Harrison returned to the University of Mississippi after his enlisted service and earned a BA in Psychology in 1951. Called back to active duty as a military personnel psychologist, he married his college sweetheart Carolyn Algee in September 1951. At his own request he transferred back to the infantry in 1952 and was assigned to the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, where he served as aide de camp to Brigadier General A.S. Newman.

He graduated from flight school in 1958 at the top of his class and was first in his class at instrument school. Over two combat tours in Vietnam he flew 1,842 combat hours and was the only officer in Vietnam to command a combat aviation battalion for 12 consecutive months. He served as chief evaluator of all Air Cavalry and Mohawk units during the pivotal air mobility tests of the 11th Air Assault Division in the mid-1960s.

In 1970, Brigadier General Harrison commanded the 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division during the Battle of Firebase Ripcord — what Keith Nolan documented in his book RIPCORD: Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970 as the last major American ground battle of the war. Following command of the Brigade, Harrison served as Senior Advisor to the Commanding General of the 1st Infantry Division, ARVN, during the Lam Son 719 operations into Laos.

The battle never left him. Recognizing that Nolan’s 2000 book had not fully captured the North Vietnamese Army’s side of the story, Harrison gathered official People’s Army of Vietnam books and publications, had them translated, and made trips to Vietnam in 2001 and 2004. He personally interviewed seven former enemy officers, including Major General Doi, who had commanded the NVA division surrounding Ripcord from May until July 23, 1970. The result was his own book, Hell On A Hill Top, published by iUniverse in November 2004 — revealing a far larger and more deliberately planned NVA operation against Ripcord than had previously been known.

After Ripcord, Harrison continued to shape the United States Army at the highest levels. He served as Deputy Commanding General of the Aviation Center and Fort Rucker (1976–77), and as the academic and administrative head of the Command and General Staff College for three years, where he consolidated all Training and Doctrine Command constructive simulations and created a family of battle simulations from platoon through corps level.

His final assignment was as Commander of the Soldier Support Center and Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, where he directed landmark studies on unit cohesion and decentralization of personnel management that fundamentally shaped today’s Army personnel policies. He also directed the one-year Review of Education and Training for Officers (RETO), which created the Combined Arms and Services Staff School and the Military Qualifications Standards system.

In 1982, already retired, the TRADOC Commander personally asked Harrison to lead a four-officer group to review Army Aviation. That four-month study resulted in Aviation becoming a separate combat arms branch and the centralization of all aviation doctrine, materiel, and training development at Fort Rucker — a transformation that shaped Army Aviation to this day.

After retirement he served as president of a holding company, conducted 38 leadership training programs for the CIA in the 1980s, and worked as a defense industry consultant specializing in joint and combined arms operations, aviation, and training simulation. He traveled to 69 countries over the course of his life.

Distinguished Service Medal • Two Silver Stars • Two Distinguished Flying Crosses • Two Legions of Merit • Soldier’s Medal • Forty Air Medals • Numerous U.S. and foreign decorations. Member of the U.S. Army Aviation Hall of Fame • University of Mississippi Army ROTC Hall of Fame • Honorary Colonel of the Third Aviation Regiment • Listed in Who’s Who in America since 1981 • National President, Army Aviation Association of America, 1993–95 • President, Army Aviation Museum Foundation • Chairman, Board of Trustees, Army Aviation Hall of Fame.

Major General Benjamin Harrison passed away on January 22, 2022. He is survived by his wife Carolyn, his college sweetheart of more than 70 years.

On July 22nd, with his company ambushed, his men taking heavy casualties, and communications difficult, Captain Hawkins held the unit together through the worst of it. Through the long night that followed, he directed artillery fire and kept Alpha Company from being overrun. The next day, Delta 2/506 walked in and helped extract the survivors.

After Ripcord, Captain Hawkins continued a distinguished military career, retiring as a Major from the Army Reserve in 1990. In the years that followed he worked extensively in defense and intelligence analysis, traveling through Europe and Asia. He logged nearly 500 days in China over 30 trips and helped the Taiwan military prepare for potential conflict with the mainland.

The U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office published a book he edited in 2006: The New Great Game: Chinese Views on Central Asia. He also authored Asia Pacific Security: Observations and Opinions of an American Defense Analyst.

