Picture this. It’s July 1970. Somewhere deep in the mountains of South Vietnam, 200 American soldiers are trapped on a hilltop barely the size of a football field. They are surrounded by nearly 5,000 North Vietnamese Army soldiers. For 23 days straight, mortars rain down on them without mercy.

 50 rounds some days, over a hundred on others. The enemy is so close they can hear them shouting through the jungle at night. GI die tonight. GI die tonight. The words echo through the darkness hour after hour. A psychological weapon as effective as any mortar round. The Americans cannot leave. They cannot be reinforced in any meaningful way.

 Their only lifeline is the helicopter. And the enemy has positioned anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine guns on every surrounding hilltop to shoot them down. One by one, the helicopters fall from the sky. Pilots describe flying into ripcord as flying into a wall of lead. On July 18th, a Chinuk helicopter is shot down directly onto the ammunition dump.

 The explosion is so massive it literally shears off one entire tier of the hill. For 8 hours straight, the soldiers dodge their own exploding artillery shells, cluster bombs, and white phosphorus rounds, all while still under mortar attack from the enemy outside the wire. And here is the thing that makes this story even more remarkable.

 Almost nobody back home ever heard about it. This was fire support base Ripcord. The last major battle between American ground forces and the North Vietnamese army during the entire Vietnam War. A battle so brutal, so costly, and so politically inconvenient that the Nixon administration did everything in its power to keep it out of the newspapers and off the evening news.

 Three medals of honor and six distinguished service crosses were awarded for actions during those 23 days. 75 American soldiers died on that mountain. Hundreds more were wounded. The total casualty count for the broader operation exceeded 400 dead. And yet for 15 years after the war ended, the battle of fire support base Ripcord remained virtually unknown to the American public.

 Today we are going inside this forgotten battle. We will walk through those 23 days of hell hour by hour, crisis by crisis. We will meet the men who fought there. The professional football player who refused a deferment because he said he was no better than anybody else. The 18-year-old radio operator who was thrown onto a helicopter in the middle of the night and found himself in the worst fighting of his life.

 The battalion commander whose acts of extraordinary heroism would earn him the Medal of Honor postumously. and we will understand why this battle was hidden from the American people and what it tells us about the final years of America’s longest war. This is the story of fire support base Ripcord, 23 days trapped on a mountain, the forgotten battle that changed the course of the Vietnam War.

 Let me take you back to the beginning. To understand what happened at Ripcord, you need to understand what was happening in America and Vietnam in the spring of 1970. America was tearing itself apart over Vietnam. The anti-war movement had reached its peak. Protests swept across college campuses and city streets. On May 4th, 1970, just two months before Ripcord, National Guard soldiers had opened fire on student protesters at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four and wounding nine others.

 The nation was shocked. The photographs of a young woman kneeling over a dead student became one of the defining images of the era. President Richard Nixon had promised to end the war. He called his strategy Vietnamization. The idea was simple in theory. Gradually withdraw American troops while building up South Vietnamese forces to take over the fighting.

 Let the Vietnamese fight their own war. Bring the boys home. By 1970, American troop levels in Vietnam had dropped from a peak of over 500,000 to around 330,000. And the numbers were falling every month. But here was the problem. The war was not over. The North Vietnamese were still fighting. They were still infiltrating troops and supplies into the South.

 They were still attacking American positions. And someone had to hold the line while the withdrawal happened. that someone was the 101st Airborne Division, the legendary Screaming Eagles. By early 1970, the 101st was the only full strength American division remaining in Vietnam. They had been in country since 1965. They had fought in some of the war’s bloodiest battles.

 The Ayadrang Valley, the Ted offensive, the siege of Hugh, and just one year before Ripcord, they had fought the battle of Hamburger Hill. Hamburger Hill had been a disaster in every way except the tactical. In May 1969, soldiers of the 101st Airborne had assaulted a heavily fortified North Vietnamese position on Hill 937 in the AA Valley.

 They attacked that hill 11 times over 10 days of brutal fighting. 72 Americans were killed. Over 300 were wounded. They finally took the hill and then just 11 days later, they abandoned it. The North Vietnamese walked right back in. The American public was outraged. Why were American soldiers dying to take hills that would be abandoned days later? What was the point? Senator Edward Kennedy called it senseless and irresponsible.

 The military faced intense criticism. Orders came down from Washington. No more Hamburger Hills. Avoid heavy combat with main force North Vietnamese units. Reduce casualties. The political cost was simply too high. But the military still had a mission. The AA Valley was one of the most strategically important pieces of terrain in all of South Vietnam.

 It was 40 km long valley that ran north to south along the Lelay Ocean border, roughly 30 mi southwest of the ancient imperial capital of Hugh. The valley floor was a kilometer and a half wide, covered with elephant grass so tall a man could disappear into it. On either side, mountains rose to nearly 6,000 ft.

 their slopes covered in triple canopy jungle so dense that sunlight barely reached the ground. And most importantly, the AA Valley was the main entry point into South Vietnam for men and materials coming down the Ho Chi Min Trail from North Vietnam through Laos. Everything the North Vietnamese needed to fight the war in the south came through that valley.

 Weapons, ammunition, rice, medicine, reinforcements. By 1970, the North Vietnamese had transformed the valley into a massive logistical hub. They had built roads and bridges. They had constructed bunker complexes and underground hospitals. They had stockpiled enough supplies to sustain major offensive operations.

 The Americans knew they could not let the North Vietnamese use the valley unchallenged. But after Hamburger Hill, they could not launch another major ground offensive either. The solution was a more surgical approach. Instead of sweeping operations with masked infantry, they would establish a series of fire support bases on the high ground overlooking the valley.

 Artillery on those bases could interdict enemy supply lines. Infantry patrols operating from the bases could search for and destroy enemy supply caches. It was supposed to be lower risk, fewer casualties, less controversy. The key to the whole operation was a fire base on a 3,000 ft mountain about 12 mi from the lay ocean border.

