HATHCOCK WIPED SWEAT from his face as he walked from the 7th Marines command post, now on his way to the more familiar finger four where the sniper platoon’s hooch still stood. He had spent the morning waiting to see the sergeant major and the commanding officer. When he finally did, he’d been given a typical welcome aboard filled with the standard rhetoric told to all new officers and staff NCOs and culminating with the cliché, “My door is always open. I’m glad to have you aboard.” The meeting confirmed Hathcock as the new sniper platoon leader and gave him the license to walk down the hill and begin assuming responsibilities.
It seemed strange to Carlos that the outgoing platoon sergeant had not come to meet him. As he walked down the trail to the low hooch and the bunkers on finger four, he began looking for signs of life-anyone who might tell him where he could find the platoon sergeant.
“Anybody here?” he shouted as he walked close to the old canvas-covered hooch—the same hooch that he helped build two and a half years ago.
“In here!” a voice shouted back.
The place looked dirty and worn now, just like much of the country. Several tears in the canvas hung loosely open and the roof revealed hundreds of small holes, made by years of harassing small-arms fire. As Carlos stepped near the door, he lifted the torn screen with his hand and wondered why no one had tacked it down again. The unpainted door frame was now dark from weather. Black streaks stained the wood from the rusting nails that held the door together—the same nails that Hathcock and Burke had driven in in the fall of 1966.
The door screeched as Hathcock pulled it open on its rusty hinges and stepped inside. The room was filthy. It smelled like a combination of mildew, body odor, and stale beer. Odd gear leaned against the walls and littered the floor. Boxes and bins overflowed with empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and trash from C-rations.
“Where’s the platoon sergeant?” Hathcock asked, standing in the open doorway.
“I’m him. What ya need?” the sergeant said, lying on a cot at the rear of the hooch. He slurped a beer and gave a healthy belch. The Marine wore a dirty green T-shirt and cutoff trousers. His jungle boots lay topsy-turvy on the dirty floor, among the cans and men’s magazines.
“I’m your replacement.”
The sergeant leaned on one elbow. “Welcome to the war.”
“You guys just get back from the bush?” Hathcock asked.
“Naw,” the sergeant said, gulping more beer. “They don’t have any idea of how to use snipers. We just burn the shitters, fill out the mess-duty quotas, and stand perimeter security.”
“Where are all your snipers?”
“Out, I guess.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know,” the sergeant said, and opened up a Playboy.
“How many men you have?” Hathcock said. He could feel the muscles in his neck tensing. “You do know bow many men you have, don’t you?”
“About twenty or so, I think.”
“How many rifles you have?”
The sergeant shook his shaggy head. “Hell, I don’t know. Ask the troops when you see ’em.”
“How many scopes you got? How many M-49s you got? Don’t you know anything?”
“Yeah,” the Marine said spitefully, looking at Hathcock. “You’re pissin’ me off, hassling me about this shit. Where you comin’ from anyway? We’re doing just fine. Nobody bugs us and we don’t bug nobody. We pull our details, do our time, and go back to the World… alive.”
“I remember you,” Hathcock said. “You were here in ’67. I taught you myself.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I got twenty-one confirmed kills and that’s plenty.”
“In two years you got twenty-one kills. In six months I got eighty confirmed. In two years you ought to have a hundred. You must have just quit as soon as you got this platoon. You found a good deal, hiding out here, drinking beer, and collecting tax-free pay.
“Well, I don’t need you. You go on up to Gunny Sommers and tell him I kicked your butt out of this platoon. Maybe he can find some use for you for the next couple of weeks.”
Hathcock took a deep breath and tried to control the anger in his voice. “I’m going out to find my platoon. You be packed out of here when I get back. You got any problems with that, go talk to Sergeant Major Puckett.”
Slamming the door shut, Hathcock stormed toward the bunker at the base of the sniper encampment. A suntanned Marine was lying across a long row of sandbags wearing nothing except a pair of utility trousers with the legs cut off at the lower seam of the pockets. He wore sunglasses and was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Around his neck dangled a German iron cross and a metal peace symbol.
“You a Marine?” Hathcock asked walking up to the man.
“Yeah.”
“You a sniper?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is the rest of your platoon?”
“Here and there.”
“Can you find them?”
“Sure. No problem. Who wants to know?”
“I do,” Hathcock said, narrowing his eyes. “I want you to have them all back here by sixteen hundred today. Will that be a problem?”
“Naw. Most of the guys are goofing off or on work details around the hill. I can get them here in an hour.”
“That’s even better. You do that.”
“You never told me who you are.”
“Staff Sergeant Hathcock. Carlos Hathcock. Your new platoon sergeant.”
The Marine stood and smiled. “You mean we finally got another platoon sergeant?”
Hathcock nodded.
“We ain’t all shit birds, Staff Sergeant Hathcock. You hang tight, I’ll round up the platoon.”
As the Marine jogged up the hill, Hathcock yelled to him, ’Tell them to bring all their sniper gear when they come to my muster.”
