WHO CREATED THE BAKER TEAM?
'First blood' comes from Morrell's book of the same name. Inside Morrell's book, there's no Baker team at all.
Morrell was more a 'survivalist' than a military expert (IMHO) which explains why so little is said in the book about Rambo's REALLY interesting past.
Anyway, the legend says that STALLONE created the whole 'radio scene'of the first movie from an idea of his own, to show how much Trautman and Rambo are 'connected'.
Whatever Stallone's reasons were, the names mentioned (Ortega, Messner, etc) comes from people working at the movie at the time, which also explain why Rambo - at the beginning of the movie - mentions two *different* names: because they were created on the spot and he could'nt remember all the ones mentioned in the radio scene.
After the first movie, the second got out and Morrell novelized it, adding some flasback scenes that gives the reader some info, but only regarding the way some of the Baker team guys died.
NOTE: I don't like those flashblacks because they make look the Baker team as normal soldiers, while they surely WERE'NT.
They were behind-enemy-lines fighters, which was a completly different kind of war that was kept secret until the ninenties, when some books began to be published about (see John Plaster's work for further references).
WHAT'S THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE BAKER TEAM?
You can find it on wikipedia or Rambopedia, and was written 'off the movie' by Morrell and Stallone.
Anyway, they say very little about the Baker team.
Rambo was first drafted in 64, than volounteered in 66 for special forces and fought with the Baker team until 1971, when he was captured in north vietnam, tortured and his team mostly killed. Rambo was then redeployed and fought again in Vietnam.
Only he and Berry Delmore ever get to escape and return in US hands (which is not hystorical accurate. NO US soldier ever get to escape from north vietnamese prisons).
KNOWN MEMBERS
John Rambo - light weapons, the only survivor.
Messner
Coletta
Ortega
Danforth
Krakauer
Berry Delmore - survived the war but died because of an agent orange related illness.
Jorgenson
PROBABLY LATER MEMBERS, OR AGGEREGATED TO THE TEAM:
Bronson
Westmore
COMMANDER
Samuel Truatman
IN FAN-FICTION: RAMBO YEAR ONE
I am an italian writer from 20 years, and I spent the last two working ONLY on the 'never-told-before' story of the Baker team.
I did it even if my work was 'damned' to freeshare, because I knew I would have done it good.
I write to make people happy - not for money - and after a couple of pages, I KNEW I was writing MY masterpiece (in fact, I already have a small following here in Italy, made by people that got CRAZY for my first two books - my fans are aged from 19 to 52!!!).
And so we are.
Rambo Year one is the only exisiting Rambo prequel, a saga of five books I will freeshare in the five next years, and it covers the story from training n Fort Bragg to the last, ill fated mission, with it's gruelling tortures.
I am also translating in english the first one, even if the work is cumbersome.
Since in first and second movies Rambo uses many MACVSOG fighting tecniques (using bow and arrows, avoiding the enemy, etc)'MY' Baker team is a fictional, experimental SOG team created by Trautman himself to fight in a different manner, because the Vietnam war WAS a very new kind of war.
COVER ART FOR THE FIRST TWO OF MY BOOKS
