Uncle Sam
Ain’t Released Me Yet
Memoirs of a REMF
Copyright©
2016 by Robert B. Martin, IV
All
Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express
written permission from the copyright owner, except for the use of brief
quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. I have attempted to recreate
events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them.
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Chapter 48
The Siege of FSB Ripcord
“In war, truth is the first casualty.”...........Aeschylus
What would become a twenty-three-day
continuous siege of FSB Ripcord began with mortar fire on July 1, 1970. There
had been sporadic fighting around Ripcord since March 12 when the NVA began
building up their strength in a plan to overrun the firebase and kill all of
the approximately six hundred U.S. and ARVN troops on the firebase. Some later
estimates put the NVA troop concentration at more than fifty thousand men.
FSB Ripcord was located 38 km west of Hue and 12 km
northeast of the northern end of the A Shau
Valley. Alpha Battery of the 2/11th Arty and their six 155mm
howitzers along with six 105mm howitzers from another battalion were dug in on
top of the hill. The firebase was defended by elements of the 2/506th infantry
of the 101st Airborne Division.
The troops on FSB Ripcord were heavily outnumbered
by an extremely aggressive contingent of regular NVA troops. After the siege
began, members of the battalion at Camp Eagle became very concerned about their
buddies on Ripcord. The 101st was taking a lot of casualties and the
firebase was not being reinforced or evacuated. Not being “in the know,” the
easiest person to blame for this was the battalion commander, LTC Burke. After
all, he was the one who had closed the EM club, banned the USO shows, and
recently ordered everyone to take down their state flags. He was not a popular guy
with the troops. Of course, the colonel did not have the authority to reinforce
or evacuate the firebase. He was only the battalion commander, not the division
commander. But someone had to take the blame.
One night during the siege of FSB
Ripcord, I was awakened by automatic weapon fire. It was the familiar sound of an
M-16 emptying a 20-round magazine. At 650 to 750 rounds per minute, this takes
no more than a couple of seconds. I ran out of the hooch to see what was
happening. I would not have believed what had happened if I had not seen it
with my own eyes. It was somewhat frightening, yet I wanted to laugh. LTC Burke’s
personal water tank, stood on a small tower, about ten feet or so in height next
to his personal hooch and was hemorrhaging water from a couple of dozen or so bullet
holes. Someone had been pissed off enough at LTC Burke to shoot up his water
tank! No one was ever caught.
The colonel received a second unwelcome
surprise another night while the NVA were hammering away at FSB Ripcord. This
time, it wasn’t as funny. It was much more personal. Someone opened the door of
the colonel’s hooch and tossed in a hand grenade. It didn’t explode because the
pin was not pulled. I suppose it was only meant to frighten him. Once again, no
one was caught.
On July 21, 1970, as the siege
continued, 1LT Bob Kalsu (it is important you recall this name from the
beginning of my memoir), Battery Commander of A Battery, 2/11th Arty
was killed by mortar fire on Ripcord. Our Battery Commander, CPT Austin, was
ordered out to take command of the battery and he left later that day. CPT George
Bannon was assigned as our replacement for H&HB Battery Commander. I only
had a few more weeks before going home, so don’t remember very much about him.
Finally, on July 23, 1970, the decision
was made to evacuate FSB Ripcord. Helicopters performed the evacuation under
continuous mortar, anti-aircraft, and small arms fire. Chinooks carried the
artillery and heavy equipment out first (I guess someone decided it was more
important than the men).
The evacuation required twenty-two Chinook
sorties and one hundred Huey sorties that day. They flew in and out of the
firebase while under constant fire. Many were damaged and several were shot
down. The NVA had zeroed in on the landing pads and were pounding them with
mortar fire.
The last man evacuated from Ripcord was
reportedly a Kit Carson Scout. They barely got him out before the entire
firebase was overrun by the NVA. One helicopter pilot said it looked like ants
swarming over an anthill. Six American soldiers were left on Ripcord because
they were either afraid or unable to leave their bunkers. Their bodies were
recovered about six weeks later.
1SG Corbett learned that the evacuees from
Ripcord were being choppered to Camp Evans. He decided we should go over to
Camp Evans and give CPT Austin a ride back to Camp Eagle. I got the jeep and we
took off to Camp Evans.
When we arrived at Evans, we learned that
CPT Austin had been wounded during the evacuation. A mortar round had taken off
part of a foot (I don’t remember which one) as he was jumping into a Huey. We
were told that he was pulled aboard the chopper and taken to the 326th Evac
Hospital there at Camp Evans. I drove over to the 326th as fast as I could, but
we weren’t allowed inside once we got there because it was so busy. The first sergeant
and I stood around outside of the hospital for a while and watched chopper
after chopper land, off load the wounded and dead, and head right back to
Ripcord for another load. We never did get to see CPT Austin. After he was
stabilized at the 326th Evac, he was flown out to the hospital ship USS Hope for surgery. I believe from Hope we was transferred to an Army
hospital in Japan before making it home. I did get to see him a couple years
later when he and his wife visited me in Savannah, GA.