The Marine waved his hand, acknowledging the last order, and continued jogging in his scuffed white jungle boots.
Hathcock sat down on the sandbags and waited for his platoon.
Less than twenty minutes passed, and one after another, his snipers began to appear. They stood together near the old hard-back tent and kept their distance from the new staff sergeant who wore a small white feather in his bush hat and sat staring quietly at the ground between his feet as if he were by himself. He was no stranger to them. They had heard of Hathcock during training sessions at both Da Nang’s and Camp Pendleton’s two-week sniper schools. He was one of several Marines that their instructors had cited as frightening, superhuman examples of what they should be striving to attain for themselves. Now the man with the white feather was here and owned them body and soul. Without saying a word, Hathcock had already gained their undivided attention.
Hathcock looked at his watch as he heard the suntanned Marine in the cut-offs shout to him, “Staff Sergeant Hathcock, we’re all here-twenty-two snipers, including you.”
The vision that met Hathcock’s eyes would remain vivid the rest of his life. He had to grind his teeth to keep from laughing. His men stood before him dressed in the widest array of color and costume that he had ever seen. Most of the Marines wore berets, some brown, some black, some red, and others green. One Marine wore a bush hat but had it covered with such an array of pins and buttons that he looked more like a fly fisherman or conventioneer. Many of the men wore wire-framed sunglasses with lenses that ranged in colors from blue to dark green and yellow to pink and cherry red. Their dog-tag chains supported a wide assortment of hardware from beer openers and gold rings to religious medals and protest symbols. Flowers adorned several berets while feathers and beads dressed others.
None of the men wore shirts, all wore cutoff trousers. Their boots showed no sign of ever being polished, and they all needed hair cuts.
“Take off all those ridiculous hats and throw them in a pile right here,” Hathcock said, pointing to the ground at his feet. He looked at the tan Marine and said, “You see that generator up the hill?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You see that gasoline can set out there by it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring it to me.”
The Marine charged up the hill, grabbed the can, and returned, huffing out of breath.
Hathcock shook the little bit of fuel that was left in the bottom of the can on the pile of berets. He tossed the can back to the tan Marine and then removed his Zippo cigarette lighter from his pocket. He flicked it open and set the berets ablaze.
“The only reason that I don’t make you strip off those cutoffs is 1 know you ain’t wearing any skivvy snorts, and I don’t want you running around here bareassed naked. But when we hold muster from now on, you will be dressed in a complete utility uniform. I want you looking like Marines, not clowns.
“From now on you’ll look and act like snipers. You’re no better than any other line troopers so we don’t dress any different. But, because you are snipers, those line troopers expect more out of you. They’ve been told that snipers are disciplined and tough, that they’re elite troops. It took a lot of good Marines to develop that respect, and I am not going to let you foul it up.
“The only hardware you’ll wear around your necks will be your dog tags, taped together so they don’t rattle. If you wear glasses, they’ll be the ones issued to you or ones that I personally approve. Get rid of the rest of that garbage. Any questions so far?” One Marine raised his hand and Hathcock pointed to him, “Yes?”
“Staff Sergeant Hathcock. When we got here, we zeroed our rifles for five hundred yards, but in the past three months, I don’t think we got more than a dozen kills between all of us. Now, we haven’t been able to go on patrol all that much because of all the shit details we’ve been pulling, but when we do go, it seems that we miss more often than we hit.”
“Good point,” Hathcock said. “Right now, I want to get a roster. Tonight I will team you up in pairs. Tomorrow we are going out here and zero all the rifles for seven hundred yards. We will start from scratch. You will be looking like snipers, and I will have you shooting like snipers. Does mat answer your question?”
“Yes, Sir.”
The flame of the burning berets died in the smoldering ashes, and Hathcock tapped them with the toe of his new jungle boot.
“When we start fresh tomorrow, I want a fresh area too. The rest of the afternoon, I want you to field day this whole finger. I want all the trash raked out of the hooches and bunkers. I want all the porno pictures off the walls and the porno magazines get put in your footlockers or I will make a fire out of them too.”
While Hathcock talked to his new platoon, the sergeant who had lain on the cot staggered up the hill beneath the weight of his seabag. Hathcock looked at the departing Marine and felt a flash of sorrow for him. He remembered him as a good Marine and a good sniper, and he wondered what had happened to him.
“One last thing. The cot in the sniper hooch is for the duty. We will man mis post twenty-four hours a day, if possible. That sniper hooch is our headquarters, not a lounge or private room. If you have been living in there, you will move out and live in the proper hooches according to your rank. That clear?”
“Now, turn to and get this area squared away.”
As the Marines began cleaning up and hauling away the garbage, Hathcock made a list of needed repair materials. He planned to make a stop at me supply tent tomorrow.
The sun set and the 7th Marines sniper platoon continued working, restacking sandbags, tacking down loose screens, and hauling away a year’s worth of garbage. Hathcock walked toward his hooch, where David Sommers sat on a chair made of pipe and split bamboo.
