Colonel Ripley's testimony on Women In Combat.

A response to Haynie's latest for USNI Blog.

                 

COLONEL RIPLEY: I, too, would like to begin with prepared remarks.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Commission, I’ll start with my background. Very briefly, my association with combat. I served my first combat tour as a young Marine captain company commander of a rifle company for a year in Vietnam, along the DMZ; from Khe Sanh, virtually all of the fire bases, over to the Tonkin Gulf, Con-Tien, Rockpile, Khe Sanh and the jungles in between.

My next tour was with the Vietnamese Marines four years later, where I served in virtually the same area. At the time, Khe Sanh was abandoned, and I had the distinction of being the last American there, having been shot down there twice on two consecutive days.

I also served a tour with the British Royal Marines, where I commanded a rifle company in 4/5 Commando, deployed with them to the Arctic for two years—correction, two winters—and during that same tour, I deployed to Malaya, where I served with the 1st of the 2nd Gurka Rifles and 40 Commando on a post-and-station tour that, to my surprise, in the jungles of northern Malaya, also included combat. I wasn’t supposed to know that.

I had been trained exceedingly well by the Marine Corps. I am one of two Marines who have completed all four schools preparatory to reconnaissance training; airborne, scuba, jump, trained with the Navy SEALs at the time they were not SEALs, they were UDT, and, finally, the British Royal Marine Commando Course. There are only two present active-duty Marines so designated.

Read the whole thing here, but I wanted to post this part because it gives a brief glimpse of Colonel Ripley's qualifications.

To say that he was hard as woodpecker lips is to understate just how hard he was.  The guy was granite.  If anyone has been there and done that then Ripley was that man.

I won't ruin it.  Read it for yourself and think hard on what he has to say.  I just wish he was here to be Commandant instead of what we have now.