Ronald L. Ridgeway was “killed” in Vietnam on Feb. 25, 1968.
The 18-year-old Marine 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,” perished there.
At first, Ridgeway was listed as MIA. His mother 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 everyone 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. Ridgeway had been part of a platoon of about 45 men sent out from the besieged Khe Sanh combat base to find enemy positions.
On that foggy morning, the patrol strayed off course and was drawn into a deadly ambush. More than two dozen Marines were killed. He was struck by a round that went through his shoulder. “They are all dead! All we could do was lay there and play dead." he said.
Ridgeway passed out but was awakened the following morning by someone pulling on his arm. He thought at first it was fellow Marines, until he realized it was a NVA soldier trying to pull off his wristwatch. 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 by higher-ups, who feared losing even more men and depleting the base’s defenses. Only six weeks later, Marines went back to recover the bodies. All the while, Ridgeway was in a POW Camp in North Vietnam, enduring interrogations, torture, harsh living conditions, starvation and disease. He survived and was released in 1973. He came home, went to college, got married and just retired from as a supervisor from the VA. "I came back in one piece. We had a job to do, we did it to the best of our ability." #welcomehome