 A fire base that had been abandoned and reoccupied several times before. A fire base called Ripcord. Fire support base Ripcord was located on a razorback ridge in some of the most remote and rugged terrain in South Vietnam. There were no roads anywhere near it. The jungle was so thick that you could barely see 10 ft in front of you.

 The only way in or out was by helicopter. The firebase itself was tiny. The main position sat on a hilltop that could barely fit a few bunkers, some artillery pieces, and a helicopter landing pad. The entire position was roughly the size of a football field, maybe slightly larger. Around the main firebase were several smaller hilltop positions where infantry companies would dig in to provide security for the guns.

It was not an ideal position by any military standard. The surrounding high ground offered perfect observation for enemy gunners. The narrow ridge made it difficult to disperse troops and equipment. The remoteness made resupply difficult and medevac dangerous. But it was the best position available for covering the target area and the mission required it.

 In March 1970, the third brigade of the 101st Airborne Division under the command of Colonel Benjamin Harrison began the operation to rebuild and reoccupy Firebase Ripcord. The operation was designated Texas Star. The plan was to use Ripcord as the hub for a series of offensive operations to search for and destroy North Vietnamese supply caches throughout the region.

 The operation was supposed to be conducted with minimal press coverage. This was deliberate. The last thing the Nixon administration needed was another Hamburger Hill splashed across the evening news. The Cambodian incursion was already dominating headlines and generating massive protests. Adding another bloody battle in the Asia Valley would be politically catastrophic.

 So, Texas Star was conducted on what one soldier later described as a need to know basis. But the North Vietnamese knew. They knew from the very first helicopter that touched down on that mountain. and they had already decided what they were going to do about it. The commander of the North Vietnamese 324th B division was Colonel Chu Puang Doy.

 He was an experienced officer who had fought against the Americans before. He had been at Hamburger Hill. He had studied American tactics carefully and he understood something crucial about how the Americans fought. American firepower was overwhelming. The United States could bring more bombs, more shells, more bullets to bear on any given point than any other military in history.

 They had jets and helicopter gunships and heavy artillery. They had B-52 bombers that could turn an entire grid square into a moonscape. In a stand-up fight on open terrain, the North Vietnamese could not win against that kind of firepower. But the Americans had a weakness. They depended absolutely on helicopters. In terrain like the Aha Valley, where there were no roads and the jungle was impenetrable, helicopters were the only way to move troops and supplies.

 Every bullet fired by American soldiers on Ripcord had to come in by helicopter. Every wounded soldier had to go out by helicopter. Every meal, every replacement, every piece of equipment, all of it depended on that thin lifeline of rotor blades and aviation fuel. If you could cut that lifeline, the firebase would be helpless.

 The Americans would be trapped on their hilltop, unable to be reinforced, unable to be resupplied, slowly being ground down by attrition. Eventually, they would have to withdraw or be destroyed. Colonel Doy personally led reconnaissance of the areas surrounding Ripcord. His soldiers observed the altitude and direction of helicopters entering and exiting the firebase.

 They noted flight patterns and timing. They identified the best positions for anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine guns. They built fortified positions on the surrounding hilltops, camouflaged so well that American observers flying overhead could not detect them. Most importantly, they brought in reinforcements. By June 1970, an estimated 25,000 North Vietnamese soldiers were positioned in the AA Valley area.

 Not all of them were committed to the attack on Ripcord, but several thousand were. Infantry, mortars, recoilless rifles, anti-aircraft batteries. Everything needed to take down a firebase. The trap was set. The Americans on Ripcord had no idea what was coming. The rebuilding of Firebase Ripcord had begun in March under sporadic enemy harassment.

 The North Vietnamese launched occasional mortar attacks and probing assaults, keeping the Americans off balance, but never committing to a decisive engagement. They were testing, observing, learning. The attacks intensified gradually through April, May, and June. By the end of June, the pattern was clear to anyone paying attention. The enemy was massing.

Something big was coming. But the operation continued. The fire base grew. Six M12 105 mm howitzers from Bravo battery, second battalion, 319th artillery were positioned on the hilltop. Infantry companies from the second battalion, 56th Infantry Regiment, rotated through the area, conducting patrols into the surrounding jungle, searching for enemy positions and supply caches.

 A tactical operations center was established. Communications equipment was installed, bunkers were built, defensive wire was strung, and all the while, North Vietnamese soldiers watched from the tree lines and the ridge lines, waiting for the signal to attack. On July 1st, 1970, at 7 minutes past 6 in the morning, the signal came.

 The first rounds came without warning. Mortar shells, the distinctive wump of tubes firing from the surrounding jungle, followed seconds later by the crash of explosions inside the perimeter. Soldiers scrambled for their bunkers and fighting positions. Within minutes, more rounds followed. Not just mortars. 75 millimeter recoilless rifles, rocket propelled grenades, heavy machine gun fire raking the firebase from multiple directions simultaneously.

This was not a harassing attack. This was not a probe. This was the beginning of a siege. By the end of that first day, July 1st, 1970, two Chinuk helicopters had been shot down. A third was heavily damaged. 15 American soldiers were wounded. And this was just the beginning of what would become 23 days of continuous combat.

 For the soldiers on Ripcord, the world had suddenly narrowed to a few hundred meters of blasted hilltop, surrounded by an enemy they could rarely see, but always feel. The jungle around them had come alive with death. Every helicopter approach was a gauntlet of tracers. Every patrol outside the wire was a potential ambush.

 Every moment of every day brought the random terror of incoming mortar rounds. Let me tell you about some of the men who lived through those 23 days. Their stories are the heart of this battle. Denny Kirkham was 18 years old. He had been drafted just 1 month after graduating from high school in Coredan, Indiana.

