SEMPER FIDELIS SAVES A LIFE
 

By Ellen Gamerman
Sun National Staff
August 16, 2002

WASHINGTON - John Ripley's worthless liver had left his skin a sickly yellow. Toxic fluids were collecting in his system, causing his lean frame to bloat: Once 175 pounds, he now weighed 425. His kidneys were failing. An incision glared from his abdomen, closed with staples in case surgeons had to rip it open fast. Eighteen IV lines fed into his unconscious body.

One of the Marine Corps' greatest living heroes was dying.

In the intensive care unit at Georgetown University Medical Center, a son of the retired colonel, Tom Ripley, sat vigil. It was 7 a.m. when the phone rang: A donor liver had been found, but his father might not live long enough to get it.

That's when the Ripleys understood that the delivery of the liver, from a 16-year-old gunshot victim in Philadelphia to the dying veteran in Washington, would take too long if left in the hospital's hands. Their only thought: Call in the Marines.

Over the next hours on that day last month, saving John Ripley's life became a military mission. It would involve the leader of the Marine Corps and helicopters from the president's fleet. Support teams would come from police in two cities, a platoon of current and former Marines, the president of Georgetown University and even a crew of construction workers.

"Sir, this is my dad's last chance," Tom Ripley said in a call to the Marine commandant's office. "I'm measuring my father's life in hours, not days."

The extraordinary efforts to save the 63-year-old Ripley, recovering from transplant surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, shows how far the Corps will go to protect one of its own.

Marines will say they'd do this for any fallen comrade. But Ripley is no ordinary Marine. In a messy war with few widely recognized heroes, he is a legend. And at his moment of need, the Corps treated him like one.

"Colonel Ripley's story is part of our folklore - everybody is moved by it," said Lt. Col. Ward Scott, who helped organize the organ delivery from his post at the Marine Corps Historical Center in Washington, which Ripley has directed for the past three years. "It mattered that it was Colonel Ripley who was in trouble."

A heroic effort

On Easter Sunday 1972, Col. John Walter Ripley - swinging arm over arm to attach explosives to the span while dangling beneath it - almost single-handedly destroyed a bridge near the South Vietnamese city of Dong Ha. The action, which took place under heavy fire over several hours as he ran back and forth to shore for materials, is thought to have thwarted the onslaught of 20,000 enemy troops.

His tale is required reading for every Naval Academy plebe. In Memorial Hall, Ripley, a 1962 academy graduate, is the only Marine featured from the Vietnam War: A diorama shows him clinging to the grid work of the bridge at Dong Ha.

Ripley received the Navy Cross, the second-highest award a Marine can receive for combat. That decoration is surpassed only by the Congressional Medal of Honor, which, many in the Marine Corps vigorously argue, Ripley deserves.

But on this July morning, three decades after surviving combat wounds, Ripley was facing death from a transportation problem. His doctors tried four civilian organ transportation agencies and could not immediately be guaranteed a helicopter by any of them.

The Ripleys say they were told that a civilian helicopter would not be available for at least six hours. Driving to Philadelphia was not an option because doctors worried that any traffic delays would ruin the organ.

Helicopter mission

Tom Ripley saw only one solution. From his father's hospital room, he called the office of the Marine Corps commandant, James L. Jones, and secured the use of a CH-46 helicopter, which is part of the presidential Marine One fleet.

The plan: The chopper would ferry the transplant team to the University of Pennsylvania hospital to remove the donor liver and then transport the doctors back to Washington.

Marine lawyers instantly approved the use of military materiel for Ripley, including nearly three hours on a helicopter that costs up to $6,000 an hour to operate. The commandant considered this an official lifesaving mission for a retired Marine still valuable to the Corps as a living symbol of pride.

Action was swift. The doctors rushed to Anacostia Naval Air Station, where the helicopter was waiting, rotors spinning. The chopper took off before the surgeons were even strapped in. By about 10 a.m., just three hours after learning that a new liver would be available in Philadelphia, the transplant team was swooping into that city. On the landing pad, an ambulance and a Philadelphia Highway Patrol car, both summoned by the Marines, were waiting. The motorcade took off, sirens blaring.

"When you're in a situation like this, and an organ becomes available, you use the fastest resource to get it," said Dr. Cal Matsumodo, a transplant surgeon from Walter Reed who flew on the helicopter to retrieve the new liver. "This turned out to be the swiftest and best-organized effort that I've ever seen."

Years of problems

Ripley's original liver had been ruined by a rare genetic disease as well as by a case of Hepatitis B that he believes he contracted in Vietnam. After a year-and-a-half of hospitalizations and infections, Ripley had received a new liver from a D.C. area donor July 22. But within hours of the surgery, that donor liver began to fail.

Medical professionals say the organ donation process is safeguarded to keep powerful people from skipping to the top of the waiting list. It was Ripley's critical condition - caused by the failure of the first donor liver, his doctors say - not his personal story, that put him first in line for another liver July 24.

Still, most new organs are never granted military escorts.

