GARY “BUTCH” O’NEAL

Gary “Butch” O’Neal lied about his age and joined the Army at age 15 to escape a hardscrabble life after being passed around by relatives in four different U.S. states following his parents’ divorce.

Trained by his father and grandfather to wield a rifle, knife and anvil, O’Neal disciplined himself to attain the coveted Ranger status among our U.S. army’s top elite.

Gary began with basic training at Fort Benning, then infantry AIT, then jump school. He served his first Vietnam tour beginning in 1967 with the 173rd Airborne, operating out of a fire base in the Central Highlands.

“I’d been lost living in America, and in Vietnam I was found,” O’Neal writes in his highly readable memoir, “American Warrior: The True Story of a Legendary Ranger,”  written with David Fisher. “War was what I was good at. It made me a whole person. Like other people fighting over there, I became addicted to the high of being at risk.”

From his first assigned combat tour in Vietnam conducting hazardous missions rescuing prisoners of war, O’Neal served with several elite units including the 173rd Airborne Brigade Line Company, Company C, 75th Ranger Regiment and the 5th Special Forces Group.

His Airborne mission was a “search and destroy” nicknamed “The Herd” by legendary entertainer Bob Hope. Gary recalls, “We lost 60,000 troops, but we killed over eight million. That’s almost a nine to one ratio.