Marine Corps company were tough, courageous

This tale is about Captain William Dabney, a Marine Corps company commander in Vietnam, who took his company of 240 men up to the top of a hill near Khe Sanh.  

Dabney and his men were in an area about 50 yards wide and 150 yards long. The North Vietnamese Army zeroed in on their position and would hit them constantly with mortars, so they dug deep trenches, and then individual caves inside the trenches for protection from the incoming mortar rounds. They were basically isolated, only getting mail every two or three weeks.  

Water was always in short supply. They got down to collecting the dew off their ponchos for drinking water. Their mission was to fire mortars into surrounding areas. One time, the tubes got so hot the rounds were erratic, but they didn't have water to cool them, so they urinated on them. They were continually getting hit by mortars and snipers. They had a soldier killed in action every day.  

One day a Chinook helicopter (two rotor blades) came to pick up the wounded. A mortar round landed on top of the Chinook, killing and wounding another 30. So, replacements kept coming in to replace the wounded and killed. 

Another day, two sergeants jumped into a hole during a mortar attack, and a mortar round followed them in. There was nothing left of them.   

But the men in the company were strong, tough and courageous throughout the 77 days they were on the hill with no water to wash up or even shave. Of the original 240 men that Capt. Dabney took up to the top of the hill, and only 19 of them came back, the other 221 were either killed or wounded and evacuated.