“I wasn’t sure how you would take that bunch,” Sommers said as Hathcock stepped up on the small plywood porch in front of the staff NCO hooch. “I guess you started out on the right foot with them, I’ve never seen them work so hard.”
“Gotta start by giving them some pride,” Hathcock said, sitting across from Sommers. “I never saw the likes of that bunch. I’ve seen hippies that looked better. What on earth is going on, Gunny?”
“Drugs. Marijuana. Heroine. You name it. It’s all happening here. Lot of guys on it. We’ve been on them pretty heavy, but I hear of entire Army units that have refused to go on patrol because of the problems with drugs and booze.”
“You think my platoon…”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t start worrying about that right now. You start fresh with them. My point is to be aware that the stuff is real popular among the troops. Just file it away and keep to your plan. Those troops you have are real good men, they just needed some leadership.”
“I got that right off,” Hathcock answered. “I just solved a big part of that problem.”
Sommers smiled. “Yeah. I sent that sergeant over to the police tent. He’ll finish out his last two weeks in-country passing out toilet paper and getting the shiners burned.”
“That was a good sniper when I had him back in ’67. What happened?”
“He stayed here too long. He’s tired, I guess.”
“No. I don’t buy that. He had twenty-one confirmed kills and quit. When he quit, he quit altogether.”
“Too bad,” Sommers said. “He’s had a shit-bird reputation since I’ve been here.”
Hathcock looked at me gunnery sergeant curiously, “In the conversation I had with my snipers, one Marine mentioned that they haven’t had the opportunity to go on operations, that they’ve been pulling shit detail instead.”
Sommers nodded. “That platoon has never produced anything that would give anyone an idea of what they do, other than wander around with deer rifles and pick off stragglers. The sergeant major uses them for whatever has to be done on die hill because they don’t seem to serve any other useful purpose. You’ll have your hands full changing all of that.”
“Gunny, I’m informing you officially that my men are in training tomorrow. That has priority over shit detail. They’ll be zeroing their rifles and getting ready to go on patrol.”
“I’m all for that. But there’re a lot of folks who’ll bitch because somebody has to burn the shitters. They won’t like filling those quotas that your Marines filled.”
“It’s their quotas that my men were filling. It’s time to balance the books!”
“Staff Sergeant Hathcock, die sergeant major is going to raise hell. It’s nothing new for me. Like I said, I lead the sergeant major’s hit-parade. I have a hunch that you and I will be competing for that number one spot after this. It’s your choice right now. Once you make it, the sergeant major will be on you just like he’s on me.”
“There’s no choice to be made, Gunny. My snipers come ahead of my own pleasure. I’ve got a hunch mat fella I just relieved might have tried to get along and keep everybody happy. He was a good Marine when I first knew him. But you can only compromise so far. I think he chose to keep folks on the hill happy, and his Marines went to hell in a handbasket.”
Hathcock stood, “I’ve gotta go inspect my area and cut the troops loose. You eat chow yet?”
“No. I’ll wait for you to get back. We’ll go together.”
“Sounds good,” Hathcock said smiling.
Before the sun revealed any light to the black sky the following morning, Hathcock sat behind a field desk in the sniper platoon hooch. He glanced down a roster of names and from it paired a senior-ranked Marine with one of a junior grade on each of ten teams he organized. He took the odd man, a corporal from London, Ohio, named John Perry. He would rotate these combinations of men and equipment until each team satisfied him. Hathcock compared it to arranging marriages, since much of a team’s success depended on the compatibility of the two partners.
The Vietnamese summer, which extends throughout the major portion of the year, drying the monsoon season’s mud brick-hard in its blistering heat, had set in long before Carles arrived in-country during the final days of May 1969. Hot dust now covered this crackling world, its shades of green stripped treeless-brown by the bullets and napalm from a decade of fighting.
As Hathcock sat sweltering in the darkness before another sandpaper day in this dusty, hot land, the afternoon heat of South Carolina June broiled the left arm and face of Staff Sergeant Ronald H. McAbee. With his bare arm propped out the window, he drove his car through the sunny countryside near the house where his wife waited for him to arrive from Texas. He had left San Antonio the day before and slept in a roadside park in Alabama.
McAbee had spent two weeks at San Antonio with the Marine Corps Rifle Team> competing in the Texas State and NRA Regional rifle matches. Like his friend Carlos Hathcock, Ron McAbee departed from Texas with orders for Vietnam. During his tour at Quantico, he and Hathcock had become close friends-like brothers, he would tell anyone who asked.
Ron McAbee first met Hathcock at Camp Lejeune at the end of the Marine Corps rifle and pistol matches in the spring of 1967. McAbee had just finished shooting his .45 caliber “hard ball” pistol in the final day of individual competition when he met Hathcock in the red brick barracks at the rifle range near coastal North Carolina’s Sneed’s Ferry and Topsail Island. That night they crossed the tall bridge mat leads to the beach community and drank Jim Beam bourbon whiskey and water at a tavern there. McAbee was allergic to beer.
McAbee knew that Hathcock was in I Corps, but he did not know where. He guessed his friend would probably be at the 1st Marine Division’s Scout/Sniper School, now at Da Nang.
