CHAPTER 24
General Berry wrote to his wife on July 20: “I had forgotten the physical manifestations of the responsibilities of combat command: constant butterflies in one’s stomach; constantly thinking about what the enemy might be planning and doing; constantly wondering if you have done everything you ought to do for your men and unit . . . I think the load feels heavier because I am the interim commander . . . Good experience for the young general officer,” he added with some irony. “When General Hennessey returns . . . I expect to have aged by several years. . . .”
Berry felt burdened not only by Ripcord but also by Operation Chicago Peak. He finally decided not only to postpone the offensive once again but also to scale back its objectives. He outlined his reasons in a letter written on the morning of July 21: “[T]he enemy is in strength [on Co Pung Mountain] and has many AA weapons; our artillery support is unlikely to be adequate to the need[,] especially in view of the action on-going around RIPCORD; and at this stage in the war, all U. S. offensive efforts must have an extremely high assurance of success and of low casualties. From the beginning, my professional instincts have suggested that our plan has called for us to take unacceptable risks without a high assurance of success. I have refrained from expressing those instincts because the operation has been on the books for several months and because of my being a newcomer to the division. Now that I personally must decide to launch the operation, I cannot, in good conscience, undertake the operation in light of the new information our intensive reconnaissance is bringing us . . . My judgment is that we’d lose too many aircraft and too many men. . . . Yesterday, for instance, we had 11 aircraft damaged by anti-aircraft fire while conducting low-level reconnaissance of the CHICAGO PEAK area. Most of the fire came from 12.7mm machine guns. Made in China. The area is lousy with AA guns and infantrymen who fire their small arms at our aircraft.” Berry added wryly: “I must say that Jack Hennessey selected a great time for his leave. Hope he’s enjoying it. . . .”
Berry noted in another letter to his wife that he was visited at division headquarters that afternoon by Maj. Gen. Donald Cowles, the MACV J3. “He stated that our division area is the most active in Vietnam and has been for some time,” Berry wrote. “We have the most and toughest enemy and have been engaging in the heaviest fights. And taking the heaviest casualties. This concerns ‘people up the line.’ In the prevailing political atmosphere, General Cowles stated, we must hold our casualties to a minimum during [the] withdrawal of U. S. forces.” Cowles also told Berry, as the latter paraphrased in his letter, that “the 101st [Airborne] Division’s planned offensive [Chicago Peak] is the only operation on the books for this summer which has any hope of hitting the enemy where it will hurt him—where his supplies are stored in preparation for his own offensive after the wet season sets in and drastically curtails our flying.”
Cowles also bore a message from Gen. William B. Rosson, acting MACV commander in the absence of General Abrams, who was recuperating in Japan from the gallbladder surgery he’d put off until the last U. S. troops had pulled out of Cambodia. “General Cowles stated that General Rosson’s hopes for some kind of successful offensive this summer are pinned on us,” Berry recounted in his letter, “but that we cannot afford to take ‘unduly heavy’ casualties. Meanwhile, our continued reconnaissance in the CHICAGO PEAK area finds more and more enemy there; and Ripcord’s use as an effective artillery base in support of CHICAGO PEAK becomes highly questionable. Something of a dilemma here, isn’t there[?]”
Colonel Harrison wanted division to pile on at Ripcord. The brigade commander would recall being “thrilled, excited” when the A/2-506th wiretap revealed not only the enormity of the North Vietnamese buildup but fixed the general location of the enemy units around the firebase. “[W]e finally had them bunched up and not going anywhere,” Harrison later wrote. “I told my brigade staff to develop plans to destroy the four enemy regiments. The staff came up with a plan calling for six additional U. S. battalions....”1
Conforming as it did to established doctrine about finding, fixing, and fighting the enemy, Harrison’s plan would have been acted upon without hesitation earlier in the war. Berry, however, was reluctant to commit the requested forces to Ripcord; it was a battle that could be won, but at a price that would undoubtedly bring about the kind of congressional lambasting that the 101st’s senior officers had endured in the wake of Hamburger Hill. Colonel Root appreciated the political situation better than fellow brigade commander Harrison. “I commiserated several times with Ben during the battle,” recalled Root. “He was taking an awful beating, but showed the courage of a lion. It is revealing, I think, that I never considered that my own headquarters or resources from my brigade might be committed to Ripcord. I don’t think division ever considered that possibility, either. Expanding a fight in terms of area or commitment of overwhelming force was not an option that came readily to mind in the climate of those days.”