A temporary mortuary tent had been set
up beside the hospital. The dead were taken into the tent where they were
cleaned and identified before being zipped up in body bags and placed into a
refrigerated tractor-trailer. I could see the bodies stacked like cordwood when
the door of the trailer was opened. It was a very sobering sight.
Ripcord was a political football that
did not have to happen. The Army was not allowed to reinforce Ripcord during
the long siege because the politicians in Washington were afraid that reinforcing
the firebase would give the impression that Nixon’s Vietnamization Policy was
not working. The politicians were afraid it would appear that the U.S. was escalating
the war if reinforcements were sent in, and the Army was afraid that evacuating
the firebase would be tantamount to admitting defeat.
Ripcord was an embarrassment to the
Army. Partly because FSB Henderson had been overrun earlier that spring, but it
was mainly because the Army was still red-faced over the events at Hamburger
Hill a year earlier while I was in AIT at Fort Sill watching it on TV. The Army
lost seventy-two soldiers KIA and three hundred and seventy-two WIA in taking
Hamburger Hill, after which it was promptly abandoned and left for the enemy to
re-occupy.
A GI
argued after Hamburger Hill, “Brass are calling this a tremendous victory. We
call it a goddam butcher shop… If you want to die so some lifer can get a
promotion, go right ahead. But if you think your life is worth something, you
better get yourselves together. If you don’t take care of [I assume he meant, “kill”]
the lifers, they might damn well take care of you.”
The public outcry over what seemed an
unnecessary loss of life on Hamburger Hill was tremendous, and the politicians
and Army brass didn’t want to go through that again. As a result, the Army implemented
a news blackout to prevent the loss of FSB Ripcord from becoming known. The
news media received no briefings on Ripcord during the entire siege and were
told nothing about it once the siege was over.
Even the troops back in the battalion
at Camp Eagle didn’t get much news about what was going on. In a letter dated
Friday, July 24, 1970, I wrote, “I suppose you have heard about FSB Ripcord on
the news, although they may not have mentioned it by name.” I went on to say, “They
have really had a rough time out on Ripcord and everyone is glad to see them
back. They only had 4 killed and about 25-30 wounded.” The casualty figures in
my letter were far from accurate. The Army didn’t want the actual casualty
figures to become public knowledge so they were buried among other casualty
reports from across Vietnam. In other words, there was a cover-up.
To this day, you will find variations
in the number of U.S. casualties reported for that time period. The After
Action Report from the 101st Airborne Division to the Commanding General of
XXIV Corps reported 68 U.S. KIA and 443 WIA out of the approximately 600
soldiers on the firebase. If you add in the fighting around and in support of
Ripcord during the same time period, the number would be closer to 800 total
casualties.
The same After Action Report went on to
state that six helicopters were destroyed, seventeen suffered major damage, nineteen
suffered minor damage, and another sixty aircraft received combat damage that
required limited repair for a total of over a hundred aircraft either damaged
or destroyed out of the one hundred and twenty-two total sorties reported.
Alpha Battery of the 2/11th Arty
suffered 3 KIA and about 25 or 30 WIA, almost one-third of the battery. The KIA
were CPL Burke Miller, 1LT Robert Kalsu, and SGT David Johnson.
Once the evacuation of Ripcord was
complete and the NVA were stripping the firebase bare, B52s bombed the hill and
the NVA on it into the Stone Age.
The Army’s rationale
for “closing” (the Army did not use the word, evacuating) Ripcord is given in
the 101st Airborne Division’s After Action Report. It states, “The closing of
RIPCORD would make troops available for offensive use against the enemy supply
caches and logistic installations to the rear of the NVA forces massed around
RIPCORD.” As good an excuse as any, I suppose.
The report did admit,
though, that, “Additional factors of critical importance in the decision to
close FSB RIPCORD were the domestic and foreign political implications of
another U.S. firebase undergoing a KHE SANH or DIEN BIEN PHU siege (there was
no mention of Henderson or Hamburger Hill). RIPCORD, if given an inordinate
amount of adverse publicity, might well have jeopardized the program of
Vietnamization.”
That made a lot more
sense, but they should have used the word “evacuate” instead of “closed.” Otherwise,
it sounds like they just hung up a CLOSED sign at the gate and went home.
An “Empty Boots” ceremony was held in
the battalion’s amphitheater in memory of the three KIA from Alpha Battery.
The Siege of FSB Ripcord was the last
major battle involving U.S. troops of the Vietnam War. To this day, the U.S.
Army has not acknowledged it as a defeat and continues to say the U.S. never
lost a battle in Vietnam.
To learn
more about the siege of FSB Ripcord you may want to read, Ripcord: Screaming Eagles under Siege, Vietnam 1970 by Keith W.
Nolan (OutSkirtsPress publisher) and Remembering
Ripcord by Christopher J. Brady (Presidio publisher).
Continued in Chapter 49, A Seven Day Leave….
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