thedrifter
11-02-06, 07:06 AM
Speaker pays tribute to Marines
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Thursday, November 2, 2006
The Richmond Council of the Navy League celebrated the Nov. 10 birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps a few days early yesterday with a rousing speech from one of its most decorated members.
Col. John W. Ripley, awarded the Navy Cross and other medals for heroism during the war in Vietnam, talked to about 160 people at the Willow Oaks County Club about toughness, leadership and team work.
Though retired, he made it clear, "Once you're a Marine, you're always a Marine."
Ripley, a native of Radford, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1962. According to the Navy League, he shares the distinction with one other Marine of having the most combat experience in the Corps.
In Vietnam, he rescued the crew of one downed helicopter by loading them into another helicopter. On Easter 1972, he swung hand-to-hand under a bridge at Dong Ha for several hours packing the span's steel beams with 500 pounds of explosives so it could be blown up, denying the enemy a way across the river.
"The cheapest way to kill the enemy is to send a Marine with a rifle," Ripley told the appreciative crowd. The Marine, he said, gives the United States the best return on defense dollars.
"Austerity has been a way of life in the Marine Corps. Indeed, it is a religion to us, to be the leanest of services."
Noting the current film about the Corps' flag raising on Iwo Jima, "Flags of Our Fathers," Ripley pointed out that one of the six flag raisers was a U.S. Navy corpsman. At Iwo Jima, said Ripley, the Marines suffered 25,000 casualties out of a force of 75,000. Among them were 300 Navy corpsmen, he said.
Iwo Jima, he said, was the only battle in the history of the Corps where the Marines suffered more casualties than the enemy. "That's because we ran out of enemy," he said, prompting laughter.
"I learned how to adapt well in conditions of misery, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, short rations, grief of loss, staggering heat, biting cold, sustained filth," he said.
Ripley, former president of Southern Virginia College in Buena Vista and Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, is a former director of the Marine Corps History and Museums Division. -- Frank Green
Ellie
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Thursday, November 2, 2006
The Richmond Council of the Navy League celebrated the Nov. 10 birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps a few days early yesterday with a rousing speech from one of its most decorated members.
Col. John W. Ripley, awarded the Navy Cross and other medals for heroism during the war in Vietnam, talked to about 160 people at the Willow Oaks County Club about toughness, leadership and team work.
Though retired, he made it clear, "Once you're a Marine, you're always a Marine."
Ripley, a native of Radford, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1962. According to the Navy League, he shares the distinction with one other Marine of having the most combat experience in the Corps.
In Vietnam, he rescued the crew of one downed helicopter by loading them into another helicopter. On Easter 1972, he swung hand-to-hand under a bridge at Dong Ha for several hours packing the span's steel beams with 500 pounds of explosives so it could be blown up, denying the enemy a way across the river.
"The cheapest way to kill the enemy is to send a Marine with a rifle," Ripley told the appreciative crowd. The Marine, he said, gives the United States the best return on defense dollars.
"Austerity has been a way of life in the Marine Corps. Indeed, it is a religion to us, to be the leanest of services."
Noting the current film about the Corps' flag raising on Iwo Jima, "Flags of Our Fathers," Ripley pointed out that one of the six flag raisers was a U.S. Navy corpsman. At Iwo Jima, said Ripley, the Marines suffered 25,000 casualties out of a force of 75,000. Among them were 300 Navy corpsmen, he said.
Iwo Jima, he said, was the only battle in the history of the Corps where the Marines suffered more casualties than the enemy. "That's because we ran out of enemy," he said, prompting laughter.
"I learned how to adapt well in conditions of misery, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, short rations, grief of loss, staggering heat, biting cold, sustained filth," he said.
Ripley, former president of Southern Virginia College in Buena Vista and Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, is a former director of the Marine Corps History and Museums Division. -- Frank Green
Ellie