HALLETTSVILLE, 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,” died 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-the-dead” 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 trench seemed empty when they got there. But as Ridgeway and the others made their way along it, suddenly a grenade dropped in.
“We throw a couple grenades,” he said. “We backed off. ... Then we realized the firing (from Marines) behind us had almost died down to nothing.”
When they stood up to look around, they saw North Vietnamese soldiers walking through the underbrush toward them. “I guess they thought we were all dead,” he said.
“We cut loose on them,” he said. “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’ company commander, Capt. Kenneth Pipes, said.
More than two dozen Marines, including Jacques, were killed.
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, who feared losing even more men and depleting the base’s defenses, said Pipes, who is now retired and lives in California.
“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 concerning Ronald’s welfare.”
Finally, on April 6, the Marines were able to return to the battlefield, Pipes said.
What was left of the dead was brought back to Khe Sanh’s temporary morgue, where Pipes and others went about the grisly task of identifying the dead. “There wasn’t much there but bones and shoes and boots ... (and) dog tags,” he said.
In the end, of the 26 missing and presumed killed in action on Feb. 25, remains of all but nine were positively identified, according to Pipes and Stubbe.
The day of the funeral at the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery was sunny and cool. Ridgeway’s mother attended, and there were flags and solemn honors. A newspaper photographer took pictures.
Far away, in North Vietnam, the rainy season was on, and Ridgeway was in his seventh month as a POW.
As he sat alone in his windowless cell beside a wooden bed and the bucket he used for waste, Ridgeway went about creating a “make-believe” life.
There was no one to talk to, and he was only allowed out once a day to empty the bucket.
He got lice, malaria and dysentery and lost 50 pounds. He wore pink-and-gray-striped POW pajamas and rubber sandals, all of which he brought home with him when he was freed.
He was beaten with bamboo canes and tied up during interrogations.
Ridgeway said he didn’t dwell on the notion that people back home might think he was dead. They would be fine. His job was to survive.
In January 1973, he was in North Vietnam’s notorious Hanoi Hilton prison when his captors abruptly announced that the POWs were to be freed as part of a peace agreement before the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
When the list of POWs being released became public, Ridgeway’s name was on it.
Back in Houston, his mother banged on a neighbor’s door and said, “Ronnie’s alive!”
Ron Ridgeway was released on March 16, 1973. He came home, got married and went to college.
“I came back in basically one piece,” he said. “I came back able to live my life. ... We went over with a job to do. We did it to the best of our ability. We were lucky enough to come back.”
Several months after his return, he and his wife, Marie, went to Jefferson Barracks to see his tombstone, which was later replaced.
“It brought back memories,” he said. “The loss of life of those that I knew. It was a solemn experience.”
Carved in the surface were the words “Ambushed Patrol Died in Vietnam Feb. 25, 1968.”
Eight names from the top: Ronald L. Ridgeway.
The Washington Post’s Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this story.