"It was clearly extraordinary, what they did," said Roger Brown, manager of the Organ Center at the United Network for Organ Sharing, a clearinghouse for organ procurement and allocation. Sometimes, Brown said, patients will die because available organs cannot be transported to them in time.

"There's a lot of work that goes into matching a donor with a patient," he said. "If you can't find that one piece of the puzzle, it's just devastating."

In Ripley's mind, the mission that day reflects the strength of the Marine Corps fraternity. As he convalesces at Walter Reed, where he went after his operation and is listed in stable condition, he summons his booming voice long enough to insist that Marines would do the same for even an unknown grunt.

"Does it surprise me that the Marine Corps would do this?" Ripley said from his hospital bed, his dog tags still hanging around his neck. "The answer is absolutely flat no! If any Marine is out there, no matter who he is, and he's in trouble, then the Marines will say, 'We've got to do what it takes to help him.'"

A battle plan

In Philadelphia, though, the Marine pilots knew exactly whom they were helping, and they called it an honor. On the helipad, the flight crew stood ready as the transplant team rushed back with a box marked "HUMAN ORGAN: FRAGILE."

Moments later, Tom Ripley, traveling with the doctors, got an update from his oldest brother, Stephen, at his father's bedside. Their dad's condition was worsening. The organ had to get to Washington, fast.

Tom and Stephen, both former Marine captains, debated the quickest "rtb" - return to base, which in this case meant the Georgetown hospital. In pager messages fired off like battlefield dispatches, the chopper became "the bird" and the doctors the "pax," slang for passengers. As the day wore on, the brothers drew from their military roots, comforting each other with the Marine motto, Semper Fidelis.

Their father, meanwhile, lay still. His dog tags, fastened with the same tape he'd used to keep them from clanking on secret missions in Vietnam, had been removed. Twice, the family had summoned a Catholic priest to deliver last rites. Now, the Ripleys wondered whether a third might be needed.

The hours ticked away, and the family learned that the Marine helicopter was too big to land on the Georgetown hospital helipad. But the doctors feared getting stuck in traffic on the drive from the Anacostia helipad to the hospital.

The delivery

A well-connected Marine buddy of Ripley's called the president of Georgetown University and got permission to land on the school's football field. A construction crew standing nearby was soon ripping down fencing to make room.

But the Marines rejected that makeshift helipad after sending another helicopter to survey it. The area was deemed too crowded for a landing. At one point, the Ripleys suggested landing at the Marine Corps War Memorial, across the river from Georgetown, by the statue that depicts Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima. But that fanciful notion went nowhere.

The answer finally came in the form of a D.C. police helicopter pilot - Sgt. Thomas Hardy, a former Marine. A Corps official found him and asked whether he would take the team from Anacostia to Georgetown on his smaller chopper.

"This was a Marine Corps mission," said Hardy, a Vietnam veteran who agreed to fly without hesitation. "Once a Marine," he explained, "always a Marine."

The organ delivered, the surgery could finally start. The next day, Ripley's recovery began.

Slowly, he is gaining strength and returning to a normal weight. Despite the surgery's success, risks of infection or other problems remain. His family expects him to be in the hospital for up to three more weeks.

Ripley rests quietly, unable to accept visitors. His wife of 37 years, Moline, sits with him amid pictures of their four children and their grandkids.

Repaying an old debt

The sons who orchestrated this rescue operation call it a culminating moment in their father's military life. John Ripley was shot in the side by a North Vietnamese soldier and during two tours of duty was pierced with so much shrapnel that doctors found metal fragments in his body as recently as last year. After Vietnam, Ripley continued to serve, losing most of the pigment in his face from severe sunburns while stationed above the Arctic Circle.

The Marines, his family believes, repaid a longtime debt.

"Dad gave 32 years of his life to the Marine Corps," said Stephen Ripley. "When he really, really needed the Marine Corps, they were there for him."

Even from the quiet of his hospital room, the Marine Corps still defines Ripley. His family has packed a cabinet by his bed with copies of a book that John Grider Miller wrote about Ripley's heroics; Ripley says he will give complimentary copies of The Bridge at Dong Ha to the medical staff.

Not long ago, a military color guard held a bedside ceremony for him, placing in the room the Marine Corps colors that normally hang in Commandant Jones' office. Ripley was urged to keep the flags in his room until he leaves the hospital.

On a recent afternoon, Ripley looked past his IV machine, past the uneaten hospital lunch, past the plastic cup of pills, to the flags. He was, at that moment, John Ripley, grateful warrior, awed by what his sons, and the Marines, had done.

"They reached over the side," he said, "and they pulled me back in the boat."

Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

 

HONORING THE WARRIORS
 

By Richard Botkin
WorldNetDaily
March 27, 2007

For every citizen old enough to remember "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" or "The Beverly Hillbillies" before they were consigned to reruns, there was a "Vietnam experience." For most Americans though, their Vietnam experience did not involve combat or even serving in the military. It involved things separate from the war itself, a Sixties phenomenon; the cultural changes, the music, the sexual revolution, the denigration of respect for traditional forms of authority and other disparate issues.