 He was a specialist 4 trained as a radio operator. By early July, he was working at a rear area when everything changed in an instant. One night, without warning, Kirkham was shaken awake and thrown onto a Huey helicopter. No explanation, no preparation. Just get on the bird. You are needed. The helicopter lifted off into the darkness and flew through the night toward the mountains.

 Kirkham had no idea where he was going or what he would find when he got there. The helicopter touched down on the hillside of Firebase Ripcord in total darkness. Kirkham slid out the door and hit the ground running. The tactical operations bunker had taken a direct hit. There were wounded personnel. Several radio operators were down.

 They needed someone who could handle classified communications under fire. They needed Kirkham. What he found was chaos. The firebase was under constant attack. Mortar rounds were falling day and night. The bunkers were crowded with wounded soldiers waiting for medevac. The air smelled of cordite and blood and fear.

 and Kirkham was expected to sit in a bunker and handle communications as if everything was normal. Years later, Kirkham described what it was like. It kind of just dragged on and dragged on, he recalled. I was there for several of the attempts of the NVA to come through the wire. We were surrounded most of the time.

 It was my first time being under mortar and artillery fire. I witnessed several of the B-52 strikes. Some were flying so close I could actually see the pilot as he flew by and dropped his napalm. As an 18-year-old, it was a trip. That last word, trip. It barely begins to capture what Kirkham experienced. He was a teenager in a combat zone, surrounded by thousands of enemy soldiers, watching men die around him, handling critical communications while explosions shook the earth.

 It was a trip in the sense that a descent into hell is a trip. You go down and if you are lucky you eventually come back up but you are never quite the same person who went down. Craig Van how was with Bravo Company second battalion 56th Infantry. He had arrived at Ripcord back in April carrying an M60 machine gun.

The landing had been his introduction to what the firebase would become. “We just got hammered with mortars,” he recalled years later. “We had expected a nice, clean helicopter assault. It was anything but. Van Hal would be wounded three times during the battle for Ripcord. Three separate wounds in 23 days of fighting.

 The first time came on the day he arrived. Shrapnel from a mortar round hit him in the jaw. It was painful. It bled. But Van did what soldiers have done throughout history when there is no time for proper medical care and no way to get evacuated. He did what he called the old John Wayne thing. He rubbed some dirt on it and moved on.

There was nowhere to go anyway. The medevac helicopters were struggling to get in through the anti-aircraft fire. Every chopper that touched down was taking hits. The wounded were stacking up faster than they could be evacuated. Unless you were dying, you stayed in the fight. Van stayed through the first wound, through the second, through the third.

 He would eventually be evacuated on the final day of the battle. Seriously wounded but alive. But that was still weeks away. In those early days of July, all he could do was keep fighting and hope that each incoming round was not the one with his name on it. And then there was Lieutenant Bob Kausu. Bob Kalsu was different from most of the soldiers on that hill.

 Just two years earlier, he had been starting on the offensive line for the Buffalo Bills of the American Football League. He was a big man, 6’3 and 250 lbs of muscle, an all-American tackle from the University of Oklahoma who had been drafted in the eighth round of the 1968 NFL draft. Despite being a relatively low draft pick, Kalsu had worked his way into the starting lineup as a rookie and been named the Bills Rookie of the Year, he had a promising professional career ahead of him.

 The NFL was his future, but Kalsu had made a commitment during his college years. He had joined the reserve officers training corps at Oklahoma and he had given his word that he would serve on active duty if called. After the 1968 season, the call came. His ROC obligation was activated. He was going into the army. His friends and teammates begged him to find a way out.

Professional athletes could get deferments. They could join reserve units that would never see combat. They could pull strings and call in favors. Nobody would blame him. He had a wife. He had a daughter. He had a career waiting for him. Kausu refused. His response was always the same. I gave them my word.

 He told everyone who asked. I am no better than anybody else. That last part is important. I am no better than anybody else. Bob Kausu came from a generation that believed in service and sacrifice. He could have avoided Vietnam. Plenty of men in his position did. But he believed that if other young men were being sent to fight and die, he had no right to stay home just because he could throw a football.

After 8 months of training at Fort Sil in Oklahoma, Kausu received his orders for Vietnam. He arrived in country in November 1969 and was assigned to battery A, Second Battalion, 11th Artillery Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. By July 1970, he was commanding an artillery battery at Firebase Ripcord.

 His wife, Jan, was eight months pregnant with their second child back home in Oklahoma City. Their daughter Jill was a toddler. Ku wrote letters home constantly, cheerful and loving letters that gave no hint of the horror he was living through. He did not want his wife to worry. Before he left for Vietnam, the couple had knelt together at St.

 James Catholic Church in Oklahoma City, where they had been married. Jan had prayed silently to God. “If you need him more than I do,” she had asked. “Please give me a son to carry on his name.” On Ripcord, Kelsu rarely talked about his football career. Word got around the fire base that he had played for the Bills, but he would shrug off any mention of it.

 “Yeah, I play football,” he would say when asked. What he talked about constantly, incessantly, was his family, his wife, his daughter, the baby that was coming. What Kausu could not hide was his leadership. In the chaos of combat, some men rise and some men crumble. Ku rose. When sling loads of ammunition came in by helicopter, he would be the first one out of the bunker.

 Let us get that ammo off the pads, he would shout. Then he would grab three 97lb artillery shells at once and hump them up the hill himself. He did not have to do that. He was an officer. He could have stayed in his bunker and let the enlisted men handle the grunt work. But that was not who Bob Kausu was. He led from the front.

 He shared the danger with his men. He never asked anyone to do something he was not willing to do himself. The other soldiers noticed they respected him for it. One soldier who served with Kausu described him as a fearless guy, smart, brave, and respected by his troops. Another remembered that he never heard Lieutenant Kausu curse. Not once.

 In a situation where most men’s language deteriorated to that of junkyard dogs, Kausu maintained his composure, his decency, his faith. He was 25 years old. He would not live to see 26. As July progressed, the situation on Ripcord grew more desperate by the day. The North Vietnamese had achieved exactly what Colonel Doy had planned.

