Always A Ranger

By Roy Barree

The first story of Always A Ranger starts near the end of the characters life. Some would consider his life to be nothing but crude challenges, however, he sees those challenges as blessings. Joe gave up almost everything in his life to become a homeless street person, so that he could help others survive their challenges. He takes the reader through one full day of surviving life on the street. Joe chooses to give whatever he can to help others. He makes an effort to show the ones who want to give up on life just how valuable it really is. At the end of the day, Joe will take you on a memory journey of his life. You will see how he lived and what he faced in life that caused him to make the decision for becoming a homeless person living on the streets of Washington DC.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roy Barree
• Release date: Apr 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370899319

Roy Barree

I was raised by my grandparents from the time I was an infant. My grandparents had very little income and was considered to be poverty stricken. At the age of 6, my grandparents could not afford to send me to school, so I was moved into my fathers and stepmothers home. At the of 7, I was moved into my mothers and stepfathers home. Passed around several times, I became an unstable adolescent. At the age 17, I was living on the streets of a large city. At 18 years old, I was married with a small child. At 19, I was drafted into the Army. At 21, I reenlisted and became an Airborne Ranger. After 6 years in the Army, I went back into civilian life and had several years of hard transition challenges. Divorced and living on the move, I was blessed with an oil industry job contracting around the world. After several years, I remarried and in 2004, I became a contractor working for the military under third-party contracts in combat zones. From 2004 to 2008, I contracted as an Engineering Technician / senior CAD Designer in Afghanistan over seeing and directing an eight-man design team. I was also the Geographical Mapping Technician for the Kandahar and FOB Salerno military bases. In 2011, I contracted to Iraq as a Senior Designer and Geographical Mapping Technician for the Al Asad base. At the end of 2011, I wanted something exciting to do, so I came home and became a substitute teacher.

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Always A Ranger

Copyright 2017 Roy Barree

Published by Roy Barree at Smashwords

Smashwords, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Prologue

The Invisible Society

Poor White Boy

Home On The Street

Responsibilities

From Civilian To Solider

Becoming An Airborne Ranger

A / Company 75th Infantry Rangers

The Road To Hell

Summary Review by the Author

Glossary

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books

Prologue

The first story (The Invisible Society) of Always A Ranger starts near the end of the characters life. Some would consider his life to be nothing but crude challenges, however, he sees those challenges as blessings. Joe gave up almost everything in his life to become a homeless street person, so that he could help others survive their challenges. The Invisible Society takes the reader through one full day of surviving life on the street. Joe chooses to give whatever he can to help others. He makes an effort to show the ones who want to give up on life just how valuable it really is. At the end of the day, Joe will take you on a memory journey of his life. You will see how he lived and what he faced in life that caused him to make the decision for becoming a homeless person living on the streets of Washington DC.

In the second book, Rangers Lead The Way (coming soon), Joe continues the memory journey of his life which takes him into remote parts of the world. He survives travel experiences along with challenges in jungles, deserts, and combat zones. At the end of Joe’s memory journey, he faces an incident that influences him to leave the street life behind and go home to his loved ones. Just before Joe gets on the bus to head back to Texas, he faces one final challenging decision. Read about that decision in the story Going Home (in the book, Rangers Lead The Way).

I would like to extend an honest question for an honest answer to all who read the two books about this character. How much are you willing to give up to be the person you want to be, and is that person a true patriot of life?

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The Invisible Society

America, once a great nation of opportunity, is slowly becoming a country of misfortune. The proud quote of our forefathers, United we stand, divided we fall, no longer holds meaning of heritage to a blind society. Countless numbers of American citizens become homeless each day. Streets, parks, underpasses, and shantytowns in the inner cities are full of homeless people; from responsible citizens to leading elected politicians. Americans refuse to recognize homelessness as a growing disastrous problem in the United States. No longer is homelessness isolated to the middle-aged male. Elderly citizens, single, female parents, deinstitutionalized mentally ill, teen-agers and small children are part of the homeless population in America today.

As the gleam of daylight pushed its way into the last of darkness from the night before, the old man stirred from his cardboard dwelling into the alley and out into the streets that would soon be busy with the motion of life.

If street survival knowledge could be measured in educational degrees, the old man had long ago earned his doctorate degree. No one knew who he really was, where he came from, or how long he had been homeless. He looked to be in his early to mid-sixties, but even that could not be for sure, because street life takes its toll on the human body. To those who knew and associated with him, he was Skid Row Joe.