Unlike the portrayal as idyllic and egalitarian the nature of World War II when fully 12 million Americans from a population of 140 million wore the uniforms of the various military branches, and with so much of the civilian manufacturing effort directly involved in building all manner of things to make the world safe for democracy, by the mid-1960s that level of commitment and sacrifice was somehow not deemed necessary to prosecute the war the nation's leaders had chosen to fight.

Where the impact of the Great Depression had shaped the national character and temperament of those young people who would be charged with actually fighting World War II, the new-found affluence and relative plenty in America in the postwar period is given as reason for the notion of general sacrifice being a foreign concept for so many of the follow-on generation of young people who might have been tapped to fight the next war.

By early 1965, when the first American Marines landed in northern South Vietnam, out of about 200 million citizens, less than one percent were then serving to meet and keep the nation's Cold War obligations in Europe, Asia and places in between. When in World War II few people would have even considered avoiding their manly obligations as citizens, and stories of boys lying about their ages to join the military or quitting school or graduating early in order that they might serve were quite common, after the war in Vietnam was well underway there were as many or more stories of young men scheming to avoid the very same service and sacrifices their fathers and uncles and cousins had willingly made not 25 years earlier.

Where the burden of service and sacrifice in World War II was seen as eagerly shared by a wide swath of the population, the burden for the actual fighting in Vietnam was born by an extremely small number of young men and their families who sweated out their year-long tours. For most Americans the Vietnam War was a vicarious, evening news experience, a nuisance without real cost to most citizens.

Along with the war being a nuisance, it was also a war without publicly known or acclaimed heroes. There were no Vietnam War warrior-type hero equivalents to Audie Murphy or Jimmy Doolittle. There were no celebrated combat leaders like George Patton or William "Bull" Halsey. Thanks to an increasingly hostile press the American public would more easily identify those associated with failed leadership and corrupted honor like William Calley of My Lai infamy. Even though there was no Iwo Jima or Normandy or Guadalcanal, the fighting was just as tough, and every time American soldiers and Marines went to the field they bested their foe. There was never a shortage of exceptional leadership and exceptional sacrifice.

Ripley's Raiders

Without public record or acclaim, the celebration and commemoration of hard-fought battles from the Vietnam War are left primarily to survivors who recall what took place so many years ago. While there are few published accounts except for official unit histories, March 2, 1967, was recorded as a day in Vietnam when one company of U.S. Marines - Lima Company 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment - engaged the greater part of a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regiment in the remote regions of northern I Corps, near the old Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). That particular day in that particular battle 12 Lima Company Marines were killed in action. Officially, 28 more were wounded in action and required actual evacuation. Nearly every other man who was in the fight, including Lima's commanding officer, was hit in that 24-hour period. The NVA regiment they engaged suffered far, far higher casualties.

These Marines, the survivors of the original Lima Company from that time period, known also as "Ripley's Raiders," came together in early March 2007 for joyful and tearful fellowship; to celebrate life with their remaining comrades, to offer respect to their forever young brothers who paid the ultimate price during their tours but especially in the series of battles fought 40 years ago this month, and to honor the man who led them into and out of the hell they collectively endured.

Few people outside of the Marine Corps and only the most serious, erudite students of Vietnam battle history recognize the name John Ripley. Best known for his exploits during a subsequent combat tour on Easter Sunday, April 2, 1972, when he personally emplaced, under enemy fire, 500 pounds of explosives into the belly of the Dong Ha Bridge in a four-hour period, and then personally blew up said bridge, his extreme heroism and perseverance in literally impossible circumstances resulted in his being awarded the Navy Cross, the nation's second highest award for combat valor. (There are many who believe that the heroism he displayed easily rose to the Medal of Honor level. That Ripley was not so recognized remains a mystery to this day.) The strategic significance of the Dong Ha Bridge was such that had Ripley not blown the bridge and denied the massive NVA armor and infantry combined-arms force entrée into northern I Corps on Highway One at that time, the momentum of the communist attacks in the early stages of what the world would come to know as the Easter Offensive might well have carried them to ultimate victory in 1972 instead of 1975.

Inside the Marine Corps, and also at the United States Naval Academy where he graduated in 1962, John Ripley enjoys nears iconic status, again mostly, but not entirely, for having blown the Dong Ha Bridge that Sunday afternoon 35 Easters ago. Surely, if the Marine Corps came up with a "Warrior Hall of Fame" Ripley would be in it, and on the first team.

To the men of Lima Company, their skipper's actions in 1972 came as no surprise. During the 11-month period Ripley had command of Lima Company (about twice the average length of time a captain was given to command a rifle company in Vietnam in combat), they remained in the field for virtually the entire time and had significant enemy contact on a near daily basis. During the 11-month period that Ripley had command of Lima Company they experienced a greater than 300 percent casualty rate - meaning for the most part that everyone, everyone, every single Marine was "hit" and if he was not killed or too seriously wounded he was recycled back to the field. Sometimes several times. Ripley himself was wounded three times during that period and was forced to take a Purple Heart for one of those wounds. Common among nearly all of his men was the refusal to leave the field when wounded, unless the wound was completely debilitating, due to the needs of the company and loyalty to brother Marines. No one has a complete, accurate count, but the number of NVA soldiers dispatched by Lima Company during that same 11-month period was significant.

