This Military Service Page was created/owned by
SSgt Scott MacQuarrie (Mac)
to remember
Marine Col John Ripley.
If you knew or served with this Marine and have additional information or photos to support this Page, please leave a message for the Page Administrator(s) HERE.
This week marks 52 years since one Marine stopped 20,000 North Vietnamese troops and 200 enemy tanks by climbing hand-over-hand beneath a major bridge to plant explosives.
In the spring of 1972, the North Vietnamese Army launched the so-called Easter Offensive, its largest attack of the war and the first major assault since the Tet Offensive four years earlier. On April 2, the communist forces reached the Dong Ha Bridge over the Cua Viet River in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam.
Marine Capt. John Walter Ripley, the Senior Advisor to the 3rd Vietnamese Marine Battalion, was on the south side of the bridge. His orders were blunt, “Hold and die.”
Sleep Well Marine: Jan 10, 2010
Col. Ripley was a great Marine and a personal friend of mine, I 1st met him when I did a photo collage for him
and asked him to autograph it......
He send it back with a really kind letter, and being the Director of the Museum, people often asked him for his autograph.
He contacted me asking for more copies of the photo, I told him I'd send him all he wanted, "on me"
he refused, and we spent a few back and forth emails till he finnaly told me he was going to pay for them, and that was an "order"
He would order prints from me, from time to time when he'd get close to running out, ALWAYS paying for them.
The COPRS is a little less bright today.....ONE OF HER BEST HAS PASSED.
He will never be forgoten...and I offer you Marines to copy and print the image from my profile page, if you like, to keep COL. RIP from being forgoten.
SEMPER FI my friend, Sleep Well you sure as hell earned it.
