The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
'Dead' in Vietnam, Marine recalls captivity
Wounded vet made up imaginary life to pass lonely years.
HALLETTSVILL E, TEXAS Ronald Ridgeway was — “killed” in Vietnam on Feb. 25, 1968.
The 18-year-old Marine Corps private first class fell with a bullet to the shoulder during a savage firefight with the enemy outside Khe Sanh.
Dozens of Marines, from what came to be called “the ghost patrol,” perished there.
At first, Ridgeway was listed as missing in action. Back home in Texas, his old school, Sam Houston High, made an announcement over the intercom.
But his mother, Mildred, had a letter from his commanding officer saying there was little hope. And that August, she received a “deeply regret” telegram from the Marines saying he was dead.
On Sept. 10, he was buried in a national cemetery in St. Louis. A tombstone bearing his name and the names of
eight others missing from the battle was erected over the grave. His mother went home with a folded American flag.
But as his comrades and family mourned, Ron Ridgeway sat in harsh North Vietnamese prisons for five years, often in solitary confinement, mentally at war with his captors and fighting for a life that was technically over.
Last month, almost 50 years after his supposed demise, Ridgeway, 68, a retired supervisor with Veterans Affairs, sat in his home here and recounted for the first time in detail one of the most remarkable stories of the Vietnam War.
As the United States marks a half-century since the height of the war in 1967 and ’68, his “back-from-thedead” saga is that of a young man’s perseverance through combat, imprisonment and abuse.
He was 17 when he signed up with the Marines in 1967. He was 18 when he was captured, 19 when his funeral was held and 23 when he was released from prison in 1973.
“You have to be willing to take it a day at a time,” he said. “You have to set in your mind that you’re going to survive. You have to believe that they are not going to defeat you, that you’re going to win.”
About 9:30 on the morning of Feb. 25, Pfc. Ridgeway’s four-man fireteam charged an enemy trench line. The curving trench seemed
empty when they got there. But as Ridgeway and the others made their way along it, suddenly an enemy grenade dropped in.
“We b ack around the curve,” he recalled. “It blows up.”
When they stood up to look around, they saw North Vietnamese soldiers walking toward them. “I guess they thought we were all dead,” he said.
“We cut loose on them,” he recalled. “They were easy targets.”
Ridgeway had been part of a platoon of about 45 men sent out from the besieged Khe Sanh combat base, in what was then northern South Vietnam, to find enemy positions, and perhaps capture a prisoner.
The enemy’s noose around the Marine base had been
tightening, with heavy mortar and artillery fire, and the patrol was hazardous. Six thousand Americans were surrounded by 20,000 to 40,000 North Vietnamese soldiers.
On that foggy morning, the patrol’s leader, 2nd Lt. Donald Jacques, 20, strayed off course and was drawn into a deadly ambush, Jacques’s company commander, Capt. Kenneth Pipes, said.
More than two dozen Marines, including Jacques, were killed.
One of the Marines in the trench with Ridgeway, James Bruder, 18, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, was cut down as the enemy returned fire, according to author Ray Stubbe’s book about Khe Sanh, “Battalion of Kings.”
“Stitched him across the chest and killed him,” Ridge
remembered.
The fire team leader, Charles Geller, 20, of East St. Louis, Illinois, took a peek, and a bullet creased his forehead, knocking him down.
They had to retreat. Geller left first, followed by Ridgeway.
As he and Geller ran to the rear, they came upon Willie Ruff, 20, of Columbia, South Carolina, who was lying on his back with a broken arm.
“We were in a hurry,” Ridgeway said. “But we stopped. He was wounded.”
As Geller knelt beside Ruff, a bullet hit Geller in the face, leaving a terrible wound. Then Ridgeway was struck by a round that went through his shoulder.
“All we could do was lay there and play dead,” he said. “We were in the wide open.”
Ridgeway said he drifted in and out of consciousness. When Geller, who was delirious, got to his knees, the enemy threw a grenade, killing him.
Ridgeway said the North Vietnamese then began shooting at Marines who had fallen in front of their trenches. “They’re popping the bodies to make sure they’re dead,” he said.
One bullet hit the dirt near him. A second glanced off his helmet and struck him the buttock, he said.
“When that hit, it jarred the body,” he said. “They figured they got me. Left me for dead and kept working their way down past me.”
Ridgeway passed out. When he woke up, it was dark and American artillery was pounding the area.
Ruff said he had been hit again and begged Ridgeway not to leave him. Ridgeway said he wouldn’t. At some point that night, Ruff died.
Ridgeway was awakened the following morning by someone pulling on his arm.
When he looked up, he realized it was a young North Vietnamese soldier trying to pull off his wristwatch.
After the firefight, the shattered survivors of the patrol made it back to the combat base, and the dead were left on the battlefield.
A rescue mission was deemed unwise by higher-ups, who feared losing even more men and depleting the base’s defenses, said Pipes, who is now retired and lives in California.
In a telephone interview, he said that with binoculars, he could see Marines’ bodies strewn on the battlefield. “It was worse than agony,” he said. No patrols outside the base were permitted.
“We couldn’t go get them,” he said. “They laid out there for six weeks.”
On March 17, he wrote to Ridgeway’s mother: “I am sorry that I can offer no tangible basis for hope concern
ing Ronald’s welfare.” Finally, on April 6, the Marines were able to return to the battlefield, Pipes said.