As impressive as John Ripley is, the Marines he led "who never disappointed" him are equally awe inspiring. To the uninitiated, to those only exposed to the old Hollywood stereotypes and bromides regarding the men who served in Vietnam, this reunion would have certainly caused them to reconsider their views. In knowing what these men went through as human beings and as Marines in the grit-with-horror fighting they survived all throughout 1967 and into 1968 and the famous Tet Offensive, few would challenge the supposition that they had indeed shouldered a disproportionate share of their generational responsibilities. The war stories these men could tell would fill volumes.

Of the more astonishing, completely atypical war stories and odd anecdotes, perhaps the most obvious strange one from Ripley's Raiders is that belonging to Dave "Tiger Dave" Schwirian of Springdale, Ark. An infantryman with Lima Company's Third Platoon, Dave had been wounded by shrapnel on March 4, but like so many of his Lima Company mates, he remained with his unit. It was during the evening of April 15, that his squad had been sent out to establish an ambush position on some remote jungle trail when, as they stealthily waited for the NVA to show, he was attacked and very nearly killed by a real, live tiger; thus the name "Tiger Dave." At every reunion unbelieving spouses and children of other Lima Company Marines who are there for the first time track him down to see if the stories they have heard over the years are true. Dave always obligingly rolls up his sleeve to display the proof and, like Jesus appearing before Thomas after the Resurrection, turn doubters into believers.

Few people, even Marines, are aware that during the Vietnam War the Corps drafted about 43,000 young men. Conscripted at the ripe old age of 20, Chuck Goggin, now of Alexandria, Va., was making a go of life as a professional baseball player. When he had received his Uncle Sam's invitation, Chuck had already played two seasons of Single A ball for the Dodgers organization; a year with the Salisbury Dodgers of the West Carolina League and a year with the St Petersburg Saints of the Florida State League.

Assigned first as an infantryman, he transitioned over to radio operator and was serving as such for Lima Company's First Platoon on March 2 when the unit engaged the NVA regiment. In the buzz saw of action that occurred once the fight was on, First Platoon's platoon commander, platoon sergeant and first squad leader were all killed or seriously wounded within the battle's opening moments. Without hesitation Capt. Ripley appointed Goggin to serve as platoon commander. With less than one year's service under his belt, he was now in a job that was, except for the exigencies of combat, one exclusively assigned to commissioned officers. Goggin would remain in the job for several months as Ripley was pleased with his performance. Even with the pick of new replacement lieutenants for a period of time, he kept the young man who had shown, on every occasion, that he could lead men and get results in combat.

Like Capt. Ripley, Tiger Dave, and nearly all of the others, Goggin was wounded a number of times but awarded only one Purple Heart. Upon completion of his Marine Corps time, he returned to baseball. And yes, he did finally make it to the majors in 1972. His first game as a Pittsburgh Pirate happened to be the game in which Roberto Clemente made his 3,000th hit. Chuck Goggin may well be the only combat decorated Marine from Vietnam to have played major league baseball as he was awarded the Bronze Star with a combat "V."

Skip Covert, of Moreno Valley, Calif., was a mortar man in Lima Company's Weapons Platoon. As one of Walt Disney's original Mouseketeers - although Skip was then and is now quick to point out that he was not a part of the "inner sanctum" but rather the larger group of kids behind the ones everyone remembers - he was continually chided, and of course peppered with the obvious question red-blooded, cultured, high-testosterone Marines needed to have answered: "What about Annette Funicello?" To this day he still gets asked the same question.

As a mortar man Skip was part of Capt. Ripley's "hip-pocket artillery" that was often the difference between victory and defeat, and saving the lives of brother Marines in Lima's infantry platoons. Like the others, Skip was wounded twice and once contracted malaria. He came back to Lima Company every time.

And then there were the rest of Ripley's Raiders, nearly 60 of them (61 of them had actually confirmed for the reunion but weather and a few personal emergencies trimmed the final number back to the high fifties.); an almost unheard of percentage given that 40 years ago Lima Company went to the field in early March with just slightly more than 200 Marines and navy corpsmen.

Fifty-some odd, nearly 60 men, each and every one of them with personal, inimitable stories, from both during and after the war, as unique and compelling as Tiger Dave's and Chuck Goggin's and Skip Covert's. Common to them all are the varying degrees of struggle endured, coped with or overcome from Vietnam in addition to whatever other cards life has dealt them. They are all individuals, and yet the common thread of service and sacrifice unites them. Forever. It is clearly a Marine thing.

