MID-AFTERNOON HEAT kept the comfort level at “unbearable” for many who worked on the dozens of helicopters on the flight line beyond the row of green Quonset huts, where Carlos Hathcock and John Burke slept. Yet for the two snipers, the comfort level had reached a mark that they had not experienced for months—“wonderful.” The two Marines rested atop cotton—and spring-filled mattresses mounted on metal bed frames—real beds. They were nothing fancy, the same type of racks that had graced their barracks back Stateside, yet their comfort was indescribable after months of sleeping on wooden-and-canvas cots or on the ground.
After cleaning their rifles, both Marines had scouted the area and found the shower and head facilities, behind the Quonset huts. There they took full advantage, washing their bodies and clothes.
Also during their tour of the air facility, they discovered the hut that housed the service club. Inside, an American civilian wearing khakis and a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap took a six-pack of cold beer from the old, LP, gas-operated Survel refrigerator, which stood in the comer, hooked to a squatty, silver fuel cylinder. It was covered with decals ranging from Flying Tigers Airways to the Dallas Cowboys. And in the center of the rust-stained and chipped cooler, fastened with two-inch-wide masking tape, hung the centerfold photograph
of Playboy Magazine’s “Playmate of the Year.”
“Drink up,” the man said, pitching the cardboard package to Hathcock and slamming the refrigerator door shut, leaving the old monster rocking on the unlevel floor.
“Ain’t got no cash,” Hathcock said, ready to hand back the beers; they were so cold that in the moment he held them they already began to condense water on their sides.
“You the Marines who got ol’ Frenchy?”
Hathcock looked at the man suspiciously, “Yes, Sir. We shot a fellow that they told us was a Frenchman. You involved in the operation, too?”
“Not really. I do some flying around here. Let’s say you did a lot of folks a big favor by zapping that frog. I owe you at least a cold beer or two.”
The man walked back to the formica-covered, plywood bar where Hathcock and Burke now sat, tearing open the six-pack. He slapped Burke on the back and threw down what was left of his beer.
“You boys enjoy. I’ve got a date down south.”
“Thanks for the beer, it’s my favorite kind,” Hathcock said, with a broad smile.
“That right?” the man said as he hooked a pair of gold-framed sunglasses on his ears, their large, dark green, teardrop-shaped lenses hiding much of his expression. “Yes, sir. Yellow beer.”
Burke yucked and chuckled and shot his elbow into his sergeant’s shoulder. He waved at the man, “Thanks a lot, Sir. You ever get to Hill 55, look us up.”
Hathcock followed with the invitation, “We ain’t quite got the luxury up there, but we’ll make do with something. We’re down on finger four, if you ever get up that way.”
The man waved back, as he closed the screen door.
For the next hour, the two Marines sipped the cold beer and played on a pinball machine that blinked multicolored lights behind a glass painting of scantily dressed women with ray guns shooting wart-covered monsters.
By 3:00 P.M., both men had returned to the Quonset hut and lay snoring on the racks, wearing only their utility trousers.
Outside, helicopters flew nonstop, with the sound of their blades rhythmically pulsing—whomp, whomp, whomp.
Monsoon rains drenched Hill 263, as a single Huey helicopter skimmed the treetops and raced toward the landing zone. Inside, Hathcock sat, belted to a web seat, looking at die dark green jungle blur past, while he clung to the rifle that he rested, butt first, between his feet.
The crew chief stiffly leaned out the open doorway, a gunner’s belt strapped around his waist, and pushed his shoulder into an M-60 machine gun, which he had suspended on thick, nylon-shrouded, rubber cords that he anchored to the helicopter’s upper framework. He laid into the gun with the full weight of his body, jutting out of the doorway at a thirty-degree angle, suspended by the cords like a marionette dangling in the rotor blades’ down-wash.
The Marine grasped the top of the heavy, black machine gun’s short, nylon stock with his left hand and rested the right side of his chin against his knuckles. His right hand clutched the gun’s pistol grip, with which he pulled the weapon into his shoulder and maintained his balance.
As the light utility helicopter zigzagged along the ridges, sporadic small-arms fire popped from beneath the trees. And with each assault from the ground, die pilot banked the Huey sharply on its right side, circling above the assault, tilting the open door to the point that the gunner lay out in the air directly above the fire. The rotors beat the air loudly, mixing with the chopping sounds of the rapid bursts that the Marine fired, showering the jungle and the hidden enemy with red tracers.
