Lanterna Rally

Author: John Gerard Ruggie

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 9780231079815

This Book tells an exciting, and intriguing story of my training, experiences, and relationships, as a U S Army Ranger in the Vietnam War during 1969 to 1971 while performing recon-missions Behind Enemy Lines. The story takes you on a journey from the physical war in Vietnam to the spiritual warfare that goes on daily for your soul. The spiritual uplifting message within its pages ignites your faith into a blazing fire. You come alive. To survive in Vietnam and come home alive required elite training, strong belief in our training, mental and physical repetition of the training, and real true relationships. If we got distracted, failed to pay attention, disobeyed, ignored, or forgot what we were there to do; our percentage of surviving was greatly reduce. There were many things to distract us. Our minds and bodies got hooked up to drugs, alcohol, sex, and the thrill of living on the edge. These are but a few of the distractions available to us, before we even went on a mission to face what our enemies had for us, or the snakes, diseases, and animals of the jungle. This book tells a very interesting and intriguing story of my experiences and relationships performing reconnaissance missions Behind Enemy Lines in the mountainous jungle region of South Vietnam and near the Cambodian border. When I arrived, in Vietnam the first thing I needed to do was de-program myself of most of the training I had received from the Army while being trained in the Sates, prior to arriving in Vietnam. For example; I had been taught to always ambush from the high ground; that high ground determined the actual site selection for an ambush. It sounded good and worked in World War II and Korea, but this was guerilla warfare. My mentor, Tad taught us first to monitor a trail by observing how the enemy was traveling on the trail and when we had determined the direction of travel, then always set our ambush on the right hand side of the trail according to the enemy's route of March, regardless of the height of the terrain. The reason is that most people, over 90 %, are right handed and the enemy's weapons would be pointed away from you as you set off the ambush. After a few hours, any soldier running missions in the hot jungles of Southeast Asia would have their attention span, focus, alertness, and weapons positions drop off measurably, especially while they traveled through what they perceived as their own safe territory. When you ambush to the right of the trail, five Rangers would fire a full 20 round magazine from an M-16 rifle in 2.3 seconds. That's 100 bullets into a kill zone while the enemy freezes up for a second in shock from all the firing. Once they realize what is happening, they fall to the ground turning their weapons from the left to the right and try to locate where the firing is coming from. That just took 2.8 seconds and our hands are on the detonators of five claymore mines. Each mine has hundreds of shrapnel like bee bees packed into them and about a pound of C-4 explosive. The enemy's rifle hasn't even gotten to their shoulder yet to fire before we detonate the claymore mines, if needed, and the enemy; well that's why it's called an ambush. The sixth person, a Ranger radio operator, was behind us guarding our back with the radio and already our choppers and support were coming. This story takes you from physical warfare to Spiritual warfare in such a way that your faith will be renewed. My prayer is that it sheds light on the battle between good (God) and evil (Satan) that goes on daily for our souls. Sit back and enjoy this short, powerful story. This books mission is; when you reach the end of this book you will have an understanding of why Jesus did what He did and why you need a relationship with Him. He loves you and wants to have a relationship with you, one that will change you from who you are, to a brand new person. You are the Soul, purpose of this book. Author Danny Clifford