Nearly as impressive as their stories of combat always against superior numbers of NVA, are the stories of accomplishments once they made it home. Like their fathers before them, the men of Lima Company for the most part, were not military professionals. In the group at the reunion only John Ripley and one other man actually retired from careers of Marine Corps service. The rest were single enlistment Marines and a few draftees who, when their time was up, came home and took up life. It was immediately apparent that this same group, 40 years hence, is disproportionately accomplished, and more importantly, disproportionately content. They are content in ways that only men who have survived the kinds of experiences they were forced to share can be content. Their bond and friendship as Marines and as Ripley's Raiders transcends everything. It is unique and has a depth and quality peculiar only to warriors.

It was particularly reassuring to meet folks like Mike and Pat Puckett of Commerce, Mich. Along with Skip Covert, Mike was a mortar man in Lima's Weapons Platoon. With the hulking, still formidable presence of a college or professional football player, he seemed ideally matched by the sweetness of his delightful, petite and perky wife of 38 years. Looking and acting more like newlyweds, they were not the longest married couple in attendance. Even John Ripley's nearly 43 years of matrimony was bested by Francis and Anne McGowin of Andalusia, Alabama, who also still appeared to be going strong after 48 years.

In the group of Raiders were quite a number of business owners, members of law enforcement organizations, attorneys, men with distinguished careers in manufacturing and sales, a college professor, a commercial fisherman, a respiratory therapist, one fellow who had just retired as an executive vice president with a Fortune 500 company, and on and on.

For this group of long-ago ordinary boys who came together to become uncommon young men who did uncommon things during uncommon times, there is one extra layer of brotherhood that unites them and makes that brotherhood near unique; the deep, abiding respect they, to a man, have for John Ripley, and the undiminished pride they have in being his Raiders.

It was instructive to listen in on the differing perspectives and impressions each of the Lima Company Marines had of their skipper. Stories of things he did, big and small, ordinary and extraordinary, that made a difference then in combat and very often later in life as examples to follow, were heartfelt and sincere.

Along with observations that did not surprise, and which almost sounded like a more adult version of the 12 points of the Boy Scout Law, one man described his skipper as "supremely confident without being brash." That confidence was contagious and several men chimed in that Capt. Ripley's resoluteness and old-fashioned bravery sustained them all. Not a small number of his men came up, in different, separate conversations, and credited their survival in Vietnam specifically to his having led them. Not stopping there, those same men often said that because of Capt. Ripley they were better husbands, fathers, and did better in their civilian careers by having been unintentionally exposed to his brand of leadership.

The most unconventional, curious observation shared on this subject by one of Capt. Ripley's men, started out as the shortest. "Decent. Capt. Ripley was simply just a decent man."

"Please explain," I asked.

It seems that late one afternoon; out in the middle of nowhere in particular in northern I Corps where the world was populated with lots of bad guys, as Lima Company was digging in for the evening, a number of pigs began foraging in an area nearby where the Leathernecks had recently buried their garbage. Concerned that the animals' activities might alert the NVA to their presence, a group of Lima's Marines wanted to kill the pigs. The men of the mortar section were particularly anxious to plop three or four rounds out to eliminate the risk a few hundred meters distant. To everyone the idea made sense. Everyone except Capt. Ripley. "No. Those pigs probably belong to some local farmer. If we kill them, some family may go hungry. Let's find another way to deal with them." This from a man who never backed Lima Company down whenever there were NVA units, of any strength, anywhere nearby.

Standing with a large group of Ripley's men close around, one of them said to me, reverentially, as if speaking for all of them - and he was because I could look and see heads nod in agreement as he shared his thoughts - "If Capt. Ripley had said to us 'Men, saddle up, we're moving out. The next objective is a tough one. They only think a few of us will actually survive. Let's go.' We all simply would have saddled up and followed him wherever that was." The odd thing, the ironic thing about that remark was that these were the observations of men who had seen and experienced, repeatedly, every horror there was in Vietnam; serious fighting men, not idealistic, naďve kids. What struck me was they had already done -- many, many times, sometimes for periods of 30 days straight in the terrible months of 1967 -what they said they would do if asked.

I think what they meant in agreeing was, if called, these no-longer young men who, down to the fibers of their individual chromosomes have "USMC" stamped on each and every one of them, and who still carry themselves, on slightly larger frames, with the same comportment they did when they left boot camp now more than four decades ago, would do it all again, as long as their skipper, Capt. Ripley, would lead them.
 

THE EASTER OFFENSIVE AND THE BRIDGE AT DONG HA
 
The Easter Offensive and the bridge at Dong Ha
Posted: August 12, 2003
1:00 am Eastern
By Richard Botkin
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

At midday on March 30, 1972, almost by complete surprise, the North Vietnamese Army launched its single biggest assault of the Vietnam War. Larger in size and scale than the very costly but politically effective 1968 Tet Offensive, the NVA this time were fighting an almost conventional battle.

Generously supplied with seemingly unlimited artillery, Soviet armor and the latest air-defense weapons, reports of the NVA strength and battlefield successes were, for the first few days, not believed by the South Vietnamese general staff and their senior American advisers way down yonder in Saigon.