The helicopter drifted toward the ground and tilted its nose skyward as it settled onto its skids. Hathcock felt die tension that had built in the forty-minute flight disappear. He stepped quickly away from the noisy aircraft and sloshed his way through the grass and mud to a clear area away from the helicopter. He turned and pulled his bush hat back on his head to shield his face from the rain that fell in heavy sheets.
Once the three Marines stood clear of the landing zone, the Huey broke its bonds with the muddy ground. Shuddering slightly, the aircraft dipped nose down and raced away, disappearing quickly behind the trees.
Gunnery Sergeant Wilson met the three snipers at the hilltop and updated his captain on the status of the snipers—all were well, and each had kills. But what Wilson and several other Marines at the observation post really wanted to discuss was the job that the three Marines had just completed—this special mission.
For more than an hour, Hathcock and Burke sat cross-legged on the dirt floor of the snipers’ command post—surrounded by curious Marines who jammed in to hear-telling them about shooting the Frenchman, and unable to answer the paramount question: Why? Why did the spooks want him dead? Yet it was this unanswerable question, this dark secret shrouded in cloak-and-dagger mystique, that made the adventure a zesty, gee-whiz tale. From that first telling in the bunker on Hill 263, the story rapidly circulated, growing in drama and speculation as it spread.
From time to time Hathcock wondered what deed the Frenchman had done, or was about to do, that warranted this special mission to kill him. Captain Land had some insight based on what the curious man in tiger stripes had mentioned concerning the downed pilots and the Frenchman’s mission to interrogate them, but he heard nothing to confirm that, so he kept the hearsay to himself.
Operation Rio Blanco lasted three more days, ending at 6:00 P.M. on November 27, 1966.
The United States Marines, the Republic of Korea Marines, and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam forces, by their combined action, accounted for more than five hundred enemy dead, yet the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese continued to appear throughout the region along the Song Tro Khuc. Several units remained behind to mop up. Captain Land left four snipers at the Hill 263 observation point to assist, with Sergeant Carlos Hathcock in charge of them.
Very quickly the demand for sniper services surpassed Hathcock’s ability to meet them. He kept both two-man sniper teams on patrols and small operations day after day, recording their activity in situation reports, much of which he copied directly from his sniper log, and sent them every other day to Captain Land.
Since Hathcock was the fifth man, he assumed the risks of working alone and accepted the overflow requests for himself.
After ten days of constant patrolling, Hathcock saw the wear showing on his Marines. They looked like baggy-clodwd zombies, with tired red eyes sunken deep, beneath drooping brows. He began taking their patrols, telling them to stay on the hill and rest.
On December 14, Hathcock stood in front of the low, sandbag-walled bunker that the snipers had been using as their headquarters for the past twenty-four days. His men stood in a semicircle around him, their packs loaded and weapons at their sides. Today he was sending his four Marines home to Hill 55.
“Burke, tell Captain Land that they still need me down here. I’m sending you guys back because you’re wore plumb out. You might make a mistake out there and get yourselves killed. Besides, it’s gettin’ to be Christmas.”
Burke looked at his sergeant and matter-of-factly said, “Sergeant Hathcock, you don’t look too good yourself. Reckon this might be a mistake?”
“I know what I’m doing, Lance Corporal!” Hathcock said sharply. “It ain’t your place to question me. You just pass the word to the captain.”
The reaction bit deeply, yet Burke somehow expected it from his tired boss. He had come to greatly admire Hathcock, and he knew him well.
“I apologize for being out of line, Sergeant Hathcock, but 1 just don’t want to see nothing bad happening to you. You know, we’re supposed to take care of each other. Marines take care of their own. Right?”
“Yeah, Burke.”
“What would it hurt if you kept me back here. We’re a real good team, Sergeant. You said it yourself. I could sure be a help to you.”
“You’ll be a bigger help getting to Hill 55. And all I’ll have to worry about is myself. You just get these Marines back safe.”
Burke nodded morosely. “We’d better be going, huh.”
“Yep. You tell the captain I’ll keep him posted. I’ll get back soon as this mess clears up down here.”
