Well, truth be told, we didn’t quite get to his campfire before the smugness was blasted off of our faces, rather at the speed and intensity that Ramsey blasted by us on the trail.
For there sat Mr Ramsey, carefully carving his way through a fresh broiled T-bone steak sitting on a plate right next to a piping, steaming baked potato, topped with melting butter, sour cream, and minced green onions.
We must have sputtered something about his steak because Mr amsey said: Well, I packed up all the stuff yu dad said I should have and the pack only weight 50 pounds, So I pulled out the dried food and packed steaks butter and sour cream in dry ice for my dinners. That and a few books brought me up to a reasonable 150 pounds.”
Our jaws dropped again I suspect. 150 lbs? the guy was carrying one of us AND our back to boot, and running down the trail. So while his statement left us with a new wonder, it did clear up one little thing; it was no wonder he slept so late in the mornings. He was still suffering from a “real food coma”.
Well, we had been bested again. And what with being ½ way through our trip, and fairly sure that the score might get run up higher, but even if it did, none of those points was going to be on our side of the board. This man had shattered our concept of what stud material looked like.
Mr Ramsey invited us to sit down and “break bread” with him. We did, and it started him to talking.
Turns out Mr. Ramsey was actually Captain Ramsey. And while yes, he was in the army, he was in a very specialized part of the army. He was in command of the Army’s LRRP group in Vietnam and had just finished his third year long deployment with orders to rotate back in at the end of the month.
He was afraid he would get too soft and thus worked out the time to be out backpacking in the 9,000-13,500 foot ranges of the Sierras. We were his third group that summer.
Captain Ramsey opened the eyes of a bunch of naïve scouts that summer, in our troop and others.
LRRP in the Army of Vietnam era stood for Long Range Renascence and Patrol. They were referred to as “Lurps”. These guys made the green Berets look like a pack of momma’s boys.
When Captain Ramsey was deployed with a team, he jumped off of the skid of an insertion helicopter wearing a backpack that came in at 160 pounds, PLUS he was carrying his weapons, ammunition, and water on top of that.
He and the team would then stalk through up to 35 miles of jungle a day, staying out for up to 3 weeks at a time in enemy territory, radioing in contacts, setting up ambushes, and generally creating havoc. He described their movement as follows; “the first man only looks forward, he is responsible for the 45 degrees to his right and the 45 degrees to his left, the second man walks sideways – left side forward and watches 45 right and 45 left, the third man walks right side forward doing the same for the other side, and the last man walked backwards.
BACKWARDS. Backwards for up to 35 miles a day!
Spending three weeks at a time with only 4 other guys hunting and searching for the chance to engage an enemy group of up to 10-15 to one odds?
These guys were kings of the badasses of all time. Even the Delta forces were in awe of them.
Suddenly we felt a lot better about getting our doors blown off on the trail.
That night and all the remaining nights of the week found us boys clustered around Captain Ramsey listening to his stories of patrols, firefights, and survival in the jungles of Vietnam.
© 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved
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