In fact, when Carlos arrived in Vietnam, he had been destined to teach at the sniper school. He had called the 1st Marine Division’s operations officer from the Da Nang airport when he arrived in-country. That colonel sent a jeep and driver for this very special Marine. He even offered him the position of senior instructor at the school, but Carlos wanted action,not classes. He told the colonel that he could do the 1st Marine Division more good with a platoon of his own.
Now, as dawn boiled above the South China Sea, Hathcock stood in the doorway of his sniper hooch waiting for his first muster. The fresh start for 7th Marines’ snipers.
Already, before others in the encampment above them had stirred, most of the sniper platoon sat below the sandbag wall of their command bunker, talking. This morning they wore a variety of uniforms from pickle colored sateen—the standard stateside Marine Corps issue—to jungle camouflage uniforms with slanted patch pockets. Others wore uniforms cut from the same design as the camouflage but in a solid green color like the sateen utilities. The effort was obvious and Hathcock accepted that for now.
Hathcock shouted, “Corporal Perry!” and a Marine leaped to his feet and snapped to attention in front of the hooch.
“Yes, Staff Sergeant Hathcock.”
“Supply have trouble keeping you people in uniforms?”
“Yes. We get one set of utilities at a time. Several of the troops didn’t have any, so they borrowed extras that some guys managed to rat hole, or they wore regular sateens. They’re all Marine Corps issue, though.”
“I can see that. We all need to be dressed alike, or at least close. I prefer cammies. Where’s the nearest supply point?”
“On the hill. But they don’t have any. If you want real utilities, you have to go down to the Force Service Regiment at Da Nang. But you gotta have paperwork from Division to get anything from them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. By the way, you’ll be my shooting partner, unless you work out better with someone else.”
“That’s fine, Staff Sergeant Hathcock.”
Hathcock spent the next hour reading the initial pairings of teams and answering questions about how flexible these partnerships would be. He explained that each man could have a combination of partners, no one would be teamed with any one man. But all partnerships must be close. Both members of the team must understand and be able to almost read his partner’s mind. This would take time, Hathcock told them.
By ten o’clock that morning, the twenty-two snipers were behind their rifles, outside the wire, shooting at targets seven hundred yards away, zeroing their sights for that distance.
Meanwhile, back at the sniper hooch, the outgoing platoon sergeant flopped on the duty cot. He had gone to see Sergeant Major Puckett, just as Carlos had told him to do if he had a problem with being kicked out of the platoon. The sergeant major took exception to the quick decision by this newly reported staff sergeant and told the sergeant to return to the sniper platoon and work there until he left Vietnam in less than two weeks.
The sergeant major rang the sniper command post telephone, but no one answered. He sent a runner down with the newly returned sergeant, but that man came back with an empty shrug for a response. Finally, at ten o’clock, when the sergeant major received word from the operations office that the sniper platoon was outside the wire, sighting in their weapons, he shouted. “Get me Gunny Sommers!”
Sergeant Major Puckett also heard complaints from the camp commandant—a lieutenant in charge of the order and cleanliness of the regimental area. Half of his detail destined to collect the cans from each of the field toilets and bum them on the downwind side of the hill, had not reported for duty this morning.
At eleven o’clock, a jeep roared to a halt at the small firing range that Hathcock had helped Captain Land construct in 1966. David Sommers casually asked Hathcock, “You ready?” He did not have to say more, Hathcock already knew the trouble.
“Perry, take charge of the platoon and take them back through the wire at fifteen hundred this afternoon, if I’m not back. Spend the rest of the day working in pairs, practicing stalking and movement. Don’t get all bunched up and keep your security out.”
When the jeep halted at the sergeant major’s tent five minutes later, Sergeant Major Puckett stood outside with his arms folded, waiting.
Hathcock stepped up to the sergeant major and smiled. “What can 1 do for you, Sergeant Major?”
“Be there when I call you, Staff Sergeant.”
“I got my platoon up early this morning, getting them ready for operations. We’ve got a whole lot of work to get done. I’ve got this here list of supplies I need, and I gotta get authorization to go down to Da Nang to get cammies for my snipers. Sure could use your horsepower. Could you help us?”
“When you leave your hooch, I want you to carry a radio. I had several things happen this morning, and I needed to talk to you.”
“I’ll be glad to carry a radio. You get me one and I’ll carry it. In fact, I could use three or four.”
“See the comm chief, he’ll sign them out to you. Second thing. Where were your men who had police detail this morning?”
“I wasn’t aware of anyone who had police detail, Sergeant Major. Which Marine was he?”
“About a dozen men in your platoon!”
“I only have twenty-one men. That’s more than half my platoon. That’s a heavy quota. Do all the other units give up sixty percent of their Marines to bum shiners?”
“Don’t get smart with me, Staff Sergeant. We have priorities, and your men have not been committed to any action, therefore, they will pull police duty or whatever else that is necessary around this hill. They aren’t paid for doing nothing.”