He settled on Kent Island, Maryland, but returned often to Alaska, where the old family homestead — a 57-year-old log structure — was in his care. “The cabin door is always open,” he wrote to his fellow veterans. Of Ripcord he said: “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Ripcord and the men who served in that hellish place.”

Tim spent his first weeks at Firebase Bastogne, rappelling into the jungle to cut LZs. Throughout the fall of 1969, Alpha Company walked the length and breadth of I Corps. In late December or early January, his platoon crossed into Laos and spent an anxious day or two on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. On the walk back into Vietnam, they were out of radio contact for two days.

Their first firefight came in late January or early February. Sent to rescue a lost cherry near Ripcord and link up with a lost recon platoon, a trail watcher used a Claymore mine from the cherry’s abandoned rucksack against them the next day. The point man was seriously wounded in both legs; the slack man was hit in both hands. Both were medevaced out.

On another occasion, 1st Platoon was assigned to observe an aerial and artillery carpet bombing of a valley used by the VC for infiltration. While spread out on a hilltop watching the artillery walk up the valley, they began receiving incoming 155mm rounds. Rounds exploded all around them, bouncing men down the face of the hill. Tim called a check fire. Miraculously, no one was hurt. The next day’s visit by what seemed like every star, eagle, and oak leaf in the Division was, in his words, scarier than the friendly fire. It was later confirmed they had done nothing wrong — the Battalion S-2 had refused to provide the map Tim needed to triangulate his position.

Tim has never understood why the initial assault on Ripcord on March 12 gets so little attention. “That first day was Hell incarnate,” he wrote. His platoon was originally scheduled to go in first, but the order changed so they could pick up replacements — they were down to about 15 men. They picked up Tim Evans and Chris Daffler; Evans’s first day in the field. By the time 1st Platoon landed, it was pure bedlam. Ripcord was a bare rock with nowhere to take cover. He saw men hiding behind rucksacks and empty ammunition crates.

Standing near the perimeter with Captain Burkhard, Tim was pointed toward a hill to spot for ARA. The entire firebase seemed to be either exploding or being ripped apart by NVA heavy weapons. He did not learn until later that 4th Platoon had been virtually wiped out within minutes of landing. Two survivors — Orville Koger and Frank Marshall — were transferred to his platoon.

That evening Tim moved the platoon to an adjoining hill, spending the day calling in ARA on a mortar crew they could see firing at Ripcord. They spent the night on a hill infested with poisonous centipedes, on full alert. Anticipating an attack, he moved everyone to alternate positions after dark and placed his two machine gunners — Tiny Aanonsen and Bobby Young — at the points he judged most likely to be hit.

The next day, ordered to rejoin Alpha on Ripcord, Tim spread the platoon in an assault line assuming an NVA ambush. Each man threw a grenade and they charged down the hill at a dead run. There was no ambush — but he took heat for not requesting permission to throw the grenades. “Asking permission when I was pretty sure it would be denied didn’t seem like a good option,” he wrote.

1st Platoon then spent a day and night alone on Ripcord while the company withdrew — in two-man positions, receiving intermittent mortar fire, with orders not to move for any reason and to use grenades if there was movement. Late that night, Dick Oxler let out a muffled cry. A large tiger had approached his position and startled them both. They watched its silhouette jump over Oxler. Before dawn, movement near the same position went unanswered on the radio. Believing it to be NVA, Tim ordered Charlie Steffler to fire his M-79. Steffler aimed short at the last second. The round landed in front of one of their own positions. Bill Rose, who had left his hole to relieve himself, was seriously wounded and medevaced at first light.

On April 15, 1st Platoon — down to about 17 men — was assigned to chase an NVA platoon estimated at 40. The NVA had an observation post overlooking a firebase about to be reopened. When Alpha approached, the NVA withdrew down a very steep mountain by the only available route — a perfect ambush corridor. Tim requested permission to do a recon by fire. Denied. He should have argued, he later wrote, but he had argued, ignored, and disobeyed orders once too often for Captain Burkhard.

