Ripcord: Screaming Eagles under Siege, Vietnam 1970. . - Net Assessment - book review

Aerospace Power Journal, Winter, 2001 by Glenn D. Lt Leinbach

Ripcord: Screaming Eagles under Siege, Vietnam 1970 by Keith William Nolan. Presidio Press (http://www.presidiopress.com), P.O. Box 1764, Novato, California 94948, 2000, 480 pages, $29.95 (hardcover).

At first glance, Keith Nolan's Ripcor seems to have little to do with the Air Force other than to serve as a reminder of the importance the F-4 played in close air support and the B-52 played in the bombing campaign in Southeast Asia. After all, this is the story of Fire-Support Base Ripcord, an Army installation. The fight in the hills around Ripcord was an infantryman's fight, holding little or no interest for an Air Force audience.

Although this is true, members of the Air Force, especially its leadership, would do well to read Nolan's book. What it chronicles, beyond the horrific scenes of battle, is the story of several hundred men fighting a battle they have already lost. It tells how these troops, faced with an impossible mission, begin to mistrust their leadership and how their anger begins to spread.

Fire-Support Base Ripcord was established as the first part of a campaign to push the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) out of the A Shau Valley, an operation that never really came to fruition as originally conceived. The ridge on which Ripcord would be built was seized in April 1970 but reverted to the NVA only three months later, on 23 July. Because of political considerations, writes Nolan, "division headquarters proved reluctant to be drawn into the kind of bloody slugging match that would have been required to push the enemy out of their entrenchments around Ripcord" (p. 11).

Ripcord is especially powerful when it examines leadership, from the platoon all the way up to division level. Nolan expertly and evenhandedly dissects eyewitness accounts of both good and bad leadership in the field. The grunts who followed their leaders into battle often did so reluctantly, largely because of the overwhelming nature of the obstacles before them. In the interviews and letters Nolan presents, these soldiers' impressions of platoon and company leadership are mostly positive. The questions surrounding leadership arise mostly at the battalion level and above, starting with Lt Col Andre Lucas, the battalion commander tasked with the defense of Ripcord, and with Brig Gen Sidney Berry, acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division. Each of their subordinates has a different opinion, and Nolan is careful to let readers make up their own minds about each man's leadership qualities. Again and again, the book returns to the issue of leadership: what proved effective and what did not; whether a comman der could have done more or less; who had responsibility; and what leadership could have done differently.

Beyond this case study in leadership is the fascinating story of several battalions of men who faced the horrors of war every day. Nolan takes his readers on patrol with the ranging platoons as they probe the jungles around Ripcord to test enemy strength. He follows them up nearby Hill 1000, from which the NVA pounded Ripcord with mortar and 55 mm fire. Nolan tells of the men on Ripcord who provide suppressing fire for the men in the field around the camp, and he walks with the men in the field who try in vain to knock out mortar and gun emplacements that threaten Ripcord. Finally, he follows the men off Ripcord as they evacuate the base while NVA troops victoriously swarm the hilltop.

Although the besieged men were happy to evacuate their living hell, they questioned the reasons for establishing the base if it was to be abandoned so quickly. Chris Straub, a retired lieutenant colonel who saw action during the Ripcord siege, wrote to Nolan, noting that the evacuation "confirms my view that from the start the 1O1st's push into the Ripcord AO [area of operations] was not in consonance with what the U.S. was trying to accomplish in Vietnam in 1970" (p. 411). If Ripcord did not mesh with overall US objectives, one wonders why so many men died before it was abandoned. Again, the question of leadership raises its head.

Ripcord is a quality piece of investigating, and Nolan deserves credit for his dedication to revealing as many sides of the story as he can. His ability to humanize the men who fought is commendable. Most importantly, however, Nolan is able to provide present military leadership with a case study in effective battle management. We owe it to future conflicts to read and internalize the lessons Ripcord presents.