I remember seeing the first Rambo flick (\u201cFirst Blood\u201d) in a movie theater in 1982 when I was nineteen and rooting for Sly Stallone\u2019s character against the police and national guardsmen who are sent to kill him.\u00a0 The police think it\u2019ll be easy to subdue one man, but we the viewers know better.\u00a0 As Colonel Trautman, Rambo\u2019s former commanding officer, says in the movie: In war, it\u2019s wise to have \u201ca good supply of body bags<\/a>\u201d on hand, a telling reminder about the harsh reality of combat.<\/p>\n Yet, there\u2019s a deeper meaning to \u201cFirst Blood\u201d captured near the end of the movie, when John Rambo, having improbably acted as a one-man invincible army (a true \u201cArmy of One\u201d), bitterly reflects on his own post-Vietnam experiences.\u00a0 Rambo, breaking down, admits he can\u2019t adapt to regular civilian life.\u00a0 A loner, he feels himself to be a loser, even though he was decorated for heroism in war with the Medal of Honor.\u00a0 Wounded and haunted by war, his soul seared by violence, he surrenders to Colonel Trautman.<\/p>\n The original Rambo movie wasn\u2019t necessarily deep, but it did remind us that soldiers like Rambo carried hidden wounds of war; it also highlighted a societal suspicion, whether just or unjust, of military veterans.\u00a0 The sheriff in \u201cFirst Blood\u201d has no respect for Rambo as a military \u201chero\u201d; he sees him as a disreputable and dangerous outsider and just wants to be rid of him, one way or another.<\/p>\n Subsequent Rambo films would portray him as a virtually unstoppable killing machine. In the first sequel, Rambo is sent back to Vietnam to rescue American POWs betrayed and abandoned by the U.S. government.\u00a0 Perhaps the most famous line from that movie is when Rambo asks Colonel Trautman whether, in returning to Vietnam, the government will finally allow U.S. soldiers to win this time.\u00a0 It was a concise statement of the stab-in-the-back myth, the idea the U.S. military would have won the war in Vietnam if only it hadn\u2019t been betrayed by a duplicitous and spineless government.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c8b3938-b876-48d4-930e-8bc2bd151fe9.heic)
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