 They had cut the helicopter lifeline. Not completely. Helicopters were still getting through, but every flight was a gamble. Every approach was a gauntlet of fire. Pilots were taking extraordinary risks just to deliver basic supplies. The mortar attacks never stopped. Some days the firebase received 50 rounds. Other days, more than 100.

 The soldiers learned to recognize the different sounds. The heavy thump of 82 mm mortars. The sharper crack of 60 mm rounds. The distinctive pop of mortar tubes firing from the jungle, which gave you maybe 3 seconds to find cover before the rounds landed. 3 seconds. That is how long you had to live or die when you heard that sound.

 3 seconds to dive into a bunker or a fighting hole or just hit the ground and pray. Some men developed an almost supernatural ability to predict where rounds would land. Others never got the chance to learn. You could not sleep. You could not eat properly. You could not relax for even a moment. The stress was overwhelming and relentless.

 One soldier described feeling like a zombie. The feeling had gone out of everything. He said, “You did not care anymore. At night, you could hear the enemy yelling from the jungles all around. Gi die tonight. GI die tonight. The words cut through the darkness like a knife. It was psychological warfare designed to break morale, to make the Americans feel surrounded and helpless. It worked.

 Many soldiers on Ripcord believed they were going to die there. This was our deathbed, one of them recalled. We thought we were going to be overrun, and the Americans were not just sitting there taking it. Infantry companies conducted daily patrols into the surrounding jungle, trying to find and destroy enemy mortar positions.

 Every patrol was a fight. The North Vietnamese were dug in everywhere in fortified bunker complexes that were almost impossible to detect until you were right on top of them. The jungle was their element. They knew every trail, every ridge, every hiding place. On July 2nd, Charlie Company engaged enemy forces on Hill 9002.

 a key piece of terrain overlooking the fire base. On July 5th, Delta Company fought a desperate battle near Hill 1000, trying to take an enemy bunker complex that was directing mortar fire onto Ripcord. They lost several men, but could not dislodge the enemy. On July 7th, more fighting, July 8th, July 10th, every day brought new casualties.

 The infantry companies outside the wire were being ground down. Men were killed. Men were wounded. Men were exhausted beyond the point of endurance and replacements were almost impossible to get in through the wall of anti-aircraft fire. The officers began asking for volunteers from other units to come to Ripcord and reinforce the firebase. Think about what that means.

They were asking soldiers who were not assigned to Ripcord to voluntarily fly into that hell hole. Some volunteered, many did not. Nobody could blame those who said no. By mid July, everyone on Ripcord knew they were in serious trouble. The fire base was taking dozens of mortar rounds daily. The infantry companies in the surrounding jungle were being chewed up in constant fighting.

Ammunition was running low. Men were exhausted, shell shocked, pushed to the breaking point. And then came July 18th, the day everything changed. It was early afternoon on Saturday, July 18th, 1970 when the Chinook helicopter approached fire support base Ripcord. The big twin rotor CH47 was carrying a sling load of ammunition for the 105mm howitzers.

These resupply missions happened multiple times every day. They were the lifeline that kept the fire base functioning. The Chuk would come in fast and low, hover over the designated drop point, release its sling load, and then bank away before enemy gunners could get a solid lock. It was dangerous, but it was routine.

 The crews had done it dozens of times. This time, the enemy was ready. As the Chinook hovered over the ammunition storage area, heavy machine gun fire erupted from across the valley. 51 caliber rounds punched through the helicopter’s fuselage like it was made of paper. The big aircraft shuttered. The rotors went out of sync. The pilots fought for control, but there was nothing they could do.

 The aircraft was going down. The Chinook crashed directly onto the ammunition bunkers and its own sling load of artillery shells. The impact was tremendous. Fuel sprayed everywhere. The crew began scrambling to get out of the wreckage. Most of them made it clear of the aircraft in those first critical seconds.

 But the crew chief, Mike Walker, did not make it out. As he jumped from the burning helicopter, the aircraft rolled and pinned his legs against the hard pack ground. He was trapped, helpless, and the fire was spreading. Soldiers on the firebase ran toward the crash site. They could see Walker pinned under the wreckage.

 They could see the flames licking at the fuel soaked ground. They grabbed shovels and picks and bare hands, trying desperately to dig him free, while others sprayed fire extinguishers at the flames. They had minutes at most, seconds, maybe. They did not have enough time. The Chinook’s remaining fuel ignited. The flames spread to the ammunition beneath it.

 The rescuers were forced back by the intense heat. Mike Walker was still trapped, still conscious when the fire engulfed him. There was nothing anyone could do. He burned to death in front of his fellow soldiers. And then the ammunition started cooking off. The first explosions were small, individual rounds detonating in the heat.

 But within minutes, the entire ammunition dump was going up. 105 mm howitzer shells, 3,500 rounds of artillery ammunition, cluster bombs, white phosphorous rounds. They did not explode all at once. They went off in waves, one after another after another, for 8 hours straight. A mushroom cloud of smoke and fire rose hundreds of feet into the air.

 Shrapnel rained down on the firebase like a deadly hail storm. Burning debris flew in every direction. The explosions were so powerful they literally sheared off one entire tier of the hilltop. What had been a position carved into the mountain was suddenly just gone, blown away by the force of the detonations. The soldiers on Ripcord could not run.

 There was nowhere to go. The perimeter was only a few hundred meters across. The jungle outside was full of enemy soldiers. They pressed themselves into bunkers and trenches and fighting holes and prayed. Their own ammunition exploded around them, killing and wounding men who had survived weeks of enemy fire, only to be struck down by their own shells.

