A FORMER Marine has told of the horrifying moment he realised his wife had chopped his penis off with a kitchen knife.

John Wayne Bobbitt, 51, recalled the living "nightmare" when he woke to find himself covered in blood after the brutal attack.

He said: "It was a nightmare. I cleared my thoughts, applied pressure.

"I went to wake my friend up to tell him to get me to the hospital."

Bobbitt had his todger savaged by wife Lorena in 1993 after she accused him of a campaign of physical and sexual abuse against her.

She fled the scene in Manassas, Virginia, with her husband's severed penis - before throwing it into a field from her car window.

Speaking to ABC 20/20 for a new special report on the case 25 years on, Bobbitt explained how doctors initially thought he may have cut his wrists as he was covered in so much blood.

He said: "Walking into the hospital, the doctor is - you know - looking at me, (and says) 'show me your wrist'".

But when he revealed his injury the doctor's "jaw dropped".

Cops had managed to find the discarded organ and placed it in a hot dog container with ice before rushing to hospital.

Urologist Dr James Sehn was called in to perform emergency surgery to reattach it.

Speaking to the show, Dr Sehn said: "Really all I knew about this on the way into the hospital was that a penis had been amputated and the organ was missing."

Surgeons performed a painstaking 9-hour operation and miraculously managed to stitch Mr Bobbit's penis back in place.

Ex-soldier Mr Bobbitt would then famously go on to star in several porn movies to prove he was back to full health.

He added: "It's normal now.

"I don't want to mess with it… it's been through the wringer."

Lorena, who now goes by her maiden name Gallo, now runs a domestic violence charity.

She was cleared of criminal liability by reason of temporary insanity and served 45 days in a mental institution.

Speaking about the attack in an interview with Vanity Fair in August, Lorena said: "I didn't want to teach him a lesson.

"No, it was survival. Life and death. I was fearing for my life."

Bobbitt told ABC: "I couldn't believe it, how could someone get away with it".

In a seperate trial, Mr Bobbitt was cleared of raping Lorena.