“I beg your pardon, Sergeant Major. My men have been working all morning. They will be working long after everyone else has kicked back for the night too. We have a lot of lost ground and training to get caught up on so that we can get back into action. We will pull our fair share of duty. Every man, including myself. With all due respect—”
“Can it, Hathcock! I’ll hit the other units for quotas. You will pull your fair share, too. If I find one of your men lazing around the hill, I’ll have your hide for it. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hathcock stood at attention and, with all the sincerity he could muster, said, “Sergeant Major, I’m on your side. In fact, I would be honored if you would consider joining us. I’ll set aside for you one of the best rifles. I just need your help. I need supplies. My men need working uniforms. You help me get this and I’ll give you a sniper platoon that 7th Marines can brag about.”
Puckett was a man who had always done what he thought was best for his soldiers, and now, in spite of himself, he had to be impressed. “I’ll do what I can for you, if you’re serious,” he said sternly. “Don’t you embarrass me.”
Hathcock reached inside the large cargo pocket on the leg of his camouflage trousers and pulled out a list that he had typed early that morning in the dim light uf a small tamp. “Here’s a copy of my shopping list. I sure appreciate the help.” He walked back to the jeep where David Sommers waited and left with him.
All the way down the hill, the two men laughed. “Hell, Hathcock, he’ll probably deliver the stuff himself. You sure stuck your chin out, inviting him to become a sniper. The sergeant major’s just gunji enough to do that.”
“Good! If he’s one of us, then he can’t be against us.”
“Yeah. But he’ll still be a pain in the ass. You know, he’s got to take care of everybody else too.”
“I hope he does,” Hathcock said, jumping out of the jeep.
That evening, when Hathcock walked into the sniper hooch, he found the old platoon sergeant reclining on the duty rack, wearing his dirty jungle boots and reading a paperback western.
“Sergeant Major send you back here?”
“Yeah,” the sergeant said without taking his eyes from the book.
“You think you can generate enough energy to answer this phone, if it rings?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“For the next two weeks, you’re phone watch.”
The sergeant glanced at Hathcock and then turned his eyes back to the book.
Hathcock slammed the door as he left and grumbled all the way to the staff hooch where he found Sommers sitting outside, drinking a Coca-Cola.
“Two weeks with that bum! I don’t know how I’ll do it. I can’t stand two minutes with him!”
“Cool off, Hathcock. Look at it this way. The sergeant major will have someone to talk to when he calls. Who knows, maybe he’ll get tired of seeing him lie back there and put him to work.”
“Burning shitters? No sergeant’s gonna burn shifters. Not even him. But now that I think about it, he may give me the space I need to get these snipers trained and put to work.”
Sommers smiled and raised his soda can in a toasting salute. “See, even that dark cloud has its silver lining.”
Mid-June heat cooked brown what little green color existed in the elephant grass in the valley below Hill 55. The summer sun sent the mirage boiling in heavy waves above the many empty rice fields that had flourished with tall stands of grain only a year before. Beyond the fields, near the broken trunks of hundreds of denuded trees that prickled the hillside with their shattered, gray skeletons, Carlos Hathcock and three of his snipers trudged in the shimmering heat, carefully following a plan set out by the patrol leader—a corporal who Hathcock was evaluating.
“You seem pretty familiar with this plan,” Hathcock said in a low voice to the corporal as they stopped to rest in the cover of several of the downed logs. “You walk this ground very often?”
“Yes. I’ve done it about three times this week, in fact.”
“You took this route three times this week?”
“Sure. I’ve gotten kills every time too. I thought that today, with four of us, we would hit the jack-pot.”
“Or Charlie will hit the jack-pot. You underestimate your opponent, Corporal. That’s deadly. Do you think they’re going to let you walk out here three times a week and not leave you a little present?”
The corporal was silent.
“Where were we headed next?”
“Down this slope and through that cane.”
“That the same route you took the last time you crossed here?”
“Yes. It’s a long way from where we’re going to set up. It’s the quickest way through here.”
“You think we ought to go through there?”
“No,” the corporal said, “We’ll have to go around and follow the contour of the hill, instead. It’ll take about forty-five minutes longer.”
“Right,” Hathcock said. “Now let’s walk down to that cane and see what that trail has to offer.”
Cautiously, the four Marines crawled over a high, dirt dike below which a tall stand of cane grew green and straw brown. Sitting on his heels Hathcock searched for trip wires. A tense smile spread across his face.
“You see it?” he asked.
“No. Where?” the corporal asked.
“About knee high, all along the edge of the cane. See it?”
The corporal looked closely, and as the breeze rustled the cane back and forth, his eye caught in a flash of sunlight, the fine, black wire stretched across a twenty-five-foot expanse of cane.
Hathcock was watching his expression closely. “All right, good,” he said. “Now look on the backsides of these thick stalks. See ’em?”
The corporal eyed each tall shaft of cane from its roots to its leafy, thin top. Suddenly he snapped his head toward Hathcock, his eyes open wide. “Yes!”