The platoon climbed down in brutal heat, out of water. Tim finally called a halt when Bobby Young was near collapse. At that moment, an NVA machine gun and sniper opened up from behind them — from the direction where another platoon was supposed to be. Thinking it was friendly fire, Tim radioed Captain Burkhard to check fire. Burkhard confirmed and said they had stopped firing. Later Tim learned they were still with the company — nowhere near him. He sent Chris Daffler to check on Bobby Young and the enemy opened up again. Tim returned fire and they started tossing, then rolling grenades at him. The last grenade exploded on his helmet. His helmet disappeared and he briefly lost his hearing. About the same time, Charlie Steffler had found their position and killed the machine gunner — then was shot in both legs, both legs broken, bleeding heavily. Bobby Young was shot in the forehead. Chris Daffler was shot in the heart.

A medevac arrived but the pilot declared it too dangerous and left. The platoon carried Charlie Steffler back up the entire mountain. Tim begged for another medevac and was told: get to an LZ. After dark, Tim asked for volunteers to carry Charlie back. The only men he remembers volunteering were Orville Koger and their medic. “It took a lot of courage,” he wrote, “for them to leave the safety of the company and walk a couple of miles in the dark carrying a stretcher with no quick way to defend themselves.”

They set up fuel tab lights at the LZ and called in the medevac. Charlie Steffler stopped breathing while the chopper was inbound. Tim and the medic took turns doing CPR until the medic told him to stop. The medevac left again without Charlie.

The next morning Tim left on a helicopter with Charlie Steffler, Chris Daffler, and Bobby Young — exactly six months to the day from when he had taken over the platoon. The first person he saw when he got back to Camp Evans was Bobby Lowe, Charlie’s best friend. Tim told him about Charlie. Bobby said it was okay — he would see him again soon. Bobby Lowe was killed not long after.

Tim finished his tour as Brigade Headquarters Company XO and Property Books Officer. Back in the United States, he served with the 10th Special Forces in Massachusetts, training for a NATO assignment to Sweden or Greece. A knee injury ended that assignment and he left the Army.

He visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial often in his early years, including the night of its dedication. “My first impression of the wall was a great black gash in the earth,” he wrote. “To me it symbolized the great division the war caused in our country. Now, it is a place of comfort and connection with guys I grew to love and miss very much.”

It wasn’t until just before Alpha’s mini-reunion in March that he ever talked about Ripcord to his wife and son. Of the battle and any future film, he wrote: “If there is one and it doesn’t include the first assault on Ripcord in March, the lives — and deaths of a lot of good and awesomely brave men will have been wrongly and unfairly minimalized.”

Frank grew up in North Philadelphia — a corner kid, not looking for trouble, just wanting to do his time and come home. The men he served with on Firebase Ripcord became his brothers for life.

On July 22, 1970, Alpha Company was ambushed by an NVA force of over 100 men on the hill with more at the base — odds of 6 to 1. Frank was wounded by shrapnel in the arm, by shrapnel in the leg, and suffered burns to his face — three separate encounters in the course of one day. Despite his wounds he continued to fight alongside his company until the battle ended.

He was awarded the Bronze Star with “V” Device for valor, a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and two Air Medals for his service.

Frank was one of the thirteen founding members of the FSB Ripcord Association, formed in the years after the war when the veterans found each other and began honoring those who served and those who fell. He has served as Vice President of the Association for many years and led the effort to build this website so the story of Firebase Ripcord — and the men who fought there — will never be forgotten.

When the NVA ambush struck on July 22nd, Widjeskog’s platoon was isolated. With his primary radio gone and his backup barely functioning, he directed his men’s fire and called in what support he could. Wounded by shrapnel, he kept his mouth shut when it hit — he didn’t want his men to know. He kept firing.

At one point he spotted an NVA machine gun position. He fired 18 rounds at it, thinking to himself that he needed to aim. He kept fighting until the NVA pulled back.

Through the long night that followed, Widjeskog helped account for his men and reported to Captain Hawkins. By the time Delta 2/506 arrived on July 23rd to help extract Alpha Company, he had held his position and brought out all the men he could.

Lee Widjeskog went on to become one of the most dedicated historians of the Battle of Firebase Ripcord. He compiled detailed day-by-day accounts of the battle, preserving the record of what happened on that hill for the generations that would follow. His work remains a cornerstone of the Association’s historical record.

In his years with the Association he was known for his quiet precision and his absolute commitment to getting the facts right. “Not a day goes by,” he once wrote, “that I don’t think about the men we lost.”

Lee Widjeskog passed away in 2022. He is remembered by his wife Kathy and all who served alongside him.