WOW! First, let me thank you for your service. I can’t imagine going through THAT whole scenario (what you saw and heard before the shells hit) as an adult let alone an 18 year old. Eight hours with one lung - that had to be worse than anything I can imagine -fighting for every breath while the battle goes on and not knowing if/when help would come if you’d still be alive to see ‘em or etc. You don’t mention much about the shrapnel and pain. Hades on Earth! I recall reading two Vietnam POW books that both referenced that location. One was titled “The Climate of Hell” and the other was “When Hell Was in Session.” And of course War is Hell - yes fighting for every breath with that going on and not knowing how it was going to ‘end’ for you - that sounds like Hell.
I was just a 14 year old in a neighbor’s backyard when some fool figured that his high powered rifle/tripod setup meant he had to walk all the way down the range to see if he hit his target and that little sapling near him, 60 degrees from the direction of his target was just so conveniently close and wouldn’t it be cool to see a sapling collapse! Apparently he didn’t think that the bullet would travel beyond the sapling?
Thank You for the kind comment. Honestly I don’t remember any striking pain from the explosion and shrapnel, just a very hard pressure. I still have shrapnel remnants inside 1 lung and 1 leg today 45 yrs later as a reminder. At 18 of course you feel indestructible and after many hours there were thoughts and fear in my mind we would be overrun before enough help arrived to get out. One of my daughters is an ER trauma nurse and told me I had an Angel on my shoulder as I should not have lasted long enough to get pulled out after that many hours. So yes, I count my blessings every day.