40 years ago: The Bridge at Dong Ha

"......the story of Le Ba Binh is so incredible, the reader will find himself wondering if he was really a film character. Le Ba Binh can teach leftwing Americans, safe in their Constitution-backed country, the folly of appeasement. His saga, which cannot be detailed here, will serve as a signpost of honor for adults and children alike."

Le Ba Binh's 700-man South Vietnamese Marine force facing 20,000 North Vietnamese......

"As long as one Marine draws a breath of life, Dong Ha will belong to us."

Nine time wounded Lt. Col. Le Ba Binh Binh served 13 years in heavy combat and another 11 years in prison camps.

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Fleets of Soviet T-54 tanks sped south as a desperate and disintegrating situation became grimmer by the hour. If the NVA tanks and other forces crossed the Dong Ha Bridge spanning the Cam Lo River, the effect might indeed crumble the already struggling South Vietnamese Republic. With NVA tanks fast approaching this vital bridge crossing, LtCol Turley gave the order, “The bridge at Dong Ha must be destroyed.” A decision, he was fully aware, he’d have to justify to higher headquarters and one that he knew to surely be a death sentence for South Vietnamese Marines and their advisors.

At his command center at Ai Tu, Turley had at his direction a full assortment of U.S. military weaponry, but the key to halting the rapid NVA advance lay with the 3d Bn, Vietnamese Marine Corps, com­manded by Maj Le Ba Binh at Dong Ha. As luck would have it, Binh’s U.S. Ma­rine advisor was a combat veteran named Capt John Ripley. Back in 1967, Ripley had won his spurs as the “Skipper” of Company L, 3d Bn, 3d Marines—“Ripley’s Raiders”— and he knew the ground in I Corps. The tale of the action that followed is aptly told in Col John Grider Mil­ler’s exceptional book, “The Bridge at Dong Ha.”

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