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Posted on 08/06/2004 10:40:05 PM PDT by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 Vietnam - Summer 1970 Rodger "Chip" Collins is a witness to hidden history. As a 19-year-old Army private first class, Collins fought at the heart of America's last major battle in Vietnam. His unit - 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile), gave up 40 of the 77 soldiers killed during the siege of Fire Support Base Ripcord, a mountaintop artillery position deep in North Vietnamese Army territory, from July 2-23, 1970. When you add the battles required to take the hill and establish the firebase, beginning in mid-March, the cost of controlling and eventually giving up Ripcord becomes 114 dead and nearly 700 wounded. But almost no one knows about what happened at Ripcord - except for the survivors, a few others who fought nearby and a handful of military historians. By the time the battle at Ripcord began, the vast majority of American troops could see the end of their Vietnam war in sight, and most American civilians were more than ready to forget that Vietnam even existed. For 30 years, almost no literature existed about the 101st's significant role in 1970, as America's war petered out.  Now this gaping hole is about to get filled. With the help of veterans like Collins - who founded the Ripcord Association to maintain links between survivors - author Keith William Nolan has completed a book detailing the battle and its previously ignored importance. "Ripcord: Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970" was published in July by Presidio Press Inc. Among the most important sources influencing Nolan's decision to write, and filling in the story's details, was the "Ripcord Report," the association newsletter founded by Collins and continued by former 101st company commander Chuck Hawkins. Firebase Ripcord was a bald lump of dirt on a mountain jutting up in the middle of Thua Thien Province, near South Vietnam's extreme northwest corner.  I Corps, the military region including Thua Thien, was best known to the American public for three battlefield events. One was the vicious battle for the provincial capital, the city of Hue, during the enemy's 1968 Tet Offensive. Another, only a few weeks later, was the bitter months-long siege of a Marine base at Khe Sanh. The third took place 10 miles south of Ripcord, in May 1969, and made international headlines. It was a bloody battle for a mountain called Dong Ap Bia, in the A Shau Valley, not far from the Laotian border. For nine days, the 101st, nicknamed the Screaming Eagles, tried to root North Vietnamese Army forces out of mountaintop strongholds before finally taking control, at the cost of 56 killed and more than 400 wounded. Dong Ap Bia became known to the troopers and the American public as Hamburger Hill. The fact that it was abandoned almost immediately after being taken at such a terrible price came to symbolize the war's seeming futility. Two months later, President Richard Nixon ordered the start of "Vietnamization," his policy of gradually pulling out U.S. forces and turning the war over to their South Vietnamese allies. Only two events from the war in 1970 stick in the minds of most Americans - the April to May invasion of Cambodia, and the fatal shooting of four Kent State University students when an anti-invasion protest became a riot. At the same time, the 101st was working its way back toward the A Shau to pound the North Vietnamese Army one last time before handing responsibility to the South Vietnamese.  But the division faced one key difference from a year before. Hamburger Hill had sapped the commanders' willingness to suffer terrible casualties and to do whatever it took to master the valley, which the North Vietnamese Army now owned completely. Trying to fight the enemy in his back yard, but avoid casualties, was contradictory. It backfired. Chip Collins had barely arrived in Vietnam in March 1970 when the 2/506th was sent to help prepare Ripcord. They walked into the fire right away, getting nailed to the hillside under mortar attack on April Fool's Day, as Collins chronicled in a 1986 Ripcord Report. The 2/506th and related battalions were nicknamed Currahee, a Cherokee word for "stand alone."  The Currahees and other 101st units eventually carved out bunkers, artillery positions and communications complexes on the mountain. Ripcord would provide the big guns to support a push south into the A Shau as part of Operation Texas Star, the last mostly-American offensive of the war. Or would it? Collins notes there's evidence in the Texas Star operational plan that the brass may have never intended to go back to the A Shau's death trap. Instead, they would set up an exposed firebase to draw the North Vietnamese Army like honey on an anthill.  Collins was among roughly 300 troopers who would alternate between providing security on Ripcord and venturing to look for the enemy among neighboring hills and valleys. Meanwhile, the push to the A Shau never happened. Beginning July 2, the Screaming Eagles were too busy trying to stop a nearly constant rain of North Vietnamese Army mortars and artillery shells smashing Ripcord. The hilltop bristled with firepower and was ringed with an elaborate wall of wire - razor wire, concertina wire, barbed wire.  Commanders were certain this intricate maze would hold off full-scale North Vietnamese Army infantry assaults and infiltration attacks, Collins said. As a squad leader, he explained, "I was the guy who had to fill the (perimeter defense) positions each night." After days and days of relentless bombing, the troops were exhausted. "I know the NVA could come through the wire if they wanted to," he said.  The 101st also needed to secure two prominent nearby peaks the enemy controlled, Hill 805 and Hill 1000. But after several failed attempts Collins had to help haul dead and wounded off Hill 1000.  Commanders put some troops atop Hill 805, but not enough to hold it. Collins witnessed the firefights from Ripcord as the North Vietnamese Army mauled an undermanned unit on Hill 805 for days, because Brig. Gen. Sidney Berry was unwilling to risk more deaths and woundings to send reinforcements. "I watched every night as a company got reduced to a platoon," he said. Collins also was among those who, on the 18th day of the siege, were witnesses as the North Vietnamese Army shot down a giant Chinook supply helicopter. It crashed into an ammunition dump that blew up with such force it tore the top off much of the hill. Ultimately, Ripcord was surrounded by North Vietnamese anti-aircraft artillery and mortar positions that could fire on it virtually at will, Collins said. Down below were hillsides and valleys that hid endless enemy bunkers, which Collins only recently learned were all interconnected. On July 21, one of Hawkins' riflemen shot a young North Vietnamese courier and found on him a map outlining plans for a massive ground attack on Ripcord. Two days later, commanders decided holding the hill wasn't worth the cost. A seemingly endless relay of helicopters lifted the Eagles to safety a half-dozen at a time.  When everyone was gone, fighter jets and bombers smashed the abandoned firebase back to an anonymous pile of dust. Collins later fought with a reconnaissance squad, unwilling to waste away the last months of his tour with undisciplined troops in the safer rear areas of the war zone. He left in February 1971, but not before watching the buildup of South Vietnamese troops, assisted by 101st helicopters, preparing for the ill-fated Lam Son 719 assault on North Vietnamese Army hideouts in Laos.  The South Vietnamese got their tails kicked badly, hinting at the failures that would let North Vietnamese tanks roll into Saigon four years later. As Nolan wrote, "Vietnamization had failed."      |
Who's spreading those ugly rumors???
Nice Phantom. :-)
Rats! I've been using the wrong wire!!
Afternoon Aeronaut.
LOL. I guess I was a little tired last night, thanks EGC. Sam had it corrected for me.
LOL. Thanks for the pancakes and strawberries. mmmmm.
Sam and I built a small fence today. That's about all the work I need for the weekend.
hehehe. The left would be soooo obliterated!
Last night we were shoring up the retaining wall in the pond, this morning we were putting up a fence in your backyard. Nah, it's not hard, it's loads of fun! ;-)
Thank you and good afternoon Mayor.
Good afternoon feather.
Hey Mud.
Albeit, we could hit the enemy harder, in larger concentrated areas and be done with them sooner, imo.
LOL. He's only a nice guy to other nice guys. I would not want to be his enemy. ;-)
Wow. A flying flag-o-gram. Neat picture PE.
Great Flag-o-gram today. Thanks.
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