John Rambo - Fictional Biography

Fictional Biography

According to the first film First Blood, Rambo's full name is John James Rambo. He was born on July 6, 1947 in Dewey, Arizona, to a Navajo father (whose name according to the last film was probably R. Rambo) and an Italian American mother Marie Drago. However, in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Marshall Murdock states that Rambo is of American Indian and German descent. Rambo enlisted in the U.S. 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 with the U.S. Army Special Forces 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 United States, Rambo discovered that many American civilians hated the returning soldiers from Vietnam, and he claimed that he, along with other returning soldiers, were subject to humiliation and embarrassment by anti-war "hippies" who threw garbage at them, called them "baby killers", and excluded them from society. His experiences in Vietnam and back home resulted in an extreme case of post-traumatic stress disorder. At the same time, inner questions of self-identity and reflectiveness had commenced to cause Rambo to lash out at society rather than handling difficult situations in a "civilized" manner. First Blood picks up from this point.