In cinéma vérité style, without music or narration, the film documents the day-to-day ordeal of a Marine point squad working to resist the occupation of a South Vietnamese village by Viet Cong forces.

The footage was captured in summer and fall 1966, following Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines (3/7)[3] participating in a series of counterinsurgency operations in Bình Sơn District along the Song Tra Bong River.

The film opens with the platoon on a search-and-destroy patrol, which moves through a rice field and is ambushed by Viet Cong forces positioned across a river, leaving one man seriously wounded.

Later, Marines attend a chaplain service, followed by the company commander outlining the plan for Operation Jackson,[4] an August 1966 effort to push Viet Cong away from the vital Route 1 corridor.

In a later scene, as flares dot a moonlit sky, Marines defending a perimeter recount the dangers of sappers moving at night, saying, "The only thing we really own is this hill right here."