Authors: Charles Henderson
"Call the artillery, Burke."
Burke called the fire mission, instructing the battery to fire for effect.
"Let's go," Hathcock said.
Both men moved quickly up the ridge and began their trek around Dong Den to their rendezvous with the patrol that would take them back to the fire base and their helicopter ride home.
The two Marines walked up Hill 55 toward the operations tent.
"You two look like shit!" the stocky intelligence chief called out to the pair. Between laughs he said, "The word's out on you two-all the way up to General Walt. Pinning down those NVA like that. What were they, a Boy Scout troop?"
"Durn near, I suppose," Hathcock responded. "Their big mistake was walking smack down the middle of that valley. I was going to watch the other side of the river where mat opening runs between the hills at the big turn. I had that all staked out to catch a patrol crossing there.
"When these hamburgers come marching down the middle of the valley-on my side-just like a Saint Patrick's Day parade, I knew I had them. But one thing that I can't figure out is why didn't they move out at night. All they had to do was run out to the river and jump in. I couldn't have gotten more than a dozen of them like that. They kept going for those huts that sit on the east end of the bend, you know, just out of the trees where that ridge runs down into the valley.
"I let that woik in my favor when we had to pull out. We called in the fire mission and dropped over the ridge. We never saw what happened, but I know plenty of artillery dusted them at those huts, if the rounds were on target."
The gunny put his arm over Hathcock's shoulder and said, "Come on in my house. We'll debrief and I'll tell you about that artillery mission."
The three Marines sat down inside the tent. Hathcock took a cigarette from the gunny's pack, which lay open on the field desk, and lit up.
"What about that artillery."
The gunny chuckled and said, "You boys were real smart getting out before the H-Es* hit-all over that valley. You probably would have taken a few. When Lance Corporal Burke radioed for the fire mission and said 'fire for effect,' they did. Those cannon cockers opened every gun they had and hit every one of your on-call targets at both ends of the valley... and everything in between, too.
"By the time the shooting stopped and the sweep team got in there, that NVA company scattered over every mountain around that valley, and they may still be running. The sweep team picked up one prisoner. And nobody can make heads or tails of any kind of body count out there."
"What did the prisoner have to say?" Hathcock asked.
"Well, that company was close to being a troop of Boy Scouts. They had just finished training in the north when their captain-whom you killed right out of the gate-marched them south to join up with an NVA battalion that was supposed to be waiting for them on the north side of Elephant Valley.
"We had pretty well ground that particular battalion down to nothing in the past two weeks-they needed these guys bad. But not bad enough to come down and face whatever it was that had them pinned. They figured you controlled the high ground on the south side, and they didn't want to screw around with you guys. That NVA prisoner said that they had no idea what in hell they faced up on that hillside, but whatever it was, it was deadly."
Hathcock took a final draw off the cigarette and crushed it into the brass ash tray that sat on the corner of the gunny's desk. Exhaling a cloud of smoke, he smiled and then tucked his bush hat back on his head, stroking the white feather in its band.
The two Marines walked away from the buzzing command tent toward their hooches, where they would clean their gear, then themselves, and get some rest. Hathcock looked at Burke and rubbed his finger down the Marine's cheek where sweat had washed white streaks through the light and dark green camouflage greasepaint that both snipers had caked on their skin. Hathcock shook his head and then lazily drawled, "Come on, Burke, let's get cleaned up, your mascara has done run all over your face."
In the Beginning.
A STACK OP mail lay on Carlos Hathcock's field desk when he walked inside the 1st Marine Division Scout/Sniper School's hand-backed tent. Two letters were from Jo-one thick and one thin.
Hathcock looked at the postmarks and opened the letter that bore the oldest date first-the thick letter. As he unfolded the letter, a small clipping from the Raleigh News and Observer fell onto a copy of Leatherneck Magazine that lay on his desk.
Hathcock grunted as he read the bold print that led the story. A sharp knot tightened in his stomach as he laid the clipping aside and began to read the letter.
"Dear Carlos," the letter began, "they wrote about you in the newspaper. I don't quite understand, but I hope you can explain...
"Now every day I wonder what you are doing. I keep waiting for them to come up the sidewalk and tell me you're dead...
"I thought you were safe at the headquarters, teaching. Now I read that you go out alone, or with one other Marine, sniping in enemy territory. I want to know how you are. I want to know the truth."
Hathcock folded the fat letter and looked at the thin one that was postmarked the following day. It was two pages long and began, "I'm sorry that I was angry with you. I know that you don't need to be getting negative letters. I understand that you just didn't want me to worry..."
The letter also told about their son and what Jo hoped to do once her husband was home. It asked, "Have you decided about staying in the Marines?
Hathcock took a tablet of paper from the field desk's right-hand drawer and scrawled, "Dear Jo, I'm sorry. I didn't think telling you would make the waiting better for you. I didn't want you to worry.
"I know that I'm not invincible, but none of these hamburgers are smart enough to get me. I promise you that. Don't you worry about me...
"I have decided to quit the Marine Corps and settle down there in New Bern.
"I'll see you in a couple of weeks... Love, Carlos."
Gunnery Sgt. James D. Wilson, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the 1st Marine Division sniper school, walked in the hooch just as Hathcock licked the envelope's flap and pressed it closed.
"Letter home?"