 Denny Kirkham was there when it happened. It was like the whole top of the hill was coming off, he recalled. The sound was deafening. The heat was overwhelming. Ammunition that was supposed to be killing the enemy was now killing Americans. And through it all, the enemy kept firing. The North Vietnamese mortar crews saw the chaos and poured rounds onto the firebase.

 20 more mortar shells landed during the 8 hours of explosions. The Americans were dodging attacks from two directions at once. The enemy outside and their own ammunition inside. When it finally ended, the devastation was almost total. Five of the six 105 mm howitzers were destroyed. The barrels had literally melted from the heat.

 Two 106 mm recoilless rifles were gone. The communications bunker was wrecked. The tactical operations center was heavily damaged. The radar unit that helped direct aircraft was destroyed. Most of the remaining artillery ammunition was gone. One man, Bill Rison, a sniper who had been helping relocate the fire direction center, was killed by an enemy mortar round during the chaos.

 He was one of 75 Americans who would die at Ripcord. But his death came amid such devastation that it almost seemed like just one more thing going wrong in a day when everything had gone wrong. Fire support base Ripcord had just lost its artillery, its primary reason for existing, its ability to support the infantry companies in the surrounding jungle.

 The firebase was supposed to be a platform for projecting American firepower into the enemy’s rear areas. Now it was just a hilltop full of exhausted, traumatized soldiers with no way to fight back except their rifles and whatever supporting fire could be called in from other bases. The North Vietnamese knew exactly what had happened.

 They could see the mushroom cloud from miles away. They could hear the secondary explosions continuing for hours and they intensified their attacks accordingly. On July 19th, more mortar fire. On July 20th, Delta Company of the First Battalion, 506th Infantry, was hit hard while on patrol, taking significant casualties. The enemy was closing in.

The noose was tightening. The American commanders faced an impossible decision. Ripcord was no longer capable of performing its mission. The artillery was gone. The infantry was being destroyed. The helicopter lifeline was barely functioning. By any rational military calculation, the fire base should be evacuated.

 But evacuation meant admitting defeat. It meant abandoning a position that American soldiers had died to hold. It meant giving the enemy a propaganda victory at a time when the Nixon administration was trying to convince the American public that Vietnamization was working. And it meant another hamburger hill in the headlines.

 Another bloody debacle that would fuel the anti-war movement and further erode support for the war. For several days, the decision hung in the balance. The soldiers on Ripcord continued to fight and die while generals and politicians debated their fate. Reinforcements were impossible. Resupply was barely adequate. The fire base was being slowly ground down.

 And on July 21st, tragedy struck again. Lieutenant Bob Callu was in his bunker that afternoon reading a letter from his wife Jan. She had written to tell him that July 21st was her due date. their second child could be born at any moment. Kaus’s face was beaming with joy as he read the news. My wife is having our baby today, he announced to the soldiers around him.

 A cloud of tear gas had drifted over the fire base from earlier mortar attacks. The North Vietnamese sometimes used tear gas rounds specifically to force Americans out of their bunkers to drive them into the open where high explosive rounds could kill them more easily. In the suffocating heat of a Vietnamese summer, you could stay in your bunker wearing a rubber gas mask, or you could risk going outside for a breath of fresh air.

 Kau left his bunker. Some accounts say he was warning his men about the gas. Others say he was simply moving between positions. What is certain is that he was doing what he always did, looking out for his soldiers, leading from the front. At approximately 5:00 in the afternoon, an 82mm mortar round slammed into the ground 15 ft from where Bob Kozu was standing.

 Private First Class Nick Fodius was nearby when the round hit. I remember this tremendous noise, he recalled years later, “Anne darkness and being blown off my feet and flying through the door of the bunker and landing at the bottom of the steps 6 ft down and this tremendous weight crushing down on top of me.

” Fodius had dirt in his eyes. His ears were ringing. He could barely see or hear. He pushed against the weight on top of him, trying to free himself. I pushed off this weight that was on top of me, he said, and I realized it was Bob. The Fodius rolled his friend off of him and looked at the wound. A gaping hole behind Kausu’s left ear.

 The base medic came running. Both men knew immediately that there was nothing to be done. Lieutenant Bob Kausu was dead. When word reached the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Andre Lucas, he seemed stunned. The tone went out of the muscles on his face, one soldier recalled. His jaw dropped.

 Lucas had seen a lot of death in Vietnam. He had commanded men in combat for months, but this one hit hard. Kausu had been one of his best officers, a leader, a man who inspired others. And now he was gone. Bob Kausu was 25 years old. He was the only active professional athlete from a major American sports league to be killed in combat during the entire Vietnam War.

His son, James Robert Kozu Jr., was born 2 days later. Jan Kozu learned that her husband was dead just hours after giving birth. She had prayed for a son to carry on his name. God had answered her prayer, but the price was beyond anything she could have imagined. On Ripcord, there was no time to mourn. The battle was not over.

 The worst was yet to come. By July 22nd, 1970, the decision had finally been made. Fire support base Ripcord would be evacuated. The military command had reached the same conclusion that the soldiers on the ground had known for days. The position was not defensible. The firebase had lost its artillery. Helicopters were being shot down almost daily.

 The infantry companies operating in the surrounding jungle were being systematically destroyed. Intelligence reports indicated that the North Vietnamese were massing for a coordinated ground assault to overrun the fire base entirely. If that assault succeeded, it would not be a defeat. It would be a massacre.

 Better to withdraw while they still could. Better to accept a tactical setback than risk the annihilation of an entire battalion. But the evacuation would not be easy. Hundreds of soldiers were scattered across the firebase and the surrounding hilltops. All of them would need to be extracted by helicopter under fire through the same anti-aircraft gauntlet that had been shooting down aircraft for 3 weeks.

 Heavy equipment would need to be slung out or destroyed in place. The withdrawal would have to be conducted while the enemy was still attacking. And before the main evacuation could begin, the men still fighting in the jungle had to be extracted. On the night of July 22nd, one of those units was in the fight of their lives.