Host For The Homeless

Some call me skid row Joe, because I've been around longer than most,

I’m sort of the welcoming committee here, might say the official host.

I watched TV last night through a plate glass window, some survey show.

The lady was saying that there was tens of thousands of us homeless with nowhere to go.

The city streets aren't particular who they take in,

A runaway teenager, hobo bum, and even an entire family now and then.

While I've been here, I've seen people of all kinds.

Some have never had much, and others were once Wall Street's great minds.

As I live here among this poverty, it's sad to say,

This great nation with all its technology can't even feed its children today.

I think it's not so important to walk on the moon or travel the depths of space;

We should solve problems of humanity, save the human race.

I no longer cry for myself, as I huddle behind my cardboard wall;

The homeless children with nothing to eat, is the reason these teardrops fall.

And as they freeze before they drop from my face,

I pray, oh God, let us the homeless, come and warm ourselves beneath your amazing grace.

To those who are homeless not by choice but by circumstances.

12/12/89

by Russell Roy Barree Jr.

A routine was about to start. One that Joe faced everyday. He had been through the routine so many times, for so long, that he could almost calculate within a few moments of where he had to be and when to be there in order to get what he needed for surviving the day.

Joe walked down the street two blocks and through the access alley that led to the back door of the bakery. He pulled a plastic five-gallon bucket from the dumpster and perched himself upon it a few feet from the back door. It was 5:48 A.M., and Dave would be coming out in another ten or twelve minutes for his morning break, provided he was caught up on his work. He would be bringing with him a large black coffee and two sour cream donuts. He would take two or three sips from the styrofoam cup and eat one of the sour creams, and then surrender the rest to Joe. Dave was once a street person, but fortune had come his way. Jim the baker had found Dave in the alley one morning nearly frozen to death. After getting him revived back to health, Jim convinced the owner to hire Dave. They needed a clean up man around there. It would make the workload easier.

It was now 6:05 A.M., and it looked as though Dave wasn’t going to make it today. Joe could hear the sound of the big truck a couple of alleys down picking up the dumpsters and emptying them. He made haste to move along before the truck came through.

Joe crossed the street and walked hurriedly through the park. His intentions were to get to the bench on 2nd Street in front of the Capitol Building. He would sit and wait there until the brown bag truck came through. The brown bag truck was a non-profit organization that handed out lunches to the homeless. The bag usually contained a sandwich, chips, a few cookies, and sometimes a canned cola.

Halfway through the park, Joe could hear someone calling his name. He stopped and turned to see the group of young kids that lived in the park from time to time. Their ages ranged from thirteen to early twenties. They had talked to him many times, and Joe had provided some street-smart survival skills to them. He grieved inside for those kids and the thousands like them. Most were battered and abused from the time that they came into this world until they ran away from the torture. They were not going to get a better deal on the street. Drug abuse, disease, and murder would consume 60% of those kids and others like them. They asked if he would like to hang out with them for a while. He informed them that he was going to the other side of the park and declined on the social offer for today.

Joe moved on across the park to the bench he was familiar with, and took a seat. He began to drift back in thought. He had slept his first homeless night in Washington D. C. on this very bench. Jesse and John had awakened him in the dark hours of morning. They informed him that the beat officer was on his way, and that he should move along to keep from feeling the sharp pain from the officer’s nightstick. They all became close friends. Jesse and John taught Joe much about street living and surviving in the capital city. Those moments seemed so long ago. They were long gone now: the friends and the moments.

The following is a true story from Newsweek.

Jesse Carpenter was a veteran, a hero from World War II, winning the Bronze Star. Under fire, he carried wounded fellow soldiers to medical attention. He returned several times to the firing line to collect the wounded men and carry them across his back to the medical tents. When Jesse came back from the war, he couldn't fit in. After a few years he became an alcoholic, and some years later he abandoned his wife and two children to live on the streets. In December of 1985, Jesse froze to death in a park across the street from the White House. When Jesse's wife read of his death in the newspapers, she forwarded the certificate and Bronze Star to Washington, D. C.

To the many homeless who had lived around Jesse, which numbered in the hundreds, he was no less a hero. They all knew him as a gentle, kind, helping man. Jesse Carpenter died at the feet of John Lamb. John Lamb was in a wheel chair stricken with Parkinson's disease. John stayed with Jesse everywhere he went. They could not sleep in the local shelters because these shelters had no handicapped access and John