The first three and a half days of what came to be known as the Easter Offensive of 1972 were a near rout. The shock value of the new conventional NVA juggernaut was wreaking havoc with friendly forces. Indiscriminate artillery barrages, as intense as any experienced by the old hands, were especially deleterious for the uncounted masses of peasants turned refugees in Quang Tri Province. The poor weather and low visibility temporarily neutered the South's advantage in air power. It was hard to believe things could turn so negative in such a short time.

It was clear early on that the town of Dong Ha was a strategic target for the NVA. Offering the only bridge over the Cam Lo-Cua Viet River capable of supporting the heavy T-54 tanks now being used with such tremendous effect, the enemy needed to take it intact. Control of that one bridge would open the South for further exploitation. At a minimum, the turnover of Dong Ha would assure the loss of the northern provinces.

The allied unit closest to the gathering storm at Dong Ha was the Vietnamese Third Marine Battalion. As fate would have it, Capt. John Ripley was the covan (the Vietnamese name "co-van" for U.S. Marine Corps advisers means "trusted friend") that day about to enter the arena.

By 1971, John Ripley had done almost everything a Marine captain could accomplish commensurate with his rank. Having already successfully served in Vietnam as an infantry company commander in 1967, during which time Ripley was decorated and wounded, he had had subsequent tours with Marine Force Recon and as an exchange officer with the British Royal Marines. (Postings with the Royal Marines are extremely competitive and go only to the most promising officers.) Happily married and the father of three very young children, Ripley did not really need to be back in Vietnam. But he was.

The ferocity of the NVA offensive caused all manner of problems with allied command and control. Due to the extreme emergency, Lt. Col. Gerry Turley, who had recently arrived to serve as the senior covan in the northern region, was ordered to also assume control of the Third ARVN Division Forward. Recognizing the need to destroy the bridge, even though higher headquarters (who were unaware of the deteriorating tactical situation) ordered him not to, Turley gave the order. He was certain he was sending Capt. Ripley to his death.

With some cover fire provided by the men of the Third Marine Battalion and aided by U.S. Army Maj. John Smock, Capt. John Ripley accomplished what was not possible: He went out and blew up the bridge.

There is no sports analogy for what Ripley did. It was not like running a three-minute mile, bench pressing 700 pounds, or pulling out a come-from-behind Super Bowl upset victory. There were no adoring crowds. What Ripley did was simply impossible. Had he failed while attempting to do it, his peers would have only thought him noble and brave for trying.

The significance of the timely destruction of the bridge at Dong Ha cannot be overstated – both in terms of Ripley's personal heroism and the impact it had on the entire communist offensive. Those who ponder alternative history could easily argue that had the NVA been able to secure the bridge and the town at that time, the unfortunate end of the Republic of Vietnam on April 30, 1975, might have been markedly speeded up.

Built by U.S. Navy Seabees in 1967, the bridge was a 200-meter concrete and steel leviathan. Its destruction required deliberate planning, intellect and guts. Mostly guts. Ripley would provide all three as he needed to distribute 500 pounds of dynamite on the structure's underside.

Making a dozen-odd trips between the southern bank of the river and the belly of the bridge, each time he shuttled roughly 40 pounds of explosives as he swung, hand-over-hand, out to the various spans and stringers, all the while exposed to enemy fire from the northern side. Placement of the dynamite and requisite wiring took more than two hours.

With the rigging complete, and without fanfare, Smock and Ripley blew the bridge. (For a superbly chronicled read of the entire action, see "The Bridge at Dong Ha" by Ripley friend and fellow covan U.S. Marine Corps Col. John Miller. For the view from the senior adviser who effectively ran the entire show during this period of the war, pick up Col. Gerry Turley's compellingly honest and painstakingly fair "The Easter Offensive." Both available at the U.S. Naval Institute or the Marine Corps Association.)

Ripley's performance that day continues to fascinate. These were not the deeds of a regular man. His bravery was not some gut reaction or counterpunch to a blow struck by an enemy. His actions in that three-hour window – with the world collapsing around him – were deliberate, willful, premeditated. Every ounce of his spiritual and physical fiber was focused on mission accomplishment. Anything less and he surely would have failed. Exhausted prior to the start, when he was finished he was way past empty.

With the bridge's destruction, the communist offensive was blunted but the fighting continued. Always seeming to draw tough assignments, the Third Marine Battalion – known as the Soi Bien or "Wolves of the Sea" – was a storied unit within the Vietnamese Marine Corps. While John Ripley's actions on Easter Sunday of 1972 would make him a legend among his brother covans and professional contemporaries, he was at least evenly matched with the man who led the Soi Bien.

Major Le Ba Binh was a Marine's Marine. He was to the Vietnamese Marine Corps, in its by-then 18-year history, what Chesty Puller, Dan Daly and Pappy Boyington combined were to the by then 196-year history of the U.S. Marine Corps. About the same age as his trusted friend John Ripley, Binh had even served as a student at The Basic School in Quantico where all American Marine lieutenants are schooled in the warrior arts. Wounded at least a dozen times, he had already been decorated for valor on seven separate occasions when the Easter Offensive began.