 Alpha Company of the Second Battalion, 506th Infantry, had been conducting operations south of Ripcord. They were 76 men, a reinforced infantry company led by Captain Chuck Hawkins. They had been patrolling aggressively for days, searching for enemy positions and supply caches. On the afternoon of July 22nd, they found what they were looking for, or rather, the enemy found them.

 At approximately 1:00 in the afternoon, Alpha Company was hit by an estimated 400 North Vietnamese soldiers, 6 to1 odds. The enemy had launched a coordinated assault specifically designed to destroy the company before the Americans could escape. What followed was one of the most desperate infantry engagements of the entire Vietnam War.

 A small group of American soldiers outnumbered and surrounded, fighting for survival against a determined enemy that wanted to annihilate them. The battle began with a wall of fire from the jungle. Automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades, mortars. The North Vietnamese had caught Alpha Company in a carefully prepared kill zone.

 Trees exploded from the incoming fire. Men went down in the first volley. Captain Hawkins immediately called for artillery support from other fire bases in the area. The guns responded, laying down a curtain of steel around the company’s perimeter, but the enemy kept coming. They were so close that the artillery had to be walked dangerously near American positions.

 Too close and you killed your own men. Too far and you did not stop the attack. Alpha Company formed a tight perimeter and fought back with everything they had. M16 rifles on full automatic. M60 machine guns raking the tree lines. Grenades thrown into the advancing enemy. The noise was overwhelming. The chaos was total. Men screamed orders and warnings.

 The wounded screamed for medics. The dying screamed and then fell silent. The North Vietnamese attacked in waves. One assault would be beaten back and before the Americans could catch their breath, another wave would emerge from the jungle. They were trying to overwhelm the company through sheer numbers. They were willing to take enormous casualties to destroy this one American unit.

 The fighting raged for over 6 hours. As the afternoon wore on, Alpha Company’s situation grew increasingly desperate. Ammunition was running low. Casualties were mounting. The perimeter was shrinking as men fell and could not be replaced. When the grenades ran out, Hawkins called in air strikes on his own position.

 Danger close missions where bombs and napalm were dropped within meters of friendly troops. It was a last resort. It meant accepting the risk of killing your own men in order to stop being overrun by the enemy. The air strikes broke the assault. The North Vietnamese pulled back, unable to sustain their attack through the storm of high explosives.

 By nightfall, the battle was over. Alpha Company had held. They had not been overrun. They had not been destroyed, but the cost was devastating. 14 men killed, 56 wounded. Out of 76 soldiers who had started the day, only a handful were still combat effective. The rest were dead or injured, waiting for medical evacuation. that might not come.

 The North Vietnamese had paid a heavy price as well. 61 enemy bodies were counted on the battlefield. The actual number of dead and wounded was probably much higher. As the NVA always tried to carry away their casualties, but those 61 bodies represented a fraction of the force that had attacked. The enemy could afford those losses.

 Alpha Company could not. Among the American dead was specialist for Wand Norris. He was the younger brother of a martial artist and aspiring actor named Carlos Norris, who would later become famous under the name Chuck Norris. Wyland had enlisted in the army out of a sense of patriotic duty. He had written to his older brother about the war, about the fighting, about his hopes for when he came home.

 He never came home. For the rest of his life, Chuck Norris wore a bracelet with his brother’s name on it. In interviews, he would talk about Wland, about the loss, about the war that took his brother. The famous action star whose movie characters never lost a fight had lost something that no amount of success could ever replace.

 That night, July 22nd, the soldiers remaining on Firebase Ripcord prepared for what they believed might be their last hours. The evacuation was scheduled for the morning. Everyone knew the enemy would try to stop it. They knew the North Vietnamese would throw everything they had at the fire base to prevent the Americans from escaping.

 Lieutenant Colonel Andre Lucas, the battalion commander, spent that night doing what he had done throughout the siege, leading from the front, checking defensive positions, encouraging his men, making sure everyone knew the plan for the morning, making sure everyone was ready for whatever came next. Andre Lucas was a career soldier, a West Point graduate from the class of 1954.

 His father had served in World War I and earned three Silver Stars for Valor. Military service was in his blood. By 1970, Lucas had already served one full tour in Vietnam. He had volunteered for a second tour specifically because he wanted to command troops in combat. He had taken command of the second battalion, 506th Infantry, in the spring of 1970.

 Ripcord was supposed to be just another operation. It had become something else entirely. Throughout the siege, Lucas had performed acts of extraordinary heroism that would later be recognized with the Medal of Honor. On one occasion, when one of his companies was about to be surrounded and destroyed, he had flown in a helicopter at treetop level over enemy positions for more than 3 hours.

 His aircraft was exposed to heavy anti-aircraft fire the entire time. Bullets ripped through the fuselage. The crew chief was wounded, but Lucas kept directing fire onto the enemy positions, calling in artillery and air strikes, refusing to leave until the company was safe. When the company ran out of grenades and was in danger of being overrun, Lucas had ordered his pilot to land.

 He personally kicked cases of grenades out of the helicopter while enemy fire crackled around him. Then, he climbed back into the air and resumed directing the battle from above. On another occasion, when the Chinook crashed and Mike Walker was trapped in the burning wreckage, Lucas had been one of the first to respond.

 He had led the rescue attempt personally. When the fire became too intense and the other rescuers were forced back, Lucas had continued alone, trying desperately to free Walker until the ammunition began exploding and further rescue became impossible. These were not the actions of a commander who stayed safely in the rear.

 These were the actions of a leader who believed his place was with his men, sharing their danger, inspiring them by example. Andre Lucas was 45 years old. He had a wife and children back home. He had already earned a chest full of medals. He did not have to take these risks. He chose to take them because that was who he was.