Hathcock said in a low voice, “I see at least four grenades tied in right here. That daisy chain stretches across the entire front of this field. Anybody walking through would be blown to pieces against this dike. I wouldn’t no more go through there now than I would tap-dance in a mine field.”
Unhooking a hand grenade from his belt, Hathcock looked at his men and said, “You men get on up over that dike. I’m gonna roll this down in the field and see if I can’t set off Charlie’s trap.”
The three Marines scrambled up the bank and over the top as Hathcock worked loose the pin with his left hand. He crawled halfway up the embankment and then tossed down the small bomb filled with heavy explosive.
Suddenly, a portion of ground gave way beneath Hathcock’s boots. His feet slipped as he scrambled at the top of the high bank, and, as he slid, he yelled. His Marines responded with six hands that grabbed hold of his shirt and pack and jerked him so forcefully that in a second he was airborne. His hundred fifty-pound body flew over the top just as the cane field exploded, sending thousands of deadly steel shards into the dirt bank where he had struggled. The four Marines were showered with leaves and dirt and fragments of cane stalk.
Pale as oatmeal, Carlos looked at the three wide-eyed Marines beside him. “That wasn’t too smart either. Thanks.”
He looked down at his hands shaking from the adrenaline his body had poured out. “The next time you do something like that get behind cover before you throw the grenade.”
The corporal looked at Hathcock and said, “1 started to say something, but I thought that was the way you did things. A little more gutsy than the rest of us.”
“A little more stupid,” Hathcock said with a laugh. He was glad to be alive. He stood, dusted off his trousers and took his three snipers on to the point. They killed three Viet Cong that day.
June was a busy month for Hathcock; he sent three sniper teams to work with 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, commanded by Lt. Col. John Aloysius Dowd, who welcomed the opportunity to employ this added dimension of firepower. Hathcock felt honored because Dowd’s battalion saw the most action and led the regiment in enemy killed.
During April his battalion killed one hundred sixty North Vietnamese Army troops, fifty-one Viet Cong, and took one prisoner. The second and third battalions killed fifty-eight and eighty-five of the enemy respectively in the same period. In May, Dowd’s Marines tallied forty-four NVA killed in action, forty-one Viet Cong, and took two prisoners, while the second battalion killed none and the third killed thirty NVA.
The first battalion seemed to be where the action always occurred, and Hathcock, who had a high opinion of Dowd, was delighted.
While the six snipers operated with the first battalion, Hathcock sent eight others to the division’s sniper school at Da Nang. Next month he planned to send four more, and two others after that. By mid-August, he calculated, his platoon would be 99 percent operational.
He faced another problem, however, that would not be so easily solved-rifles. When he reported to Vietnam, he anticipated seeing nothing but the M-40 rifle in use. He saw the first arrivals of the new sniper weapon in January 1967, therefore, it was not unreasonable to expect this weapon-a Model 700 Remington 7.62mm rifle with a 10-power light-gathering, range-finding scope-to be the common denominator among snipers. But what he found when he arrived left him bitterly disappointed. There were vintage World War n era Model 70 Winchesters and M-1D sniper rifles, as well as a couple of M-40X rifles—the test model of the M-40.
The sniper arsenal offered him nothing more up-to-date than the weapons he had left behind in 1967, and in fact, he believed he was handling some of the same rifles he’d fired then. Only now they were a little worse for wear.
“Be nice to have an armorer assigned to the platoon,” Hathcock told David Sommers one hot June evening as the two Marines sat on the front porch in bamboo-bottomed chairs.
“You talk to the sergeant major about it?”
“I mentioned it, but he told me that he would be glad to ask for one if I knew where one could be found. I’m out of answers. He did tell me that an assistant platoon sergeant will be coming from division soon.”
“That’s good news.”
“Good or bad. You never know. Kind of like a blind date—you expect the worst and hope for the best. My luck, it’ll be an ugly, old, toothless, fat girl.”
A week later Hathcock was scratching out notes with his black ballpoint pen on a yellow, legal-size pad. The sweat ran down his shiftless back and soaked into his trousers.
Suddenly the door burst open and two loud feet stomped across the sniper hooch’s plywood floor. Hathcock raised his head as he heard the thud of a hundred pounds of personal gear, bound inside a long, green seabag, hit the floor behind him. A familiar voice boomed, “The name’s McAbee—Staff Sergeant McAbee. Just call me Mack!”
“Mack!” Hathcock said, twisting around on his stool. “You old horse thief. What in the world are you doing here?”
“Carlos! You the platoon sergeant?”
“Yeah!”
“Hell! I’m your platoon armorer.”
To have as his assistant a man who was not only his best friend, but one of the very best high-power rifle armorers in the Marine Corps was a good deal beyond his wildest dreams.
“Look out Charlie!” Hathcock said, laughing and embracing his friend.
“The first project on the agenda is to overhaul all these old sticks we’ve been shootin’ with. You’re gonna have your work cut out with them. They’re in pretty humble shape.
“What this platoon needs is a set of rifles to choose from like a pro golfer picks clubs—the right one for the right job. Custom-fined for each man. If you can get our weapons tuned up like that, we’ll be the hardest thing to hit this country yet.”