"Yeah. I gotta bone to pick with that reporter who was up here a couple of months ago. You know, the one who interviewed me and Captain Land after Charlie put out the bounty on us?"
"Sure. What happened?" the gunny asked.
"You remember Captain Land tellin' that guy that the story he wrote was just for the Sea Tiger? That it was for in-country, only?"
"Yeah?"
"His story-almost word for word-appeared in the Raleigh newspaper. My wife just mailed me the clipping."
"No shit. That's a hell of a way for a woman to find out about her husband, by reading it in the newspaper."
"That's what she thought, too."
"You know, you lead the list of confirmed kills, and that makes you the Marine Corps' number one sniper. And there is no way you can keep that secret from her. How's she going to handle that news?" Hathcock lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Blowing a cloud of smoke toward the mud- and oil-stained plywood floor, he said, "I never looked at it like this was some sort of shooting match where the man with the most kills wins the gold medal. Hell, Gunny, anybody would be crazy to like to go out and kill folks.
"As far as I'm concerned, you can take those numbers and give 'em to someone who gives a damn about 'em. I like shooting, and 1 love hunting. But I never did enjoy killing anybody. It's my job. If I don't get those bastards, then they're gonna kill a lot of these kids dressed up like Marines. That's the way I look at it.
"Besides, Gunny, I got a lot more kills unconfirmed than confirmed, and so does every sniper over here, including you. So what the hell does it mean? Who really has the most? And who gives a shit-this ain't Camp Perry."
"The fact that you got as many kills as you do isn't the issue," the gunny said. "It's the way you got that many that's impressive. The Army has this fella mat they say has got a hundred confirmed kills. They take him by helicopter and drop him on a hilltop. He'll sit there awhile and sharpshoot folks, and then they'll lift him off and drop him somewhere else. I don't think he knows stalking from Shineola. He sure as hell ain't a real sniper-not like you or anybody else who learned in this school.
"You'll go home next month with more than eighty kills, and the Marine Corps might just want to do something about that. That's my point. Like it or not, you are Super Sniper."
"I never set out to be no Super Sniper," Hathcock said sharply. "I just did my job."
"Hathcock, you did your job... and kept doing it over and over when any other sniper would have reported back after completing the original assignment he was sent on. Hell, Hathcock, you started a regular campaign selling yourself to every battalion and company commander in I Corps. Remember Captain Land sending me down to Chu Lai to bring you back to Hill 55-under restriction? Tell me about just doing your job and nothing more.
"Also, stop and think about the fact that you and Captain Land were the first snipers to have the big bounties put out on your heads by the North Vietnamese. They didn't do that because they thought your white feather looks cute in your hat -you're hard on their health. In fact, the sight of a white feather in anybody's hat scares hell out of half the country.
"I've heard you tell how there ain't no VC or NVA smart enough to get you, and that's why you wear that white feather, to dare 'em to try. You wear that feather in your hat like some of these assholes wear a bull's-eye painted on their flack jackets. Now, you can't tell me that you don't enjoy your work. And you may not like killing, but 1 remember about six weeks after we moved up here when you killed that woman sniper platoon leader. Hell, you were dancing around like you had won the National Match Championship."
Hathcock nodded, "I was happy about getting her. But you know why-She was bad. Real bad! I still say I do my job and nothing more, but I don't wait until somebody orders me out to the field. If I did, I'd be laying in here and have no kills. I know my job, and maybe I am the best there is at it. So if that makes me Super Sniper, so be it. But 1 never went on any mission with anything in mind other than winning mis war and keeping those shovel-headed bastards from killing more Americans. I never got pleasure out of killing anybody, not even that woman that they code-named the Apache. No. Not even her, and you know she tortured and killed a hell of a lot of people before we got her."
Five months earlier, on September 30, 1966, a stretch DC-8C airliner landed at Da Nang and unloaded another 200 soldiers bound for I Corps' battlefields. When it took off again, it was carrying 219 cheering soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines whose tours in Vietnam^ were over.
Sitting on his tightly stuffed military suitcase, Capt. Jim Land watched the big jet, which had now become what American servicemen called a "Freedom Bird," lumber down the runway and lift into die hazy sky, headed for Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa. Land awaited transportation to Chu Lai, where he would check in at 1st Marine Division's headquarters and begin the task of establishing a sniper program.
It was Land who had put sniper teams back into Marine Corps thinking for this war. He had written papers on the merits of training and using scout/snipers well before the United States became involved militarily in Vietnam. He told how commanders could use snipers to penetrate the enemy, deny him leadership by killing his officers and NCOs, demoralize him by random hit-and-run attacks, and cut off his support from crew-served weapons by sniping those who operated them.
In 1960, Lieutenant Land, who was then officer in charge of the Hawaii Marines shooting team, organized a scout/sniper school. He had spent the previous year as an infantry platoon commander with the 4th Marine Regiment-the same organization to which Private Carlos Hathcock belonged.
A chief warrant officer named Arthur Terry assisted Land with the shooting team. Gunner Terry had survived Wake Island in World War II and had competed on rifle and pistol teams throughout all his years as a Marine. Terry had been the one who turned Land's attention to sniper warfare-not from his Wake Island experience, but from another angle. "If we don't provide a service as a rifle and pistol team, we're going to wind up losing our happy home. They're not going to pay for us to run around the country and shoot-we have to deliver something worth the money.