 Now, on this final night, Lucas moved through the firebase, checking on his soldiers. Some of them were veterans who had been there from the beginning. Others were replacements who had arrived in the middle of the siege. All of them were exhausted, traumatized, pushed past the limits of human endurance. As darkness fell on July 22nd, the soldiers of Firebase Ripcord waited.

 Some slept in fitful bursts, leaning against sandbags with their weapons in their hands. Others stared into the darkness, listening for sounds of enemy movement. The mortars fell intermittently through the night, a constant reminder that the enemy was still out there, still watching, still waiting. GI die tonight. GI die tonight.

The voices echoed through the darkness one last time. But the soldiers on Ripcord had survived too much to be broken by words. They had survived the mortar attacks. They had survived the ammunition dump explosion. They had survived 3 weeks of constant combat. They would survive this night, too. Then came the dawn.

 At 5:45 on the morning of July the 23rd, 1970, the extraction of fire support base Ripcord began. The plan called for a carefully choreographed aerial ballet. 14 CH47 Chinook helicopters would handle the heavy lifting, extracting the destroyed artillery pieces, equipment, and the bulldozers that had been used to construct the firebase.

 These were valuable assets that the army did not want to leave for the enemy. Bell UH1 Huey helicopters would extract the infantry six men at a time. Cobra gunships would provide fire support, suppressing enemy positions while the transport helicopters came in. The operation was supposed to be quick and efficient.

 Get everyone and everything out before the enemy could organize a major response. Get clear of the fire base and let the B-52s finish the job. It did not work out that way. From the moment the first helicopter approached the firebase, the enemy opened fire. Anti-aircraft guns on the surrounding hilltops.

 Heavy machine guns in the tree lines. Mortars from positions that had been shelling the firebase for 3 weeks. The North Vietnamese knew exactly what was happening. They were determined to turn the extraction into a slaughter. At 7:40 in the morning, anti-aircraft fire hit one of the Chinuks. The big twin rotor helicopter shuttered, lost power, and came down hard directly onto the landing pad.

 It crashed amid the already destroyed howitzers, its wreckage adding to the devastation from the ammunition dump explosion 5 days earlier. The crew scrambled out and took cover, but the crash Chinuk now blocked the main landing zone. This was a disaster. The Chinuks could not get in to extract the heavy equipment.

 The carefully planned operation was falling apart. Decisions had to be made on the fly. The heavy equipment would have to be abandoned. The infantry would have to be pulled out by Hueies alone, six men at a time instead of 30. Under constant enemy fire, the mortars started falling almost immediately after the Chinuk crash. The North Vietnamese realized the Americans were trying to escape.

 Orders went out to units surrounding the fire base. Overrun the base without delay. Destroy the Americans before they can withdraw. Hundreds of mortar rounds slammed into the fire base over the next several hours. Some estimates put the total at 500 rounds during the extraction. Heavy machine gun fire rad the landing zones.

Soldiers who had survived 3 weeks in bunkers now had to leave the relative safety of those positions and run across open ground to board helicopters that were sitting ducks on the ground. Wayne Wasilk was a door gunner on one of the Hueies flying into Ripcord that morning. This was his second tour in Vietnam.

 He had been infantry on his first tour. He knew what it was like to be on the ground waiting for extraction, watching helicopters get shot out of the sky. Now he was on the other side, flying into the chaos, trying to get those men out. What he saw was pure desperation. Men running toward the helicopter under fire.

 Wounded soldiers being carried by their buddies. Some of them leaving trails of blood on the ground. Explosions everywhere. Mortar rounds landing among the running soldiers. Some men were so exhausted, so shell shocked that they seemed unable to move. They just stood there staring as if their minds had finally broken under the strain.

 The crew chiefs had to drag some soldiers onto the helicopters. These were not cowards. These were men who had been pushed beyond human limits. 23 days of constant combat, no sleep, no rest. Watching their friends die, their minds had simply stopped processing reality. They could not make their bodies move without help.

 The Hueies made run after run. Land, load, lift off. 30 to 45 seconds on the ground each time. Any longer and you became a target. The pilots flew through a storm of tracers and shrapnel. Door gunners fired continuously at muzzle flashes in the tree lines. The noise was overwhelming. The fear was constant, but they kept coming.

 Run after run, soldier after soldier getting the men out. By the end of the day, 22 Chinuk sorties and over a hundred Huey sorties had been flown. Eight Chinuks had been hit by enemy fire. 12 Hueies had been hit. Two Chinuks were shot down entirely. The crews were evacuated, but the aircraft were destroyed. Craig Van Hort was one of the last soldiers to leave the fire base.

 His team had been ordered to lay down covering fire while the helicopters came in. They were providing suppression for the extraction, trying to keep the enemy’s heads down long enough for the birds to get in and out. That was when the mortar round hit. Vanha went down, seriously wounded. It was his third wound of the battle, third time in 23 days.

 This time there was no rubbing dirt on it and moving on. This time he needed a medevac. Somehow he made it onto a helicopter. Somehow he made it out. Craig Vanha would survive the Battle of Fire support base Ripcord. He would carry the scars, physical and psychological, for the rest of his life, but he survived. Lieutenant Colonel Andre Lucas was not so fortunate.

Throughout the morning, Lucas had remained on the firebase directing the extraction. He was everywhere at once coordinating the withdrawal, making sure his men got onto helicopters, handling the thousand details that had to be managed in the midst of chaos. He could have left early. Commanders are valuable.

 Nobody would have blamed him for taking one of the first helicopters out. But that was not who Andre Lucas was. He stayed until nearly the end, making sure his soldiers were safe. At some point that morning, a 120 mm mortar round landed near Lucas. It was a heavy round, the largest the North Vietnamese commonly used. The explosion was devastating. Lucas was mortally wounded.

He died on the fire base he had fought so hard to defend. Lieutenant Colonel Andre Lucas was postumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration. The citation praised his extraordinary heroism throughout the 23-day siege. His complete disregard for his personal safety, it read, his inspirational leadership and profound concern for his men were directly responsible for the successful performance of the battalion.

