Conducted from March 19 to April 19, 1967, Operation Prairie III was one of a series of movements by the 3rd Marine Division aimed at engaging and eliminating the communist units arriving in South Vietnam’s demilitarized zone.
Instead of Viet Cong guerrillas, however, the Marines would be meeting soldiers of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), more trained, disciplined and aggressive than the VC had been. Although the Americans had the benefit of complete air superiority and air support, the PAVN usually did the choosing between flight or fight. This often led to a series of battles within battles — small in the overall scheme of things, but anything but minor to the combatants.
One of these encounters, fought on March 30, 1967, 5.9 miles northwest of Cam Lo in Quang Tri Province, was named for Capt. Michael Getlin, commander of I Company, 3rd Battalion, 9th Regiment, 3rd Marine Division (Reinforced), famously known as “The Walking Dead.”
Known as the Battle of Getlin’s Corner to the participants, that patch of contested real estate is also remembered for an officer who stood out in a field full of valor: 2nd Lt. John P. Bobo.
After graduating from Niagara University in 1965, the New York native enlisted in the U.S. Marine Reserve in Buffalo, New York, on May 28, 1965. On Dec. 17, he completed an officer candidate course before completing further training in Quantico, Virginia in May 1966. Bobo shipped out to Vietnam the following month, where he was assigned a platoon in I Company, 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines.
On March 30, 1967, Bobo’s platoon was among some 200 advancing and his men were establishing night ambush sites on Hill 70., west of Con Thien. At 3:00 p.m. that afternoon, Marines shot two North Vietnamese, but soon afterward the company came under attack by some 700 to 800 troops of the PAVN 324B Division, reinforced with heavy automatics weapons and mortars.
Reacting as did all the officers down the line, Bobo organized a hasty defense and fought to prevent his platoon’s being overrun by an enemy determined to bring its greater numbers to bear before American air support arrived in force. Moving along from position to position, Bobo seemed to be everywhere as described in his citation for the day’s operation:
“Recovering a rocket launcher from among the friendly casualties, he organized a new launcher team and directed its fire into the enemy machine gun positions. When an exploding mortar round severed 2d Lt. Bobo’s right below the knee, he refused to be evacuated and insisted upon being placed in a firing position to cover the movement of the command group to a better position, with a web belt around his leg serving as a tourniquet and with his leg jammed into the dirt to contain the bleeding.”
Besides the first sergeant, Bobo was entreated by the platoon corpsman, Petty Officer Kenneth Braun, to withdraw for medical attention. When Bobo refused, Braun did what he could to improvise the makeshift tourniquet.
When they came under attack, Braun picked up an M14 rifle that proved to be defective, but he managed to shoot two enemy soldiers with it. More memorable to “Doc” Braun’s men, perhaps, was his pulling 30 Marines to safety while himself being wounded three times.
Once he’d moved to what he thought a better position, Bobo reportedly “delivered devastating fire into the ranks of the enemy trying to overrun the Marines,” according to his citation.
Bobo was “mortally wounded while firing his weapon into the main point of the enemy attack but his valiant spirit inspired his men to heroic efforts, and his tenacious stand enabled the command group to gain a protective position where it repulsed the enemy onslaught,” it concluded.
On the morning of March 31, the PAVN troops conceded that they could do no more against the Marines and their supporting helicopter gunships and withdrew into the forest, leaving 67 bodies and two prisoners in the area of Hill 70.
Marine casualties included 16 dead in the one position the enemy had managed to overrun. Of the seven Marine officers involved, three survived.
It could have been worse.
Of a total of 47 wounded recovered there, every one later recovered in hospital. Bobo, Braun — who was subsequently awarded the Navy Cross — and numerous others each played a part in I Company’s holding the line during the Battle of Getlin’s Corner.
When Operation Prairie III concluded on April 19, 1967, it had cost 56 Marine dead, an estimated 252 PAVN killed and four prisoners of war.
Lt. Bobo’s remains were returned to his home and interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Lewiston, New York. On Aug. 27, 1968, his family assembled at the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. to receive his posthumous Medal of Honor from Secretary of the Navy Paul R. Ignatius.
Of several monuments and dedications afforded him since, the largest, entering service in 1985, is the Marine prepositioning ship USNS 2nd Lt. John P. Bobo.
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