D Company Contact — SGT Robert Ross, July 1, 1968 (YD293319)
July 1, 1968 — YD293319
Research stub. Built from a single secondary source (a veteran-transcribed company daily journal). The casualty tie to SGT Robert Ross below is the strongest candidate identification of the four reviewed from this document, though still not name-confirmed.
D Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry made contact with an estimated 2-3 North Vietnamese soldiers at 0930 hours on July 1, 1968, at grid YD293319. A soldier was wounded in the contact and died of his wounds by 1230. The action produced one NVA KIA and a captured AK-47 rifle (serial number 51747).
Later the same day, at 1315 hours, a separate NVA KIA was found buried in a bunker at grid YD296319, roughly 300 meters away — the journal attributes this to a First Platoon ambush four days earlier, on June 28.
The candidate match
SGT Robert James Ross's roster date of death is July 1, 1968 — an exact match to this action, with no casualty-count discrepancy to reconcile. Of the four D Company losses reviewed against this journal, this is the cleanest: same date, same company, one casualty. Virtual Wall independently records his cause of death as hostile fire, gun or small arms, in Quang Tri Province — matching this action's mechanism exactly (wounded 0930, died of wounds 1230). It remains a candidate rather than a confirmed identification only because the journal never names individuals, but this is now the best-corroborated of the four candidate matches from this document.
Robert Ross was born July 1, 1947, and had arrived in-country October 27, 1967 — over eight months before this action. If this identification is correct, he was killed in action on his 21st birthday. See Robert Ross for the full profile.
Next source needed
The 2/8 Cav daily staff journal (NARA RG 472, 1 July 1968) would confirm the casualty by name.
If you served with D Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry in July 1968, we'd like to hear from you. A contact on July 1, 1968 at grid YD293319 cost the company one man. Any memory of this action, or of SGT Robert Ross, helps complete the record.
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