“Carlos, you get the parts and machinery and I’ll do the rest.”
“Soon as you get settled, you’re gonna get a truck from 11th Motor T and head down to 1st Force Service Regiment at Da Nang and use their shop. I’ll get the sergeant major to grease the skids.”
It took three trips to Da Nang before McAbee completed the major work on the rifles. From then on, he passed time at a bench he built in the sniper hooch, fine-tuning each weapon. It was a job that had no end, and he knew it. But with the new glass* jobs and refitted and matched receivers and barrels, suddenly the sniper platoon’s kills rose to the level mat rivaled battalions.
July ended with the 7th Marines sniper platoon confirming seventy-two kills. Hathcock felt certain it was a record.
For Hathcock and his snipers, McAbee’s arrival had turned their lives sweet. His fine gunsmithing coupled with the keen training and leadership that Hathcock provided resulted in a platoon that became one of the best in Vietnam. For their outstanding achievement the platoon received a Presidential Unit Citation, one of the few platoons to ever receive such recognition.
Sergeant Major Puckett had a different view of things. Out of sight meant trouble to him. He felt that Hathcock or his second in command, McAbee, should be available—and accountable—at any given moment. It was a sound command-and-control philosophy shared by most Marines, and Puckett was undoubtedly right in feeling that the sniper sergeant had to take the responsibility of command as seriously as he took the business of getting out in the field and zapping “Charlie.”
Hathcock had a hard time sitting in his hooch and pushing papers, remaining by his radio and being always available for the sergeant major’s beck and call. Once Hathcock delegated assignments, he and McAbee grabbed their gear and went to the field too. As Hathcock saw it, the sergeant major could always reach him by radio. Most often he would be with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines.
He had built a bond with that company and its commander, a captain named Hoffman who had reached the enlisted rank of gunnery sergeant and received a battlefield commission. After the war the Marine Corps withdrew his temporary commission and made him a gunny once again. But because this captain “spoke the enlisted man’s language,” and was a “straight arrow,” Hathcock trusted him completely.
While Sergeant Major Puckett fumed because he could not reach anyone at the sniper hooch, Hathcock and several of his snipers spent the first ten days of July working the bush along Western Route 4, between the hamlets of Hoi An and Thuong Due, supporting Lieutenant Colonel Dowd and his 1st Battalion Marines.
During that brief period, they cleared the area of all enemy positions, and on July 10 escorted the first convoy to successfully pass along this route in more than four years.
July 10 found Hathcock and McAbee peering from behind tall shafts of dry elephant grass, searching a broad clearing. They had moved away from Route 4, looking for signs of enemy movement. McAbee carried the radio and held the handset next to his ear as Hathcock scoured the landscape with his twenty-power M-49 spotting scope.
“Mack, I don’t see a thing moving out there. But there is
this tittle hump six hundred yards out there that I want to stay and watch just a bit. It strikes me a little curious—somehow it just don’t fit.”
The grassy hump rose from the ground fifty yards from a cluster of trees and much taller grass. Hathcock thought it a likely spot for an enemy patrol to break out. It was the most narrow point in the clearing and seemed to be the most likely place for anyone to cross.
“Perry got a kill,” McAbee whispered to Hathcock as the two men lay cooking in the afternoon sun. Hathcock glanced at his watch and noted the time—3:30 P.M.
“How long ago?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
“I never heard a thing.”
“Yeah, he stayed with Charlie Company when they moved on down by that river. He set up mere on a bluff, overlooking that big bend in the river. Perry said he no more than settled in and this Viet Cong laid down his rifle, shucked off his clothes, and started taking a bath right there. One shot put an end to his bath.”
“Where’s Perry now?”
“He had just moved out when he came up on the net. He’s got a patrol covering him, so he’s moving out in the direction that the VC he killed came from.”
“Look!” Hathcock whispered urgently.
McAbee put his eye to the spotting scope and saw a head rising out of the hump.
“Told you that looked funny.”
Hathcock snuggled behind his rifle and laid his cheek against the old Winchester’s humped stock. He found his proper eye-relief behind the Lyman 8-power scope that he had selected for this particular mission. Mack had come across with the fine-tuned rifles and now Hathcock did select them like a golfer selects clubs. For this mission, he chose a Model 70 Winchester, shooting a 180 grain, .30-06 bullet, and the Lyman scope for what he called medium range shooting—three hundred to seven hundred yards.
McAbee could hear Hathcock’s slow and steady breathing stop, followed by the sudden explosion from the muzzle of the Winchester. The Viet Cong guerrilla, who had begun climbing out of the hole, suddenly fell on his face. Hathcock waited, staring through his scope. He waited for anyone else who might have been in the hole with the man.
“Look to the left,” McAbee whispered.
A man wearing black shorts and a khaki shirt trotted across the open field. He held an AK-47 in his right hand, and when he knelt next to the dead comrade, Hathcock dropped him too. He waited again.
“Here comes another one,” McAbee whispered.
