Remembering Firebase Ripcord

The 101st Airborne Division battled to survive a fierce enemy, Vietnamization and a media blackout. . . From March 12 to July 23, 1970, the 101st Airborne Division battled to hold a mountaintop firebase just west of the A Shau Valley in a time when Richard Nixon's Vietnamization was pulling troops from Vietnam. The four-and-a-half month battle claimed over a hundred American lives and featured one of the Army's largest air evacuations in history. Accessible only by helicopter, Firebase Ripcord and the surrounding triple-canopy jungle was rife with well-trained, well-equipped soldiers from the North Vietnamese Army. Sent out to find the enemy, firefights mounted until a siege of the firebase erupted and ran throughout July. Casualties escalated and a decision had to be made. Veterans of Ripcord have lived in the shadows for decades. Remembering Firebase Ripcord features the recollections of some 200 veterans of the battle. Thanks to a media blackout that stemmed from the carnage the 101st suffered just months prior at Dong Ap Bia (Hamburger Hill), many of these stories lived only in the hearts and minds of those who were there. To this day, Ripcord veterans meet by the hundreds annually. They share a unique bond that could only have been formed in the heat of fierce combat half a world away from home during a time that much of America had turned its back on the soldiers still charged with fighting a fierce enemy. Fueled by a desire to clear misconceptions and the wide array of misreporting that arose during the Vietnam era, Brady delved headlong into research associated with Remembering Firebase Ripcord in 2013.