Charlie Rangers

They were the biggest Ranger company in Vietnam, and the best. For eighteen months, John L. Rotundo and Don Ericson braved the test of war at its most bloody and most raw, specializing in ambushing the enemy and fighting jungle guerillas using their own tactics. From the undiluted high of a "contact" with the enemy to the anguished mourning of a fallen comrade, they experienced nearly every emotion known to man--most of all, the power and the pride of being the finest on America's front lines.

"Shelby Stanton has emerged as the leading military historian on the war in Southest Asia." COL. CHARLES B. MacDONALD Author of COMPANY COMMANDER and A TIME FOR TRUMPETS One of the toughest and most challenging jobs in Vietnam was to be a U.S. Army Ranger running Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols. The LRRPs took volunteers only, and training was designed to weed out all but the best. What emerged was an elite outfit of warriors in the finest sense of the word. Now Shelby Stanton, renowned military authority on the war in Southeast Asia, presents the first and only definitive history of the LRRPs and the U.S. Army Rangers in Vietnam. They're all here: the Screaming Eagle Patrollers, Cochise Raiders, Charlie Rangers, Cobra Lightning Patrollers, and more.

Texas Ranger Lieutenant Jim Blawcyzk is on his way to the easiest assignment he's had in a long time... until a fellow Ranger, a man Jim trusted as a friend and partner, murders their commanding officer and puts two bullets into Jim. Now, with Jim lying gravely wounded in a hospital bed, his long-time partner Smoky McCue, along with Jim's son Charlie, newly appointed to the Rangers, must try and track down the Ranger turned killer. The only problem is the renegade lawman has powerful friends and allies in Mexico, and they are determined to keep him safe from Texas law, at any cost.

This study of the US Army Ranger takes the reader through the distinct stages of training and acceptance, including the Ranger Indoctrination Program and Ranger Battalion training, and details the developments in Ranger weaponry, equipment and clothing since the early 1980s. Using first hand accounts, it shows what it was like to fight in Panama in 1989, in raid missions in Iraq in 1991 and Somalia in 1993, and brings the unit up to date with the 3rd Battalion's deployment to Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom. It also covers the culture of the Rangers, from their special language and terminology, to the rites of passage that lie behind the formal training program.

Emotions were running high in Forth Worth... Charlie Katz, a ranger with the 4th Mounted, Texas, had run amok. He had beaten up and all but killed Stella Nash, daughter of the local bank manager, in his attempts to rape her. Van Buren, the girl's fiancee, had rushed in to rescue her -- and Charlie had gone to his death in a spray of bullets. Charlie Katz had been Kane's best friend. Sickened and disbelieving, Kane had set out to try and clear the ranger's name. After he'd been beaten up by Sheriff Hewitt and ridden out of town, he began to wonder about the Hondo Mining Corporation. Charlie had been investigating this shade outfit before his death. The name of its chief was Van Buren.

In three straight years he was a paratropper, and army seaman, and a LRRP—and he lived to tell about it. As an FNG paratrooper in the 173d Airborne, John Leppelman made that unit's only combat jump in Vietnam. Then he spent months in fruitless search of the enemy, watching as his buddies died because of poor leadership and lousy weapons. Often it seemed the only way out of the carnage in the Central highlands was in a body bag. But Leppelman did get out, transferring first to the army's riverboats and then the all-volunteer Rangers, one of the ballsiest units in the war. In three tours of duty, that ended only when malaria forced him back to the States, Leppelman saw the war as few others did, a Vietnam that many American boys didn't live to tell about, but whose valor and sacrifice survive on these pages.

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