Hell On A Hill Top America's Last Major Battle In Vietnam [Hardcover]

Instead of backing away from the fight, the North Vietnamese mortar, recoilless rifle, heavy machine gun, sapper and regular infantry attacks increased. The last offensive around Ripcord was starting to look like the last stand. Unwilling to keep American soldiers at high risk at this stage of the war; Ripcord was evacuated on 23 July. The battle went unnoticed for 30 years until Keith Nolan's book, RIPCORD, was published. As powerful and gripping as was the story of great leadership and courageous fighting by our soldiers, the magnitude of the enemy force still remained unknown. The author, the 3rd Brigade commander during the siege and evacuation, made trips to Vietnam in 2001 and 2004 and interviewed the 324B Division Commander whose first-ever division sole mission, was to destroy Firebase Ripcord. The full story is now told.

Considering all that has been written about the Vietnam War in the last thirty years it would seem that the subject has been covered completely. Not so. Benjamin Harrison's Hell on a Hill Top breaks new ground--and does it in an unusual way.

Fought from March to July 1970, the Battle for Firebase Ripcord was the war's last big clash between U.S. and North Vietnamese troops. But until now it has been essentially forgotten.

Overshadowed by the incursion into Cambodia that May, and coming in the midst of the withdrawal of U.S. combat units from Vietnam, the combat raging around Ripcord fell into the cracks of history. Harrison's book rescues the battle from obscurity, restoring it to its rightful place in the storied annals of the 101st Airborne Division.

Elements of the division's 3rd Brigade, which then-Colonel Harrison commanded, precipitated the long slugfest. Americans carved out positions on key terrain near the A Shau Valley, endangering the all-important North Vietnamese supply lines into the south. Enemy commanders could not tolerate that threat to their operational freedom of actionlCG