Binh was the consummate combat leader. Always out front where the action was heaviest, he was revered by his men and would endure any burden to defeat the hated communists. With the world crumbling around his Marines and the generally poor showing being put forth by most ARVN units in Military Region 1, he intended to follow the orders he received – to hold at all costs.

The battles in and around Dong Ha were only part of the much larger communist offensive. While many other ARVN units initially collapsed under NVA pressure, the various battalions of the Vietnamese Marine Corps, along with their covans, fought with tenacity and gave ground grudgingly.

Facing an entire 20,000 man division with an estimated 200 tanks, the 700-plus men of the Third Marine Battalion held Dong Ha for four days, until they too were completely surrounded and were forced to make a fighting withdrawal from the area. Less than a month later, as those who remained stood in formation to be addressed by their commandant at the regional headquarters in Hue, Maj. Binh would muster only 52 survivors. The two companies which had provided Ripley with cover fire while he and Major Smock destroyed the bridge, and then remained in place to battle the NVA armor and infantry, had been wiped out to the last man.

The Easter Offensive ended in failure for the NVA, in no small part thanks to the efforts of the Vietnamese Marine Corps and their faithful advisers. The unfortunate demise of freedom in Southeast Asia would come nearly three years later. In the meantime, covans Gerry Turley, John Ripley, George Philip and all the others headed home to be reabsorbed back into the regular Marine Corps and American society in general.

There was no going home – no rotation date – for Major Binh or his Marines. They fought the communists right up until and past April 30, 1975. Le Ba Binh was not among the fortunate few able to secure spots on the extraction helicopters that last day of April. Captured, he was sentenced to the "re-education camps."

In a time period six times longer than America's involvement in World War II, Binh labored in the camps. Through the terms of five American presidents, Binh labored. When the Great Bull Market lifted off in 1982, Binh labored. While most who served in Vietnam moved on and pressed ahead, Binh was stuck in the bamboo gulag. Through the stock market crash of 1987, Tiananmen Square, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War, the ups, the downs – through it all, Binh labored. From 1975 up until the time of his release in 1998 and subsequent movement to the United States, Binh labored. Ever defiant, never broken, his slave masters toiled in vain.

Whenever I am with Marines, whether long-time friends or new acquaintances, there is a peculiar level of comfort and happiness unique always to those times. I am not quite able to reduce those feelings to words. It is different than the pleasure that comes from being a father, and exceeds the delight and youthful exuberance I recall as a little boy awaiting Santa's arrival. I would describe it simply as joy. When I am with brother Marines, I feel joy ... joyful ... joyous. That's it. That's all.

For three days I was allowed to hang with, to bask in the reflected glory of several dozens of heroes whose names and deeds the many millions of Americans and Vietnamese they served will never know. The youngest covans are now in their late 50s. Most are older, and except for a touch of graying hair they all – to a man – have that same comportment, the ramrod-straight bearing, the fire in their eyes that identifies them still as – only as – U.S. Marines.

Recruiters for the Corps have left one of their greatest, unquantifiable marketing tools completely off the table. Each time I am with Marine friends, the evidence overwhelms me yet again – that is how well Leathernecks do with and by the women they marry. More impressive even than the array of valor and Purple Heart medals among the covan warriors were the wives who kept it all together. These were not just women who look good. They do. These are women equal to or greater than their men in terms of grit and pluck and spirit. Women of character who kept the faith in their men and the cause they served when few others did.

What a group to be around. And then there were the Vietnamese.

I doubt I am unique in my viewing of history always from the solipsism of the "American experience" – the American experience in World War II, the American experience in Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War ... wherever. Rarely is my consideration for allies, especially allies from a country and government which no longer officially exists. Yet, here they were with us, or we with them. All these Vietnamese Marines, their wives and children, looking proud, prosperous, accomplished. Like their covan brothers, the Vietnamese Marines, clad in their signature tiger-striped uniforms, still formidable, retain that eager-for-action, lock-and-load aura.

When I was told what so many of these now-American families had been through to get here, their speeches, their testimonies of comradeship and bravery and sacrifice, in English far more perfect than my Vietnamese, became heavy with meaning.

In the entire American population there are, at most, a million men living who have actually really fought the up-close and personal, fixed bayonets, give no quarter fight for freedom. Of the entire native born, except maybe for those who have been prisoners of war, there are none who have had their freedom taken from them. Even among our own warriors, most have never had to risk more than their own lives in our nation's defense. For Americans, freedom is a given. It is assumed.

I wonder how sweet freedom must seem and how much someone who came from Hungary in 1957, Cuba in 1962, Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia after 1975 must love our country and truly know the blessings we enjoy. Le Ba Binh knows.

Spending time alone together, Ripley and Binh toured the hallowed halls of The Basic School where they had common memories from different times. So many friends gone. So much sacrifice. More familiar with one another than brothers, the communication was mostly non-verbal. Referring to each other as they did in 1972, not because of rigid formality but out of love and respect, Binh is still "Thieu Ta" – Vietnamese for "Major" – to Ripley.

