Army  at the age of 17 on August 6, 1964. After graduating from Rangeford High School in 1965, his military service began in January 1966. Rambo was deployed to South Vietnam in September 1966. He returned to the U.S. in 1967 and began training in the Special Forces (Green Berets) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In late 1969, Rambo was re-deployed to Vietnam. In November 1971, he was captured by North Vietnamese forces near the Chinese-Vietnamese border and held at a POW camp, where he and other American POWs were repeatedly tortured. Rambo escaped captivity in May 1972, but was then re-deployed. At some point in his military career he also apparently received training in flying helicopters. Rambo received his military discharge on September 17, 1974.
Upon his return to the U.S., Rambo discovered that many American civilians hated the returning soldiers from Vietnam, and he himself along with other returning soldiers were subject to humiliation and embarrassment by anti-war "hippies" who throw garbage at them, call them "baby killers", and exclude them from society. His experiences in Vietnam and back home resulted in an extreme case of post-traumatic stress disorder of a sort that does not seem to have ever manifested in reality. At the same time, inner questions of self identity and reflectiveness cause Rambo to lash out at society rather than handling difficult situations in a "civilized" manner. This is where First Blood picks up from.