“Got him,” Carlos said, waiting for the Viet Cong soldier to reach that point where the earth rose slightly and the two men lay dead. The rifle cracked and the third man joined the other two, and Carlos waited.
“Somebody’s peeking out of the grass where those two hamburgers came from.”
“Got him.”
Hathcock followed the soldier, who carried an AK-47, as he cautiously edged from the grass and walked toward the hole. He knelt to one knee, and before he could stand, Hathcock killed him too.
“Four. Any more?” Hathcock asked quietly.
“Yes, looks like three others. They’re just sitting on the edge of the clearing trying to see what’s happening. With the wind blowing in our faces, I don’t think they can figure out where the shots are coming from. That must be their hole, and they’re trying to get in to take cover.”
“I figured they had some sort of tunnel there. That patrol was headed home.” Hathcock waited quietly for ten more minutes, and then the three soldiers rose to their feet and walked cautiously toward the hump and the four dead men.
“Three-round rapid fire,” Hathcock said, chuckling as he sighted through his scope. His first shot surprised the group, and the two still-living men turned to flee. A second shot dropped one, leaving him kicking on the pile of bodies. The last man pirouetted in confusion. He was still spinning when the bullet shattered his breast bone, exploding his heart and killing him as he whirled in his death dance.
“Damn! Carlos,” Mack whispered in wonder. “I’ve never heard of a sniper killing more than seven at a time!”
“I took on a company a long time ago. I don’t know how many I killed then. But there was this one sniper I knew back in ’66 who killed eleven at one time—all confirmed. I guess that’s the official record, if anybody really cares about things like that.”
“I guess you’re right. You start shooting for record, like it’s the Marine Corps Matches or something, and you could go off the deep end. Anybody who enjoys this has got to be crazy.”
“Yeah,” Hathcock said quietly. “Crazy.”
McAbee buried his face in the crook of his arm, and Hathcock watched the big man’s body tremble.
“You okay?”
McAbee raised his face from his arm and looked at Hathcock. “I’m ashamed. I was laughing.”
“Why?”
“That was the stupidest bunch of gooks I ever watched. They were about as dumb as I’ve ever seen, walking up there like that.” He started chuckling again and Hathcock smiled, seeing the humor in the midst of the ugliness.
“It is kind of funny, come to think about it.”
The two Marines moved further up Route 4 and hid on a hill, in a twisted mangle of shattered trees, devastated from heavy shelling and now covered with low, new plants that found sunlight in the absence of the trees’ umbrella. There they spent the day waiting for any unlucky enemy who tried to cross the narrow stream that flowed five hundred yards away from them.
“Except for yesterday, this whole operation has been slow as syrup,” McAbee said, squinting through the spotting scope, examining the tangled and fallen jungle for signs of a hidden enemy.
“Looky, looky, here comes Charlie,” Hathcock said.
A Viet Cong soldier wearing an open white shirt and black shorts walked along the edge of the stream, holding his rifle over his shoulders like a yoke. He walked with a staggered gait, and even at five hundred yards, the two snipers could hear him singing.
“He drunk?” McAbee asked.
“Don’t matter,” Hathcock said as he sighted through his scope. “He’s gonna be dead soon as I crank this round in him.”
The rifle recoiled and Ron McAbee expected to see the man drop, but after a jolt that sent the enemy soldier to his knees, he began to run. He ran straight for them, shooting blindly.
Hathcock shot again, and the man dropped but bounced up and again ran, shooting and yelling.
But before Hathcock could shove a third shot into his chamber, McAbee fired his M-14, dropping the man temporarily to his knees. This time the soldier dropped his rifle, but got up again and continued to run toward them, yelling.
Hathcock fired once more and McAbee fired twice, and the man kept coming, blood streaming from both his shoulders and his groin. McAbee could see large chunks of flesh torn away from his chest, yet he kept coming at them.
Taking one long, slow breath, Hathcock took careful aim, laying the center of his scope’s reticle on the man’s head. Hathcock watched his eyes, flaming and wide. His mouth gaped open, and his arms dangled broken in their joints. Ron McAbee stared through his spotting scope, not believing what he saw. He too saw the eyes—die eyes of a man crazed. Dead yet still alive in his final attack. His mouth wide with a scream that echoed more and more loudly through the once quiet valley.
When the soldier began to climb the slope, three hundred yards below the blind where the two snipers hid, Hathcock sent the seventh shot into the man’s face. He stopped at that moment and moved no more.
“He had to be on opium!” McAbee exclaimed. “No normal man could take that many shots.”
Hathcock sweated. It was as though he had encountered a devil and in the last moment won.
The next two months weren’t easy ones. Hathcock moved with his snipers to the Que Son hills as did the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. In August, Lieutenant Colonel Dowd was killed in battle, and Carlos, who had regarded him as both a friend and an ally, felt devastated at the loss. On the day of Dowd’s death, Hathcock took a bullet in the thigh when the helicopter he was traveling in was fired upon. But the sniper recovered quickly from that and was back in action before the month was out.