21 June 1968,
05:00, It’s already hot.Could hardly get my breath all night. Like sleeping in a Sauna.
Cpl. Pete Bosco an I are packing to go on a 2 -3 day sweep with Hotel Co. The deal is (According to G2) the NVA have a company to regiment size detachment hiding on a peninsula not far from Phu Bai. Believed to be factions of the remains of the post Tet force.
200 lbs c-4, blasting caps, det cord, fuse , fuse lighters. Ready to go.
We immediately distribute all but 1 satchel of c-4 for each of us to the grunts. ( A common practice to enable us to transport more than we can carry. They get to keep a stick for cooking in exchange for carrying 5 more pounds.)
07:00 , its already near 100 and humidity is 90%
Within a 1/2 mile we start finding weapons caches. ( Weapons buried in the sand) This peninsula is only about 7 miles long but our progress is slowed considerably by finding so many weapons caches. We have 3 Amtrak (Amphibious Tracked transport vehicles) 2 Tanks and all the supplies are in the Amtrak. We are of course on foot.
Noon, 105 degree and climbing.
We capture a couple of Gooks (Suspected NVA). The Kit Carson Scouts (NVA deserters, retrained as scouts) and The ARVNS (Soldiers of the Republic of South Viet Nam) begin to question them. The ARVN leader become very agitated with one prisoner and pulls out his knife and proceeds to cut open the prisoner’s abdomen from side to side and pull out his internal organs while he lives and screams. The other prisoner is taken away. Unbelievable cruelty by some of the Vietnamese to their counterparts.
15:00, 121 degrees.
More weapons caches. we transfer supplies all to one Amtrak and store undestroyed enemy ordinance in the 2nd track. The 3rd Track due to mechanical problems it is limping along empty.
We capture no more enemy although 2 brief small firefights resulted in 3 NVA killed.
We reach the end of the peninsula and find no enemy force. G2 says they have either left already or are behind us. We start back to Phu Bai with a track full of supplies, a broken but able to move track and a track full of enemy weapons and explosives.
The Amtrak’s plow through a small line of small trees. The first one through, the second one starts through when KABOOM! this immense vehicle flies up into the air and flips over landing on its top. Command detonated Mine I shout to the Skipper. The Grunts immediately begin to set up a defensive perimeter as we move towards the now inverted track.
I said to Pete, they are all dead (The crew of the Amtrak)from that blast. Just then the gunner ( Amtrak have a machine gun mount on top) starts to crawl out from under the track.
Amazingly somehow he has survived the blast but he is pinned underneath. Just as we are approaching to help him out the fuel cells rupture and burst into flames. The heat an flames prevent us form getting to the track and immediately consumed the gunner and he is burned alive while we could do nothing but watch.
18:00, 110 degrees Finally cooling off.
With one track destroyed, 3 dead and scattered small arms fire we dig in for the night. Finally the small arms fire stopped around dusk. Pete and I have just cooked up a meal of c-rats and coffee cooking on c-4 in the bottom of our foxhole we sit down to rest for a moment on the edge of our foxhole and drink our coffee when KABOOM!!! The world went silent and I felt myself being thrown through the air. (Enemy Mortar) I hit the ground flat on my back and laid there semiconscious for a long moment trying to decide if I was dead or alive. I could not feel or move anything on my left side and could not tell where my left arm was. I reached over with my right arm to my left side and did not feel an arm and where my shoulder was I felt a big hole. Oh my God! MY left arm is gone! I heard Pete groan and said “Pete, are you alive?” He groaned “Yes.” Then we both started calling out. “CORPSMAN!! CORPSMAN!!”
The Corpsman came over and looked at us both laying side by side a “They are both alive” He rolled me over and my left arm flopped out from under me. “It’s stilttached.” he said.
He began to look over us to see the visible extent of our wounds. I had the remains of my left kidney and some intestine hanging out of a gaping hole in my back just below the ribcage.
I had a hole in between my ribs about halfway up my back that had torn up my left lung.A large piece if schrapnell was sticking out of the small of my back between two vertebrae. Another piece about 2″ in diameter was sticking out of the back of my skull. There were shrapnel puncture wounds all over the back, left arm, left leg left side.
One Corpsman spoke in medical terms to the other about what they were discovering. I had been in combat for most of the 6 months I had been in country so I understood enough of what they were saying to know it was not looking too good.
They carried Pete and I into an Amtrak and called for medivac. The medevac chopper crew said they could not come in in the dark while we were under fire. We could not give them illumination to land without exposing our position. Just then an Air Force medevac chopper who was in the area answered the call for 2 priority one medevacs. He said he would attempt it if they could talk him down to the ground. He flew in without illumination at night and picked Pete and I up and had us in Phu Bai 1st medical battalion in 20 minuets.
When we arrived they took us both into emergency surgery. I was slipping in and out of consciousness and I remember the Doctors saying “His veins have collapsed, do a cut down in the groin.” While I was awake and unmedicated they took a knife and cut my artery open and fed a blood tube in, that is the last thing remember until the next day sometime.
That was to be the last day in combat in my very brief Marine Corps career.
When I awoke the next day I was in an Intensive care ward with Pete in the bed next to me.
He was alive and his wounds and mine were similar. Neither of us had lost any limbs but both of us were experiencing paralysis in parts of our body. Both had lung damage, Mine resulted in the removal of the left lung and left kidney. He had not lost any organs. We both were very happy to be alive
The Battalion Commander and staff came in later to award us our Purple Hearts and to tell us we were going home.
I spent a year in the hospital. a couple of month in Yakutska Naval Hospital in Japan, a couple of months in the Wright -Patterson Air force Hospital In Dayton Ohio. I got to go home for 2 weeks and spent the whole time in bed. the remainder of the year I spent in Philadelphia Naval Hospital until I was Medically retired, 17 June 1969.
I was married on 21 June 1969. The Happiest day of my life.
I am a combat wounded survivor.
And that is the rest of the story!
GEORGIA 
Maj. Nino Chkhenkeli, a physician with the 1st Georgian Infantry Brigade, gives food to a woman she treated in His Ais Asomar Feb. 26. Fifty residents, mostly women, received medical care.
A Georgian Soldier watches with a boy as other children leave the site where Georgian Soldiers of the 1st Georgian Brigade distributed food and other supplies in Hwar village, June 9. The Soldiers were a part of the Brigade’s Civil Military Cooperation company, tasked with maintaining good relations between civilians and coalition military personnel. “We supply people with food and medicine and hear their problems,” said Cpt. Zaur Makaradze, company commander. “Our main mission is to help people.” 
A boy from Hwar village receives supplies from Cpl. Iago Tedeachvei of the 1st Georgian Brigade. Soldiers of the brigade’s civil military cooperation company distributed food and other supplies, June 9. 
Second Sergeant Romeo Sharia and Cpl. Georgi Khidesheli demonstrate emplacing a mortar during a class, July 7, on Forward Operating Base Delta. 
