His village Susulia, 35 km from here, is inaccessible. But that does not deter his admirers from wading through knee-deep water and traversing a road full of potholes to meet him. Bhuban has lost two of his toes in the battle.

It has rendered him unfit to continue as a gunner, but he awaits a call from his 139 Medium Regiment to serve his motherland.

Bhuban's regiment was stationed at Drugmullah in Jammu and Kashmir when it was asked to move to Drass on May 1. They moved to Druptikund on June 5 but retreated from Matiyan Post to escape heavy and continuous shelling.

Later, they reached Matiyan Post and retaliated by firing continuously from June 12 to June 13.

All along there was no retaliation from Pakistan, said Bhuban. ``Probably,they knew that our Prime Minister was slated to land at the Matiyan helipad'', he said.

However, the lull was broken on June 13 when Pakistani intruders rained artillery for an hour just before noon followed by another spell from 2-4 pm.

Finally a volley of artillery around 5.30 PM injured seven soliders out of the 67 manning the post. Bhuban was one of them. He was hit by splinters on his left chest, right knee and toes. All the seven injured were taken to Srinagar for medical attention.

After being treated at Srinagar till June 17 they were shifted to the Army Hospital, Chandigarh and were discharged on June 24.

Writhing in pain Bhuban points out to his bandaged toes which were severed when splinters ripped his sturdy boots apart.

Bhuban is bitter about not being able to attend an interview at Mathera which would have given him a promotion. He also is apprehensive of being declared medicaly unfit. His farmer parents Dolamani and Golapi Barik, clutching the `Kargil Hero' award conferred by GuruTegh Bahadur Gurudwara, Chandigarh, on Bhuban, have little regret that their only graduate son joined the Army. They would have been happier if Bhuban had returned after driving out infiltrators instead of returning injured.