The four Marines, packs and rifles strapped across their backs, walked away from the bunker where Hathcock stood.
“We’ll be thinking about you, Sergeant Hathcock, when we’re sleeping in them new cots and partaking of that Christmas cheer,” Burke said, waving.
Hathcock waved back. “That’s okay, me and Charlie gonna have our own little celebration. You boys keep your heads down, ya hear.”
Burke gave him the thumbs-up sign.
“Where the hell is Sergeant Hathcock Land snapped, as the four snipers came up beside him. He was standing behind a bunker on Hill 55 with a scope-sighted, .50-caliber machine gun trained on the flatlands beneath.
“Sir,” Burke said, standing at rigid attention, “Sir, Sergeant Hathcock had some more work to finish. He’s okay. He said he would keep you informed.”
“I expected to see him and you back here a week ago. Now you tell me that he’s off on his own, completely unleashed. Hell, now he has total freedom down there.”
“Sir, don’t be mad at him,” Burke said, trying his best to defend the sergeant. “He’s doing a lot of good down there.”
“Burke! Bullshit! I know how thick you and Hathcock are. You’d do anything to defend him. But, he’s wrong! Gunny,” Land said looking at Wilson, “you better get in touch with someone right now. I need to know what that skinny little shit is up to—today!”
Hathcock had known die captain would not be pleased to see the snipers return without him, but he had developed a rapport with several unit commanders. They let him call many of his own shots, planning sniper operations. And with each operation that he planned and brought off, his reputation grew. He liked that.
Enjoying a status shared by few other enlisted Marines, Hathcock’s ego thrived, even as he became more gaunt and weathered. However, he remained mentally sharp and demonstrated increased cunning against the enemy with each outing. No matter how bizarre the plan or dangerous the mission, his opinion meant much to the Marines who daily dropped him off on patrol and picked him up again at its completion. He had sold “snipers” to them.
Christmas passed and the new year was one day away when Hathcock marched outside the security wire with a patrol that would drop him at a bend in the Song Tro Khuc, where he could move and cover two wide zones that had opened to free fire.
Enemy contact had increased in this area, well to the west of where he usually worked. Now he embarked into that no-man’s-land to observe and count the enemy as well as to harass them with his fire. He would remain overnight and return on his own.
At a bluff that overlooked the bend in the river, Hathcock constructed his hide where he could watch his rear and flanks, as well as observe the river country below. He had three quick exits, should the enemy bear down on this position.
The afternoon passed into the evening. Under a clear sky, the moon shone brightly on the river and its marshy banks. Anyone who moved along that route could not pass without his seeing him.
With it too dark to take aim and shoot, he spent the night observing through his twenty-power (M-49) spotting scope several long boats filled with soldiers, sliding silently past him. “Coming back by the boatload. Lots of gear, too. Bet
They’re headed to those tunnels below the hill.” When dawn broke, he watched the last boat slipping downstream in trace of the all-night procession. It was a much smaller craft, built like a dugout canoe. It appeared as a black dot, but as it drew nearer, he could distinguish three seated figures. The man at the bow and the man at the stern each paddled, while the man in the center simply sat with his arms folded and his head turning casually, watching the quiet banks as he drifted past them.
As the boat neared, Hathcock put his rifle’s scope first on the man paddling at the bow—a Viet Cong soldier wearing a black shirt and black shorts. He had a carbine across his back. But it was the man in the center—the man who did nothing but ride—who interested Hathcock.
Holding steady on the slow-moving boat, the sun’s orange light exposed the red collar tabs on the gray uniform that the man wore. As he came nearer, Hathcock recognized the large red star above the bill of the man’s cap. “Chinese. I’ll be damned.”
Hathcock had no idea what rank the man held, so he watched through his scope and held his fire until he could clearly see the gold star and clusters of braid on the large, red, collar tabs. “I’ll make a note of that. Maybe CIT can tell me what this guy is.”
He watched as the boat came abeam him, and as the small craft passed, Carlos tightened his grip around the Winchester’s stock and squeezed the trigger, sending a shot ripping into the back of the Chinese soldier’s neck, knocking him out of the boat.