General Berry retired to his office late on July 21 to wrestle with the Ripcord question. It was true, as Berry jotted on a notepad, weighing the pros and cons of evacuation, that Operation Chicago Peak was “infeasible w/o Ripcord.” That fact argued for holding the firebase. The dilemma was that to exacerbate political divisions in the United States and thus speed the withdrawals, the “NVA plan mil[itary] victory in Ripcord area.” Meeting the enemy challenge would involve shifting such forces into the mountains around Ripcord as to seriously weaken the division’s defense of the coastal plains, its primary mission, and the resulting battle would draw such adverse media and political attention as to jeopardize the entire Vietnamization program. In conclusion, Berry wrote:
Ripcord now a liability
a hostage
a potential NVA victory
Logic argued for immediate evacuation. The ethos of the division that Berry commanded did not. He was, he later wrote, “keenly aware of Bastogne” as he pondered what to do at Ripcord. He was also concerned with the effect that withdrawal would have on morale.
Rising before dawn the next morning, Berry typed a letter to his wife dated “0515 Wednesday 22 July 1970”:
We’ve now reached a point where we must question the continued use of RIPCORD. Is it worth the casualties for the purpose it is serving? If we decide “no,” how do we get out of RIPCORD? If we vacate RIPCORD, then what do we do? Where will we place our artillery to support the attack we want to make into the NVA base camp and cache area?
Today we must decide on a course of action that differs from what we are now doing. Now we are taking constant casualties on RIPCORD from incoming mortar rounds . . . We are taking constant casualties among the rifle companies operating in the mountains and jungles around RIPCORD trying to locate and destroy the enemy mortars and AA machine guns . . . Daily our artillery fire from RIPCORD grows less effective as enemy mortar rounds make it more difficult for the artillerymen to fire their howitzers. . . .
There are plenty of NVA in those hills. Most of them are moving in from NVN [North Vietnam] via Laos. They are well equipped and supplied. The mountains seem loaded with 12.7mm AA machine guns. Yesterday, we had two more helicopters shot down in the same area where a rifle company [D/1-506th] was in a tough fight. The NVA want very badly to inflict a major defeat on US forces. . . .
I’ll be glad when I’ve decided what to do in the Ripcord area and begin doing it. Dear God, help me to make the right decision.
Berry decided the issue upon finishing the letter, as described in a follow-up dispatch written later that day: “This morning I made the most difficult professional decision of my life: to get out of RIPCORD as quickly as possible. Easier said than done. . . .”
According to John Fox, the general’s command-ship pilot, the decision to withdraw in the face of the enemy, however sensible, was to Berry a hateful thing that required the swallowing of much pride. “No soldier likes to bail out,” as Berry himself later said. “It’s not in my nature.” Berry would write that his decision was “based on what I believed to be a costly, unjustifiable continuation of human casualties for no corresponding military advantage.”
Berry flew to Camp Evans to speak in private with Colonel Harrison. “We’re closing Ripcord,” Berry announced without preamble. “What do you need in the way of support?”
Though the planning session that ensued was crisp and unemotional, Harrison was actually reeling in shock. “I was dumbfounded,” the brigade commander later wrote. “It had never even occurred to me to consider a withdrawal, but I nevertheless made no plea or argument to change Berry’s decision. I believe the thought went through my mind, yeah, you’re probably right. . . .”
Colonel Harrison had spent the last five nights with Lucas on Ripcord, waiting for the ground attack that they were sure was to come and were confident they could destroy in the wire. “General Berry was able to see the battle from a more detached view,” Harrison wrote. “I was too close. I was part of it. I was fighting right alongside Andre Lucas on Ripcord and in the air. I failed to step back from the immediate problem and think strategically.” Had Ripcord been presented as a classroom problem at Benning or Leavenworth, Harrison concluded in retrospect, his decision “would have been the same as Berry’s.”
There are those convinced that Berry had been pushed to evacuate by higher command’s subtle reminders about casualties and not so subtle restrictions on ammunition. As Berry would deny that, in fact, there had been any restrictions, so does he deny that his decision was influenced by anyone up the chain of command. “I, and I alone, made the decision to withdraw,” Berry would write. “I never had the feeling that anyone from higher headquarters was trying to pressure me to decide one way or the other. If anything, there was an absence of guidance.” Berry would recall “feeling pretty lonely” when trying to make his decision, and he “occasionally wished for clearer guidance from my superiors.”
In the final analysis, though, said Berry, “I’m glad that they left me on my own,” it being “within the best traditions of the Army that you leave the commander that is on the ground free to see things his own way and make his own decision—and then you support him from the next higher headquarters. That happened in our case. Once I made the decision, not a single commander above me did anything other than say, we think you made the right decision. There was no criticism, there was no second-guessing. That’s how it should be. Such a decision is the ultimate responsibility of command, and relying on commanders to make their own decisions is one of the great strengths of the United States Army.”