Binh, who has done so much, seen so much, experienced it all, is a man of few words. John Ripley cannot describe their brief, final exchange without pausing to acknowledge his own emotions. Stopping to look back one last time before leaving, Binh reflected to his covan: "Ripp-lee. I am happy."

"That is good Thieu Ta. I am happy too."

"No, no, no Ripp-lee" – as if to tell John Ripley he did not quite get it all. Tapping his fingers over his own heart, he continued. "I am happy ... in here. I am proud."

Le Ba Binh, we are glad you are here.

Welcome home, Thieu Ta. Welcome home.
 

RIPLEY SET FOR INDUCTION INTO RANGER HALL OF FAME
 
By Bryan Mitchell - bmitchell@militarytimes.com
Posted : June 16, 2008

Retired Col. John W. Ripley, the legendary leatherneck whose exploits in Vietnam earned him a Navy Cross and an eternal spot in Marine Corps lore, is set to become the first Marine inducted into the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame.

“It’s pretty amazing really. I can’t believe it,” said Ripley, who retired in 1992 after a 35-year career. “When I was called by Fort Benning and this sergeant first class told me what was happening, my jaw just dropped. I couldn’t believe it.”

Ripley said his famous assault on the Dong Ha Bridge, on Easter morning 1972, was straightforward. There was a bridge to demolish, and he was the Marine to do it.

“I was a little surprised because the Vietnamese engineers had pre-positioned explosives there,” he said. “And that’s when I showed up.”

Ripley had to climb underneath the bridge to avoid enemy fire and to perfectly position the explosives to bring it down.

“I had to swing like a trapeze artist in a circus and leap over the other I-beam,” said Ripley, whose combat awards also include the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars with combat “V.” “I would work myself into the steel. I used my teeth to crimp the detonator and thus pinch it into place on the fuse. I crimped it with my teeth while the detonator was halfway down my throat.”

The destruction of the bridge allowed his unit of 735 Vietnamese Marines to hold off several thousand approaching enemy fighters.

Lt. Col. Jeff Knudson, 39, commanding officer for the Marine detachment at Fort Benning, Ga., said it’s impossible to overstate the importance to the Corps of Ripley’s induction into the Ranger Hall of Fame.

“At a recent ceremony here, we had the chief of staff of the U.S. Army at the 2008 Best Ranger Competition. He said that if the Army is the strength of the nation, then the Ranger is the heart of the Army,” Knudson said. “So when you hold it in that level, with the title and distinction of being a Ranger, to select a retired Marine Corps officer is evidence of how impressive his career is.”

The Ranger Hall of Fame honors and preserves the contributions of the most extraordinary Rangers in American history, according to the Web site of the U.S. Army Ranger Association, www.ranger.org. It strives to identify and highlight individuals as role models for current Rangers and to educate the public about the culture of the U.S. Army Rangers.

The 2008 class includes 13 former Rangers, as well as Ripley. Of those, eight served as officers while six were enlisted.

Ripley spoke to Marine Corps Times by phone from his home in Maryland, ahead of his trip to Georgia to be ushered into the group on June 11. Friends, family and former comrades from across the country are slated to join Ripley at the ceremony.

Ripley enlisted in the Corps in 1957 and was selected to attend the U.S. Naval Academy a year later. While serving as a first lieutenant, he was selected to attend Ranger school at Fort Benning, Ga., in 1965.

He took the class in the dead of winter, which he recalls as being especially brutal that year.

“They had to break the ice for us to qualify in the water survival class,” Ripley said. “It was so cold that we had to constantly worry about frostbite and hypothermia. The real leadership of these men stood out.”

To create a true-to-combat training environment, the troops were deliberately kept hungry.

“They wanted you to continue to perform under these extremes of physical depravation,” he said.

The training he received at Ranger school, as well as his time serving with the British Royal Marines, prepared him well for his tours in Vietnam, especially his famous destruction of the Dong Ha Bridge.

“Not once in my entire command was I ever surprised by the enemy,” he said. “On the contrary, we surprised them. We would ambush the enemy. So we were by far the best.”

During his assault on the bridge, Ripley called on his skills gleaned during his Ranger training.

“That could not have happened had I not had the training I had at Ranger school. I was exhausted, at night, freezing cold and when I got there you had to rely on just your adrenaline and your staying power,” Ripley said.

After he retired, Ripley worked in education for a number of years before he served as the director of history and museums for the Marine Corps. In that position, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Triangle, Va.-based National Museum of the Marine Corps.

About two dozen Marines currently attend Ranger school each year, with about a 50 percent graduation rate. That attendance is down from a historical average of approximately 85 Marines annually going to the grueling school, Knudson said. The strain of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan translates into fewer opportunities for Marines to attend the 10-week course.

Asked if there were Ripley protégés serving in Iraq and Afghanistan today, the legendary Marine spoke of the sacrifice today’s Marines are making for the country.

“I would dare say there are a number, and God bless them,” he said. “Every service has dozens of them who are just solidly performing, doing the hard work and serving their country.”