The two Viet Cong who gulled the small boat down the river bent low in the craft and paddled as hard as they could toward the far bank. The two men powered the boat over the reeds and salt grass that grew in the shallows along the river’s edge. The soldier who crouched in the rear rose up. Just as he jumped into the water and the boat struck shore, Hathcock sent a shot across the river that shattered the man’s spine and sprayed his terrified comrade with blood. That soldier leaped from the boat into the reeds. Hathcock cycled the rifle’s bolt and pulled his scope back through its mounts. But as he sighted through the scope, he saw only a flicker of the third man as he disappeared into the thick brush that lined the river.
In the Song Tro Khuc’s main channel, where the current pulled strongest, Hathcock could see the Chinese soldier’s back and shoulders above the water. Taking careful aim, he sent a bullet into the man’s back, making certain that this advisor’s last testament to the Viet Cong would be a warning to beware of the whispering death.
Hathcock silently slipped from the hide and crept through the jungle toward a mark on his map where he knew friendly forces now waited.
“Happy New Year,” Hathcock called out, startling a daydreaming Marine who was manning a forward outpost.
“What the fu--! Where in the hell you come from, man?” the Marine called back.
“That’s, where in the hell you come from… Sergeant!” Hathcock said with a broad smile, showing a line of white teeth contrasting against the camouflage paint that covered his face. “You got a radio?”
“Sure. You a sniper?”
“Yep. I spent the night observing Charlie moving a lot of men and equipment downstream. And I killed what looked to be a Chinese officer.”
“Chinese? Shit!”
“What net you on?”
“7th Marines. Just talk and the regimental CP will answer.”
While Hathcock spoke with an operations officer at the regimental command post, Captain Land talked with the 1st Marine Division’s operations officer, Col. Herman Poggemeyer, Jr.his boss. Land was getting short. His orders home had arrived.
“Captain,” the colonel said, “you’ve done an impressive job with the snipers. General Nickerson is extremely happy with the program and sad to see you go. But you need to go home. I want you to stop in and see the G-2. He’ll show you one good reason why you should not consider extending in-country.” What the intelligence officer showed Land shocked him a little and concerned him a lot. “God damn it, Hathcock!” he roared.
A newspaper story that had appeared in the Sea Tiger* extolling the greatness of “Hathcock and company” had fed the enemy vital information about the 1st Marine Division’s sniper school, its officer in charge, and the sniper with the most scalps—the one who wore the white feather—Sergeant Carlos Hathcock. The Viet Cong had issued a leaflet based on the story.
Land stared at the black-and-white leaflet, written in the Vietnamese language, to which the intelligence officer had attached a translation. A pen-and-ink sketch on the left half of the front page depicted a perfect likeness of Hathcock, complete with bush hat and white feather, and on the right, a perfect likeness of himself, square-jawed and steely eyed.
The translation stated that the two Americans were wanted by the People of Vietnam for the murder of hundreds of innocent women and children. They offered the pay that a middle-class city worker would make in a period of three years as a reward for either man—dead or alive.
Captain Land handed the leaflet back to the captain who had custody of it.
“You know, Charlie has a standing reward of eight dollars a head on any sniper. What you’re looking at is several thousand bucks for each of you two. If I were you—and I thank God I’m not—I would get in the bunker in the center of the compound and not come out until the Freedom Bird took me back to the world.”
Land smiled. “I’ve got work to do, Captain. Good day.”
Seeing the leaflet made Land feel naked. He wondered who might be watching even now and walked near cover, consciously avoiding the open.
Hathcock must be warned. He had no way of knowing that Charlie wanted him bad enough to pay literally a king’s ransom for his head.
“God damn that Hathcock!” the captain swore. He walked to a pickup point, where he could catch a truck from Hill 327 back to Hill 55.
A helicopter rushed Hathcock to a debriefing at the 7th Marines command post, while Captain Land bounced and jarred in the back of a “six-by” truck headed south. Several officers crowded around as the sniper read from the notes that he had jotted in his log book during the night.
“Are you certain he was Chinese?” a lieutenant asked. “Could he have been North Vietnamese or Laotian?”
“Could have been any kind of Oriental Communist, Sir,” Hathcock said. “But he looked to me like he was wearing a Chinese uniform. It was gray, or light brown—I couldn’t be certain because of the color of the early morning light. However, he had that big red star on his hat and those big red and gold tabs on his collar. I have no doubts about that.”