His actions, it concluded, were instrumental in saving the lives of many of his fellow soldiers while inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. Andre Lucas was buried at West Point Cemetery near the academy where he had trained as a young man. His grave is marked with the Medal of Honor insignia. He was 45 years old.

 He left behind a wife and children who would never see him again. By 12:14 in the afternoon, the extraction was complete. The last living American off Firebase Ripcord was a Kit Carson Scout, a former North Vietnamese soldier who had defected to the American side. A Cobra gunship pilot spotted him walking around the abandoned firebase, apparently dazed and confused.

 The pilot called in a light observation helicopter to pick him up. They got him out with seconds to spare. 5 minutes after that final helicopter lifted off, several hundred North Vietnamese soldiers charged up the hill. They threw satchel charges into the empty bunkers. They planted their flag on the position they had fought so hard to capture.

 Firebase Ripcord, after 23 days of bloody siege, was finally in enemy hands. But not for long. As the last helicopters cleared the area, waves of Air Force fighter bombers arrived over the fire base. They dropped high explosives and napalm on the position, destroying bunkers, trenches, and anything else of military value. Then came the B-52s.

 The massive bombers carpet bombed the fire base and the surrounding area, dropping thousands of pounds of ordinance. Whatever victory the North Vietnamese had won was obliterated. They had captured a pile of rubble in craters. Fire support base Ripcord was no more. The final toll of the battle was devastating by any measure.

 75 American soldiers killed during the 23-day siege at the fire base itself. The total casualties for Operation Texas Star, which included Ripcord and all the surrounding operations, reached over 400 killed. Hundreds more were wounded. Countless helicopters were destroyed or damaged. Millions of dollars in equipment was lost.

 As for the North Vietnamese, their losses are harder to determine. American commanders claimed over 2,000 enemy killed during the operation. Colonel Benjamin Harrison, the brigade commander, later argued that the losses at Ripcord had crippled the North Vietnamese offensive capability for two full years. He believed this was why the enemy’s planned Easter offensive, originally scheduled for 1971, did not happen until 1972.

Whether that claim is accurate remains debated by historians. What is certain is that both sides paid a terrible price for that remote hilltop in the mountains of South Vietnam. A hilltop that had been captured and abandoned multiple times. A hilltop that would never be occupied by American forces again.

 And yet for years almost nobody in America knew about it. The Battle of Fire support base Ripcord was deliberately kept out of the news. The Nixon administration was in the middle of withdrawing from Vietnam. Vietnamization was supposed to be working. American boys were supposed to be coming home, not dying on remote hilltops in the jungle.

 The last thing the White House needed was another hamburger hill splashed across the front pages. So, the story was buried. Casualties were reported in dribbs and drabs, never connected to a single battle. The media was kept away from the operation. When reporters asked questions, they were deflected or given incomplete information.

 The soldiers who fought at Ripcord came home to a nation that had no idea what they had been through. They were forgotten soldiers from a forgotten battle in an increasingly unpopular war. Many of them struggled with what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. They had nightmares about the mortars. They flinched at loud noises.

 They could not talk about what they had seen and done because nobody wanted to hear it. Vietnam veterans in general faced hostility and indifference from a society that wanted to forget the war. But the men of Ripcord did not even have the comfort of knowing their sacrifice had been recognized. It was not until 1985 that the FSB Ripcord Association was founded.

 Veterans of the battle began reaching out to each other, reconnecting, sharing stories that they had kept bottled up for 15 years. They discovered that they were not alone, that others had lived through the same nightmare, that their experiences were real, even if the rest of the country pretended they had never happened. Reunions were organized, memorials were built, the story of Ripcord began to be told.

 Keith William Nolan, a military historian, spent years interviewing survivors and researching the battle. His book, Ripcord, Screaming Eagles, Under Siege, Vietnam, 1970, became the definitive account of what happened on that mountain. General Benjamin Harrison wrote his own memoir, Hell on a Hilltop. Oliver North produced a documentary for Fox News.

 Slowly, reluctantly, the American public began to learn about the battle that had been hidden from them for so long. Today, at the South Carolina Confederate relic Room and Military Museum in Colia, there is a massive diarama of fire support base Ripcord. It depicts the firebase in meticulous detail, showing exactly what it looked like during those terrible days in July 1970.

 the bunkers, the artillery positions, the helicopter landing pads, the surrounding jungle filled with enemy soldiers. Craig Van Hout, the soldier who was wounded three times during the battle, visits that diarama regularly when he sees visitors walk past it quickly, giving it only a cursory glance. He wants to stop them. He wants to make them understand what happened there.

 Take it in completely, he tells them. This is sacred ground because what happened at Ripcord matters. It was the last major battle between American ground forces and the North Vietnamese Army. It was a testament to the courage of the men who fought there against impossible odds surrounded and outnumbered knowing that their country had already decided to leave them behind.

 It was a tragedy and it was a lesson about the true cost of war. That lesson is worth remembering. Wars do not end cleanly. They do not end when politicians sign agreements or make speeches. They end in places like Ripcord on remote hilltops where young men die for objectives that will be abandoned days later. They end with soldiers who give everything for their country and then are forgotten by that same country.

 Lieutenant Colonel Andre Lucas gave his life for his men. Lieutenant Bob Cowsu gave up an NFL career because he believed he was no better than anybody else. Mike Walker died trying to escape his burning helicopter. Win Norris died in a desperate battle that most Americans have never heard of. 75 names, 75 lives, 75 families who receive folded flags and condolence letters.

 They deserve to be remembered. Fire support base rip cord. 23 days trapped on a mountain. The forgotten battle of the Vietnam War. Now you know their story. Now you understand what they went through. Now when you hear the name Ripcord, you will think of the men who fought and died there. You will think of their courage, their sacrifice, their brotherhood, and you will remember. Thank you for watching.