Chapter 35

Ripley’s Raiders

The next day March 2, we headed south to connect up with the headquarters group. We were sweeping down through an area with a well-established trail. At around eleven, we discovered two Chi Com grenades. Evidently they had been dropped because they had not been set up with a trip wire or any other method to detonate them. There was also rice scattered on the trail that was mixed with blood, indicating that whoever dropped the grenades was carrying a bandolier of rice and had been wounded. Following the trail of bloody rice, we came across bloody bandages that had been discarded. We continued following the trail.

At a juncture in the trail, Captain Ripley had First Platoon snooping around in a brushy area. At around 1300, the point man was silently walking down the path, and through the bushes, he saw two NVA sitting on top of bunkers wearing radio headsets with their backs toward him. One was busy tapping out code with a telegraph key strapped to his leg. The point man signaled his squad leader, and they decided to take advantage of the radiomen’s inattention and capture them.

They stealthily crept up on their unsuspecting prey, and in a moment, they were overpowered, gagged, and their wrists tied. The captors were hurried out of the area, and the Marines grabbed all their gear including their radios and code and log books. As the two of radiomen were brought back through our column, they didn’t look very happy. Captain Ripley examined the captured equipment and determined by the complexity of the radio equipment and an antenna mounted in a tree that this was a regimental headquarters for an NVA unit.

We withdrew slightly to keep from being discovered. Battalion radioed Captain Ripley to avoid contact, so we advanced and tried to go around the enemy, but they discovered that their radiomen were missing and came looking for us. At around 1440, they found us and attacked. We started getting small arms fire and mortars. They were so close that we could not call in artillery or mortar support.

We fixed bayonets and charged in shooting and yelling, which surprised the NVA. They abandoned their gear and retreated away from us to a distant area to regroup. Now we were inside the area that they had just occupied and had all their supplies. It wasn’t long before that they realized that we were a small unit and decided that they might be able to retrieve their gear. They came at us again with small arms and automatic weapons fire. They also sent in mortars to further harass us. Soon we were experiencing casualties. The enemy units were still too close to us to call for artillery or air support.

The first wounded Marine I encountered was Private First Class Jack Harris. He was lying in a trench that had formerly been occupied by the NVA. He had been shot as he apparently had been exiting the trench. He had been shot in the chest and had no respirations or heartbeat. I started doing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on him, but quickly abandoned my efforts as there was nothing I could do for him. There were too many more wounded who needed my immediate attention. As we progressed, I remember thinking how the bullets passing just above me again sounded like angry bees. I wished I could get flatter on the ground. I was crawling around the area putting battle dressings on the wounded and pulling them back into a trench or a hole to keep them out of harm’s way.