This was a surprise to me!

[Ranger Ron]

Did a search and don't think this has been posted before. Don't think it is recent however.

Many people may have forgotten about his time in the U.S. Army. He is the son of an Air Force General, and a accomplished Golden Gloves boxer, and he graduated from Pomona College with a B.S. degree, and then became a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford University.
He joined the U.S. Army at the prompting of his father. After graduating from Officer Candidate School he attended and graduated from both Army Airborne and Ranger training in the top of each class. He was selected for U. S. Army Special Forces Training but refused so that he could attend pilot training where he earned his wings, and became an accomplished U.S. Army helicopter (gun ship) pilot, and achieved the rank of Captain.
He was about to be promoted to the rank of Major, and appointed to teach at West Point when he resigned his commission from the Army to pursue other interests. You can tell in this video that his time in the military still means a lot to him.
Another thing that I often admired about him was his “tell it like it is” attitude, which always seemed to irritate some people. Guess who?

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[Jim]

Kris and Willie. What a pair!

[colt1rgr]

I knew he had earned the tab and was very proud of it but was unaware of the rest. I was quite moved by this and am a much bigger fan because of it. Man wrote some beautiful songs too! Loved his remark about our politicians having mandatory military experience.

[Slowpoke]

Before his carrer as an actor or singer he was a songwriter and pitched his first hit song (Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down) to Johnny Cash by landing his helicopter on Cash's front lawn and telling him he HAD to hear his song.....big hit for cash.

[CatFish Driver]

Kris Kristofferson. That man pisses excellence.

[Black 6]

Kris Kristofferson. That man pisses excellence.

Yes he does.

Sent from my phone.

[K.Ingraham]

In '77 there was a clipping pinned to the company BB cut from an interview w/ Kristoferson about some flick he'd just worked. Someone highlighted his comment "working with Barbara Streisand was the hardest thing I've done since Ranger School."
He blew off Streisand's boyfriend with "if I need any shit from you, I'll squeeze your head."

[BruteForce]

Two complete surprises: 1) No idea that Willy was in the Navy and 2) No idea that Kris served in the Army. I found the video just awesome and was astonished at Kris' humility.

Nice! Thanks for sharing.

Edited to add: I just noticed that I'm a "Tadpole". How the hell do I get promoted to at least "Shit kicker" or "Whirlygig guy" or something?

[fatboy]

Urban legend has it that Kristoferson was on one of the late night talk shows and was asked what the hardest thing he had ever done was and the reply was along the lines of "Day 5, Florida phase."
I'm paraphrasing of course, I've never seen the video clip, so he might or might not have said it. I always thought it was pretty cool though.

[rgrokelley]

The other suprising Ranger / actor to me was the fat guy who played Tommy Gavin's father on Rescue Me, and the governor in "Oh Brother Where art Thou". He was with the 2nd Ranger BAttalion in WWII, was later wounded at the Huertgen Forest and recieved the Silver Star.

[K.Ingraham]

The other suprising Ranger / actor to me was the fat guy who played Tommy Gavin's father on Rescue Me, and the governor in "Oh Brother Where art Thou". He was with the 2nd Ranger BAttalion in WWII, was later wounded at the Huertgen Forest and recieved the Silver Star.

Big negative on that. He was a genuine conbat guy but with an engineer combat battalion - his ranger & H-Hour/D-Day service is internet mythology. He was indeed WIA. That SSM might be a BSM, I remember onbly that he got "something", could've been the SSM.

[CatFish Driver]

The other suprising Ranger / actor to me was the fat guy who played Tommy Gavin's father on Rescue Me, and the governor in "Oh Brother Where art Thou". He was with the 2nd Ranger BAttalion in WWII, was later wounded at the Huertgen Forest and recieved the Silver Star.

Charles Durning.

[Flesh Thorn]

James Earl Jones is allegedly a Ranger School graduate.

[rgrokelley]

The other suprising Ranger / actor to me was the fat guy who played Tommy Gavin's father on Rescue Me, and the governor in "Oh Brother Where art Thou". He was with the 2nd Ranger BAttalion in WWII, was later wounded at the Huertgen Forest and recieved the Silver Star.

Big negative on that. He was a genuine conbat guy but with an engineer combat battalion - his ranger & H-Hour/D-Day service is internet mythology. He was indeed WIA. That SSM might be a BSM, I remember onbly that he got "something", could've been the SSM.

I did a search to see if he said he was a Ranger, possible poser hunt, but I did find this.

Charles Durning’s WWII Experience

It's hard to describe what we all went through that day, but those of you who were there will understand.

We were frightened all the time. My sergeant said, are you scared, son? And I said, yes, I am. And he said, that's good. It's good to be scared. He said, we all are.

This guy in the boat, he turned to me and threw up all over me, and I got seasick. It was scary. You're not thinking about anything, you're just thinking about, you hope that shell that just went off isn't going to hit this boat. Even the guys who had seen a lot of action before – and this was my first time – they were just as ashen as I was.

And I was frightened, to death. I was the second man off my barge and the first and third man got killed. The first guy, the ramp went down, the guy fell, and I tried to leap over him and I stumbled, and we both slipped into the water.

We were supposed to be able to walk into shore, but they didn't bring us in far enough, and I was in 60 feet of water, with a 60-pound pack on. So I let it all go. I was under the water, and you could see the bullets go "ps..ss...tt" down past you. But what I was afraid of was that I'd come up and meet a bullet coming my way. But I came up, and I didn't have a helmet, a rifle, nothing. When I hit the beach, the guys pulled me in who were already there. I'd lost everything, but they said you'll find plenty of them on the beach, rifles and helmets that belonged to nobody.

Nobody knew where we were supposed to go. There was nobody in charge, you were on your own. All around me, people were being shot at. I saw bodies all over the place, but you didn't know whether they were alive or dead, 'cause they were just lying there.

The ships were still bombing in there too. Somebody asked me how it was on D-Day and I said "loud." When something goes off, you can't hear anything. You could watch a guy's mouth and know that he was talking to you, but you couldn't hear him. That was frightening 'cause you didn't know what was going on. The artillery was dropping constantly and all around you, and you were lucky not to get splattered. And then our planes were coming in and they couldn't see where to shoot and they were hitting some of our men.

We got behind this tank to protect ourselves. We were holding our own there, until they called us over. I asked the sergeant, do you want me to go first? And he said you go first, I'll be right behind you. I heard an explosion and I turned around and his torso was here, and his upper body was over there.

There was another guy whose intestines were out on the sand in front of him. And he was still alive, and he seemed to be very calm. You know when someone's dying, you can see it right away. Everything changes in their face, its kind of gray. He said, "I can't go home like this. How they gonna push all that back into me?"

I saw wounded or dying guys crawl up in front of us to act as barricades, so they could protect us from getting hit with their own bodies. I saw that. They would come up and just lay there, you know, take the shot.

Once we got up to the bluff, you could see for miles. It was this eerie sight of bodies which looked like driftwood floating in the water. The beach was covered with the bodies of American soldiers.

All of these are like flashbacks for me. I can't recall everything ...

I forget a lot of stuff now, but I still wake up once in a while and it's still there … I can't count how many of my buddies are in the cemetery at Normandy.

The heroes are still there, the real heroes.