A husky gunnery sergeant, with a bulldog wearing a Marine campaign cover tattooed on his forearm, said, “Sir, what the sergeant described is a Chinese officer. Probably about like our field grade—perhaps a colonel. From an intelligence standpoint, I’d like to examine that body and what he had in his pockets.”
“I want that body,” a major said, taking a pipe from his mouth and blowing a cloud of cherry-scented smoke through die command post tent, where they grouped around Hathcock. “Call for some helicopters to sweep the river. Put out a reward to anyone who can lead us to where that body may be snagged up.”
“Odds are the VC already got him,” another major said. “We can offer twenty thousand piasters. Those gooners will turn in their mothers for that. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“Sergeant, good job. We’ll write this up as two probable kills and send your report to division with trie sitrep.”
The Marines walked outside. Hathcock was already planning another mission.
Late that afternoon, Captain Land climbed down from the bed of the dirty truck in which he had ridden to Hill 55. His body ached and his head throbbed from the long, rough ride, but throughout the whole trip back he had thought only of
what to do about his sniper who had spent the past month walking patrol after patrol, working himself to physical exhaustion hunting the Viet Cong, and now who had been billed as one of the Communist enemy’s most-wanted men.
“Gunny Wilson!” the captain bellowed as he walked toward the snipers’ headquarters. The angry shout echoed through the compound, sending heads turning and wide-eyed faces peering from behind screen doors. The captain never broke his stride as he walked inside the sniper hooch and slammed the screen door behind him.
Gunnery Sergeant Wilson hurried into the small building. Captain Land was rummaging through the large file drawer, looking for a bottle of aspirin.
“Gunny, what’s the latest on Hathcock?” Land said.
“Sir, the last report in on him is two probable kills this morning. He claims one was a high-ranking Chinese officer—possibly a colonel.”
Wilson hesitated and then added, “He’s patrolled daily since the other snipers came home. The gunny 1 talked to told me that Hathcock will come in with one squad and catch another going out and fall right in with them, without even taking his pack off. That gunny’s concerned.”
“Me too. Did you know that the NVA and Charlie both have a bounty out on Hathcock and me? A big one? Several grand?”
“No, Sir.”
“I think it’s time for our Sergeant Hathcock to pack up and come home. I want you to go and get him—put him under arrest, if you have to—but bring him home. I want him standing tall in front of my desk by tomorrow afternoon.”
“You want me to arrest him, Sir?”
“That’s right, gunny. I want you to hog-tie the little shit, if you have to. He’ll kill himself out there, I’m certain. The dummy won’t stop unless I lock him up or Charlie puts a bullet in his head. I’ll be go-to-hell if I’m gonna lose him now. You go and make your travel plans right away. See if you can get air—maybe a Marlog flight.”
At daylight Wilson sat staring out the open door of a CH-46 helicopter, looking over the shoulders of an air crewman who stood behind a .50-caliber machine gun, gripping the two wooden handles and swinging it from side to side as the aircraft shuddered its way to Hill 263.
This daily matt and logistics flight would sit on the ground there only long enough for the crew to unload a few sacks of mail and some boxes of resupply items. Wilson hoped that the gunny in the operations shop there had been able to reach Hathcock before the sniper departed for the day. If Hathcock was waiting at the landing zone, according to instructions, they could fly back on this helicopter. If the gunny had missed Hathcock, it might mean remaining there an extra day.
Hathcock was waiting when the helicopter landed. He had known that the clock had run out from the way the gunny in the operations tent talked.
“Hathcock!” Wilson yelled inaudibly, beneath the whine and roar of the two gigantic rotors that churned through the air above him, as he walked down the rear ramp. He saw Hathcock standing and waving, his baggy uniform whipping in the wind.
Waving him aboard, Wilson turned and disappeared inside die belly of the huge bird. Grabbing his pack and clutching his bush hat in his right hand, Hathcock trotted up the ramp after him.
Wilson tried to talk to Hathcock, but the engines’ loud roar drowned out his attempts, and he sat silent for the rest of die trip.
“Gunny, what’s going on?” Hathcock asked, as die two Marines walked from die landing zone at Hill 55.
