Our time on the Hill was divided into the five weeks prior to mid January 1968 and the months after.  During those initial weeks, we would wait for the rising sun to burn off the haze and the clouds to lift, in order to appreciate the ocean-like waves of the eight-foot high elephant grass in the valleys below.  It was a beautiful green for as far as the eye could see.  Under direct orders from Captain Dabney, India Company CO, to “dig deeper”, we spent our time digging a six-seven-foot deep trench system that inter-connected our bunkers, the ammo bunkers, the gun pits and the secure perimeter trench line.  We built and/or rebuilt our personal bunkers, the ammo bunkers and stocked, what seemed like, a never-ending supply of airlifted ammunition.  (Over the next months we would need it all.)  Our fire missions were mainly H & I (harassment and interdiction) and nighttime illumination in nature.  They were relatively small, less than fifty rounds.

Everything changed on approximately 17 January ’68.  A Marine reconnais- sance patrol going off of Hill 881 South made heavy contact with a large NVA force just off the base of the Hill.  The embattled Patrol called in our mortar rounds literally on top of their position.  After several hundred rounds and several hours, the battered Recon Patrol was extracted with the help of reinforcements from 881 South.

Within the next forty-eight hours, our preparation and training would begin to pay off.  Under the veil of darkness, the NVA initiated an all out assault on Hill 861, a Hill about 3,000 meters East of our position.  I can still hear the extreme sense of urgency in the radio operator’s voice as he called in the fire mission.  (I had heard that same sense of urgency only a day or two before when the Recon Patrol had radioed in for help from our mortars.)  That night we fired approximately 1,000 rounds between the two guns.  The mortar tubes would eventually get white hot, the rounds would “cook off” and fall short of their target.  We had to swap out both of the gun tubes twice during that fire mission.  While staying in constant radio contact with some- one on Hill 861, we walked rounds inside their wire and near their defensive positions.  The Marines on Hill 861 heroically repulsed the attack.  The Siege of Khe Sanh had begun.  It would continue for seventy-seven more days.

In speaking for all of the Marines in our gun section, approximately sixteen of us, we would like to say that we are extremely proud to have been a part of India Company 3/26 under the command of Captain Dabney.  We are equally proud and want to thank Colonel Dabney for the gracious compli- ment he paid us, in an e-mail he sent, prior to our Reunion at his Navy Cross Ceremony.  “I am particularly looking forward to seeing ‘my’ 81’s again.” Colonel Dabney wrote.  “I still believe it was, and remains, the best 81mm mortar section in the history of the Marine Corps.  You damn well should have been!  Thanks to the NVA, no other section ever had a more target rich environment.”