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The eight US Army Rangers were under heavy fire, roaring through the streets of Mogadishu in an armored personnel carrier, trying to reach their buddies who were under a relentless attack on the other side of the embattled city.

"The call went out for all able-bodied Rangers," said Lamb, who found himself in an armored personnel carrier with seven Army cooks, heading for the battle. "Don’t misunderstand. These guys are Rangers first, cooks second. They’re first-rate people." - John Carlson, "‘City Was Crawling With Bad Guys,’ Iowa Native Recounts Attack on Army Rangers in Mogadishu," October 9, 1993, Copyright 2002, reprinted with permission by
The Des Moines Register.

"We had to go through a terrible small-arms crossfire at every intersection," said Sgt. Richard Lamb, a Des Moines native who was one of the eight Rangers in the vehicle. "And then we got hit. It was a Soviet-made rocket-propelled grenade. It flattened three tires and blew off the oil pan.

The driver was wounded so I got behind the wheel and we took off again. Then another (grenade) hit the wall next to our vehicle. I took a piece of shrapnel in the forehead. Everything went kind of gray. And then there was this spurt of blood. I pushed my helmet down a little harder on my head to stop the flow of blood and drove us out of there. We reached our objective and got our guys out."

For each mission, Rangers consider the augmenting and tailoring of a unit’s table of organization and equipment (TOE) as a normal practice. This TOE adaptability results in multiple, unique missions for the Quartermasters who are food service specialists in the 75th Ranger Regiment.

A Food Service Section conducts individual cross-training in organic weaponry, communications equipment, and Ranger small unit leadership tactics. The section’s primary mission in garrison is quality food service to its battalion.

However, during rapid deployments and brief missions, Rangers mainly eat operational rations. For such operations, a Quartermaster with the 92G MOS can find himself working on a team at a casualty collection point (CCP) attached to a line company or augmenting a critically short mortar squad or machine gun team.

During rotations at the Joint Readiness Training Center, I found myself attached to Bravo Company as a CCP team leader with the mission of timely evacuation support or assigned as the commander’s radio/telephone operator (RTO) carrying a PRC 77 with a KY 57 and enough equipment to equal a rucksack weighing more than 100 pounds.