#FlashbackFriday: 1993—‘Granny Rambo’ returns from Somalia
On June 4, 1993, 31 years ago this week, Exchange associate Pat Wood (above in a 1993 Exchange Post photo) returned to the States after a tour in Somalia. When she arrived at an airport in Killeen, Texas, she was greeted by cheers, banners, flags, roses and other bouquets from teammates at Fort Hood (now Cavazos) who were anxiously awaiting her return home.
Wood, the main store operations manager at Fort Hood, earned the nickname “Granny Rambo” after she volunteered to deploy to Somalia (despite the nickname, her age wasn’t mentioned in Exchange Post stories). An Exchange team was supporting multinational forces for Operation Restore Hope, a mission to provide a safe haven for humanitarian workers struggling with more than a half-million Somalis dying from famine, inter-clan violence and battles between warlords and the multinational force.
Wood left Feb. 15 for a planned three-month tour, assuring Fort Hood teammates that she would be living and working in a guarded compound and that she wasn’t concerned about danger from hostile forces. The biggest danger was disease, but in an April 1993 Exchange Post article, she said she wasn’t worried about that, either.
“I’ve had all my shots [10 in all],” said Wood, who spoke in a British accent and was known for her sense of humor. “And I have no desire to pet the local animals, i.e. the fleas, flies, snakes, scorpions, spiders, etc.”
Wood wrote a brief report for the Exchange Post saying that she and a sales area manager worked out of a fruit warehouse, where they arranged all the Softlines merchandise so that “you could walk into the room and pull what you want without having to search in every wall in the warehouse.”
Wood described the conflict between two warring factions as “for the most part, [a] rock-throwing riot, with some hand grenades and gunfire thrown in” and described grim conditions in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital and largest city, but reiterated that the compound was well-guarded and safe. Still, at one point while writing her report, she had to stop because of nearby gunfire.
Wood would move on to positions at Fort Campbell and Hanau Consolidated. After her “Granny Rambo” moment, her transfers are the only mentions of her in the Exchange Post archives—except for her retirement in 2001, after 24 years of service.
Source: Exchange Post archives
