Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:08 | It was just his luck. Newly arrived Recon Marine Pete Kukurba was sent to Khe Sanh just before Tet. The siege was beginning to get bad, with nearly constant artillery, mortars and rockets. It got so bad the resupply planes wouldn't land. The crew just pushed the pallets out the door on a low pass.
Keywords : Pete Kukurba Vietnam Recon Marine Da Nang gunnery sergeant (gunney) George MacCauley Corpsman Khe Sanh French coffee plantation North Vietnamese Army (NVA) artillery fire mortar rockets Con Thien sniper
Pete Kukurba's parents were Ukrainian immigrants by way of a German concentration camp. That's where he was born before the family moved to their new home, Chicago. He figured if he was going to be sent to Vietnam, he might as well get the best training so he joined the Marines. He even made it through the tough Recon training.
What was up with these hills in Vietnam? Push up the hill, get pushed back down the hill. Why are we taking this hill? No one knew. Pete Kukurba had a taste of that but his biggest problem was that he was at Khe Sanh. As if the shelling wasn't enough, he got bitten by a rat. That turned out to have a bright side.
When the B-52s dropped their bombs, the whole ground shook. That helped end the siege of Khe Sanh. Pete Kukurba was in that fight and was glad when the unit moved to Quang Tri. Finally, a shower! Next stop was Dong Ha, another place that was almost like R&R after Khe Sanh.
It happened a lot to Pete Kukurba. The higher ups would put the Marines in bad situations and they would have to fight their way out. In one such firefight, despite being wounded in the arm when a bullet hit his machgine gun, he grabbed an M-16 and continued the fight. His action earned him the Bronze Star.
The good news for Pete Kukurba was that he was going to the Bob Hope USO show. The bad news meant that he had a lousy seat. After a quiet assignment guarding a bridge, he wound up at Hill 190. During that fight, a Medevac chopper was hit by an RPG and came down in a fiery crash. The crew got out but the pilot was trapped. Pete did not hesitate.
Pete Kukurba's mom made Christmas nice for him when she sent a small Christmas tree for his bunker. He had been in Vietnam for a year and it was a couple of months later that he got wounded. A new lieutenant who was clueless led his men into an NVA trap.
After getting wounded by a booby trap, Pete Kukurba recovered in Japan and did not return to Vietnam. He was a driver for an officer on Okinawa. Then they sent him on a Med cruise. This was all like a paid vacation after Khe Sanh and Hill 190.