“Sergeant Hathcock, you’re under arrest. That’s all I can tell you. The captain came back from Colonel Poggemeyer’s mad as hell.”
The gunnery sergeant’s words knotted Hathcock’s stomach. “What have I done?” he thought. “Did I lull somebody I shouldn’t have?” He thought of the Frenchman. Perhaps die captain. Burke, and he had fallen into a well-planned scheme of murder, where they were left holding die bag.
The two Marines walked toward finger four where their captain stood behind a sandbag wall, scanning die fields and hills below.
Hathcock remembered presenting himself to his battalion commander for nonjudicial punishment seven years before in Hawaii. In that case, he lost a stripe for slugging a lieutenant in a bar. They were both drunk, and the officer started it. But striking an officer is striking an officer—drunk or sober. Hathcock clearly understood why he got busted then.
But diis. What had he done now?
“Sir. Sergeant Hathcock reporting as ordered, sir!” Hathcock barked, as he stood at rigid attention before the captain.
Land eyed his sergeant and felt a sharp pain—Hathcock looked worse than he had imagined. The 24-year old Marine almost looked like an old man, gaunt and hollow. He had shrunk so much that his camouflage uniform bagged off his shoulders and hips. His boots were scuffed white, and his dark red eyes had sunk deep in their sockets.
“God damn you, Hathcock!” Land said, “What am I going to do with you?”
“Sir. I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong. I have done my best to support that operation, and they are real sold on snipers now.”
“I left you down there with thirty-two kills to your name, and you come home with what? Sixty-two or sixty-three confirmed! That’s thirty more on your own. You did one hell of a job. But you did something stupid.”
“Sir?”
“You forgot one of die most important aspects of leadership that I know. You totally neglected the welfare of your men.”
“I sent those men home after two weeks. Sir. I went out on patrol for diem when they looked too tired to work. I didn’t neglect diem. Sir.”
“You neglected one.”
After a silent pause, Hathcock concluded, “Me?”
“That’s right—you, Hathcock, you don’t know when to quit. You put yourself into situations that are impossible. You hang your life out on die ragged edge and gamble against all the odds. You overload your ass and men won’t stop. What the hell you weigh now?”
“Sir, about a hundred forty-five or fifty.”
“Maybe when I left you there. I don’t think you could tip the scales at more than a hundred twenty-five pounds now. You’re out there living on a can of peanut butter and a handful of John Wayne crackers.”
Hathcock half smiled, “Sir, it keeps the buzzards off my back.”
“Shit yeah! for a day or two, but not for a month. The buzzards wouldn’t waste their time with you now!”
Land folded his arms and looked up and down at his sergeant, who remained at attention, and then the captain shook his head. “Hathcock, 1 put you under arrest because that was the only way 1 could be sure to get you back here. You look like hell. You probably haven’t slept more than a couple of hours a night in the past month. You’ve lost so much weight that your clothes are falling off you. How can you do that to yourself?
“If I hadn’t pulled you out, how long would it have taken before you fucked up and let Charlie kill you? Hathcock, I’ll be damned if I’m gonna write Jo a letter, telling how you got yourself killed!”
Hathcock’s face betrayed his disappointment. He hadn’t realized that the chances he took would wound the captain as deeply as he now realized they had, and he spoke up strongly: “I’m as sorry as I can be, Sir, and I feel awful that I destroyed your confidence in me. I was trying to do the best job I could, and I just totally forgot about myself. I ain’t making any excuses. I’ll take whatever punishment you order, but I want you to know I’m sorry.”
“Sergeant Hathcock,” the captain said, with official sternness, “You are restricted until further orders. You may go only to the head, the mess hall, and to chapel services. You step outside this wire, and I’ll have a stripe. That clear?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“That starts now! Get to the hooch. Square away your gear. And get some sleep!”
“Aye, aye, Sir.” Hathcock said, taking a rearward step with his left foot, executing a drill-perfect about-face, and walking briskly toward his quarters.
Land reached into his back pocket, pulled out a dirty black wallet, and withdrew five dollars.
“Gunny Wilson, I want you to go buy a case of beer and take it to Sergeant Hathcock. When he runs out of that, come see me. If I don’t keep him drunk and sleeping, he’ll manage to worm his way out on the next operation—I know the way he maneuvers. His body has to get some rest.”