SERGEANT RUFFLE

I had known Sgt Ruffle for a long time, considering that I was barely over thirty and he was probably a couple of years younger. That was because I had known him, or more correctly, known of him, back on Okinawa in the beginning of the decade which was now approaching its end. That is a long time for an officer to still be in touch with an enlisted acquaintance..

I was surprised and pleased to see him when he showed up in the 3d Batt not long after I got there. He was now a platoon sergeant, whereas he had been a buck sergeant in the recon platoon back on Oki some six or seven years before. He had matured a lot and seemed confident and competent. He was assigned to D Company, one of our better companies.

A few days after his arrival, B Company ran headlong into an enemy camp. There were some guards posted close by the camp and they were in sniper positions in trees. At first they caused some trouble, wounding the point men and slowing the attack momentarily. The company took aggressive action, though, and moved quickly through the ambush, leaving medics behind with the wounded and calling for medevac.

As B Company entered the camp they found it deserted but it had obviously been occupied moments before. The enemy had left in a hurry, leaving behind its equipment and leaving the entire camp intact. It turned out to be a major hospital and recuperation facility, the biggest ever discovered during the war. No enemy remained, not even the badly wounded.

Still, they were fleeing hastily, possibly in many directions, so we alerted the other companies to be on the watch for enemy entering their areas. D Company was up on the same ridgeline and had found a wide trail on top, so they expected they might have some company coming from the direction of the camp. Ken Nash, the company commander, assigned Sgt Ruffle’s platoon the job of ambushing any enemy coming down that trail.

Just minutes after getting that assignment, while emplacing his weapons, Ruffle saw an enemy force coming down the trail He had them trapped and could have killed or captured many of them except that the order he gave his platoon was "Every man for himself" as he ran to the rear.

It happened that Nash was expecting the enemy at about that time and was on his way up the trail to check on his new platoon sergeant when he found him running to the rear. Ken Nash was about 6’ 2" and 225 lbs, most of it muscle. He had played football at Kansas State and hadn’t lost much muscle tone since. He grabbed Sgt Ruffle, turned him around, picked him up by the collar of his shirt and carried him back to the forward position.

They found no enemy there as apparently the NVA didn’t understand what Ruffle was doing and went the opposite direction. His troops, though, following his example, had abandoned a machinegun and a couple of radios, serious no nos. Luckily, the equipment was still where it had been abandoned. Nash sent Ruffle back to the company CP, put the next ranking sergeant in charge of the platoon, and called for a helicopter to evacuate Ruffle from the company. He didn’t want him in his company another minute.

We were pretty busy with our wounded and trying to find the bad guys, so it took hours to get around to Ruffle, but we did get him out before dark. LTC Berke met with Ruffle that evening back at the base camp and decided to assign him as the platoon sergeant of the recon platoon. When he came back out to the fire base in the morning and told me that, I thought it was a big mistake.

The recon platoon is theoretically assigned missions by the Intelligence Officer. In our case, we usually had a young lieutenant as the intel officer and I gave missions to the recon platoon just as I did to rifle companies. Of course, the commander actually is the one who makes the decision, but I planned the operations and that included the recon platoon. I usually put them out in small teams outside the area covered by the rifle companies and outside artillery range. Their job was always to watch and listen and never get into a fight. They were almost guaranteed to be killed or captured if they were discovered by the enemy since there were so few of them and we couldn’t help them with artillery or mortars. We would get to them with infantry as fast as we could, but that might be too late. This was not a job for a coward.

Over the next eight months I watched Ruffle nearly die from anxiety. To his credit, he pulled his share of field duty, but I could always tell when he was out in the bush. I got at least one call everytime telling me that he thought he had a major enemy formation in his area and that he was about to be captured. That never happened and I soon learned not to believe him. I still don’t know if he actually had a lot of enemy in his vicinity or not, and I guess I never will. In any case, Ruffle was in terror and he didn’t try to hide it. He couldn’t eat or sleep and he had terrible diarrhea. He lost over 60 pounds in the next few months and looked like death.

Once he called, as he always did, and asked to be pulled out immediately. There really wasn’t any way to pull him out even if I had believed him. I only had one helicopter at the FSB, which is one more than I usually had there. The colonel was off somewhere in his Command and Control helicopter, known as the Charlie Charlie. I decided to find out for myself how serious this problem of Ruffle’s was, so I took the helicopter, located his position, flew low over it to show him there was no problem and was promptly hit with a barrage of fire. The helicopter eased into the bamboo. We had several helicopters shot down that year and every single one burned killing everyone on board. Obviously, this one did not. I don’t know why.

I have to admit that I have always wondered who fired at the helicopter, the NVA or Ruffle. He wanted out badly enough that I wouldn’t put it past him. He was in bad, bad country at the time. Now I was there with him. Anyway, we never heard from the enemy force that was supposedly surrounding him and he eventually made his way to my now flightless helicopter with its two machineguns. About that time LTC Berke returned and came in and took us out. He comtemplated either a Distinguished Flying Cross or a court martial for me, and decided to let them cancel each other out. I still didn’t trust Ruffle and he didn’t seem too happy with me, either.

Shortly thereafter we changed the way we operated and the way we used the recon platoon, too. I still put it out beyond artillery, but typically we just put it out overnight and often put it along all the trails in a given area, hoping that we would detect any movement anywhere in the vicinity.

One morning at daybreak, Ruffle was out with the entire platoon. The platoon had been split up into a number of small listening posts during the night, but was so close in that it was going to be picked up by a couple of trucks in the morning. Ruffle was assembling the platoon in a tea plantation. Being over 6 feet tall, he could see over the tops of the tea bushes and he noticed a company of enemy moving across the plantation a short distance away. It was actually the entire remaining enemy in our area, all the rest having been eliminated over the preceding months.

Ruffle violated his orders to just watch and listen He had assembled nearly the entire recon platoon and he was fairly sure he outnumbered the enemy. Besides, he knew they were there and they didn’t know about him. He ordered his men to their feet, pointed out the enemy, formed a line of skirmishers, and advanced toward the enemy engaging in marching fire. In about five minutes, the recon platoon eliminated the last of the enemy in that province.

Sgt Ruffle was awarded the Silver Star for heroism. In my book he’ll always be a hero.