On this Veterans day, an amazing story about an amazing marine:
“Hold and Die” – Legendary Marine Passes On
by W. Thomas Smith, Jr
COL. JOHN W. RIPLEY, U.S. MARINE CORPS (ret.), recipient of the Navy Cross and for years one of my personal heroes, has passed away.
Ripley, 69, was awarded the Navy Cross – the nation’s second-highest award for valor in combat – for single-handedly blowing up the Dong Ha Bridge in Vietnam, thus blunting the North Vietnamese Army's Easter Offensive on April 2, 1972.
The enemy was attacking in great strength – huge numbers of infantry, tanks, artillery – and
Ripley's little force was ordered to "hold and die."Dying would be easy. But the only way to hold was to blow the bridge spanning the Dong Ha River. And, as Ripley said, he was "the Marine there to do it."
Then a 33-year-old captain, Ripley accomplished his task by dangling from the bridge's I-beams, climbing along the length of the bridge hand-over-hand, his body weighted down with explosives, the enemy shooting at him, desperately trying to kill the lone Marine hanging beneath the bridge.
In a June 16, 2008 interview for Marine Corps Times, Ripley said “I had to swing like a trapeze artist in a circus and leap over the other I-beam. ... I would work myself into the steel. I used my teeth to crimp the detonator and thus pinch it into place on the fuse. I crimped it with my teeth while the detonator was halfway down my throat.”
Ripley set the charges and moved back to the friendly side of the river, all the while under heavy fire.
Cont:
http://townhall.com/Columnists/WThomasSmithJr/2008/11/03/%E2%80%9Chold_and_die%E2%80%9D_%E2%80%93_legendary_marine_passes_on
