Inside the Crosshairs

by Col. Michael Lee Lanning

  Manuals, of course, detail optimums that are not always possible or practical in combat conditions. The cadres of the various sniper schools were aware of the manual’s selection criteria and used them, and their own experience, to evaluate volunteers at the reception centers. Field commanders, although unlikely to have access to the manuals or time to peruse them while fighting the war, understood the basic physical and mental criteria for snipers from their personal combat experiences.

  The school cadres and field commanders shared the knowledge that it took a very particular type of soldier or Marine to coldly peer through a telescopic sight and pull the trigger to deliver a fatal bullet to an unsuspecting and unwarned enemy. Not only must the potential sniper be able to accomplish that task, he also had to possess the mental toughness to do so repeatedly.

  Jim Land strongly believed in the importance of the psychological stability of potential snipers and questioned each candidate at length to determine if he had the correct mind-set for the job. Land later wrote in a foreword to Marine Sniper by Charles Henderson, “It takes a special kind of courage to be alone: to be alone with your thoughts; to be alone with your fears; to be alone with your doubts. This courage is not the superficial brand stimulated by the flow of adrenaline. Neither is it the courage that comes from the fear that others might think one a coward. It is the courage born of honor.

  “Honor on the battlefield is a sniper’s ethic. He shows it by the standards and discipline with which he lives life in combat. By the decency he shows his comrades. And by the rules he adheres to when meeting the enemy.

  “The sniper does not hate the enemy,” Land continued, “he respects him or her as a quarry. Psychologically, the only motives that will sustain the sniper is the knowledge that he is doing a necessary job and the confidence that he is the best person to do it. On the battlefield, hate will destroy any man—and a sniper quicker than most.”

  The sniper instructor also wrote of other characteristics he sought in trainees. Further, according to Land in the foreword, “The sniper is the big game hunter of the battlefield, and he needs all the skills of the woodsman, marksman, hunter, and poacher. He must possess the fieldcraft to be able to position himself for a killing shot, and he must be able to effectively place a single bullet into his intended target.”

  More recently, in One Shot—One Kill by Charles Sasser and Craig Roberts, Land, reflecting on his own experience as a marksman and sniper, added, “When you look through that scope, the first thing you see is the eyes. There is a lot of difference between shooting at a shadow, shooting at an outline, and shooting at a pair of eyes. It is amazing when you put that scope on somebody, the first thing that pops out at you is the eyes. Many men can’t do it at that point.”

  Senior commanders in Vietnam also had specific ideas about the characteristics of good snipers. General Frederick J. Kroesen Jr. (USA, Ret.), who commanded the 23rd Infantry (Americal) Division in 1971, simply states that a “good sniper” had to exhibit “selflessness” and “patience.”

  Lieutenant General Ormond R. Simpson (USMC, Ret.), who assumed command of the 1st Marine Division at Da Nang in December 1968, also had ideas about what he looked for in volunteers for his sniper school. According to Simpson, “Of course superior marksmanship was an absolute requirement that was never waived. Given this talent or ability, a good sniper needed to have infinite patience, even nature and temperament, ability to get along with his team member, willingness to remain in his position for often long periods of time regardless of rain or wind, the skill to move quietly and to escape detection. The judgment to fire only when there was a good chance for a kill with a single round. We could never use ‘trigger happy’ people in this program.”

  An article in the January-March 1969 edition of the 9th Infantry Division publication, Octofoil, provided insights into what Major Powell’s school looked for in potential army snipers. According to the article, “It [the sniper school] constantly seeks soldiers possessing special qualities—a good eye, ability to think quickly and remain cool in combat and, a prime requisite, the desire to learn.”

  The selection of potential snipers from replacement centers and from the ranks in the field was not a pure process. Ed Kugler, observed that firsthand as a scout-sniper with the 4th Marine Regiment. In March 1966. Kugler and several hundred other Marines arrived from the States at the Da Nang replacement center. Early on their first morning in Vietnam, Staff Sergeant Walt Sides, the platoon sergeant of the 4th Marine snipers, addressed the formation of replacements using a bullhorn. Sides, explaining that he worked with Captain Russell at the scout-sniper school, told the new arrivals they were looking for volunteers. Kugler recalls that the sergeant did such a great “sell job” of making the sniper role sound exciting that he and thirty or forty others stepped forward.

  Some of the volunteers were eliminated when their records showed that they had not qualified as experts on the rifle range. The sniper school NCO then interviewed the remainder, looking for what he termed “mental toughness.” At the completion of the interviews, only Kugler and three other replacements were selected by the NCO for transportation to Phu Bai.

  At Phu Bai, Kugler and the others joined another eight Marines (from infantry units already in Vietnam) for the second sniper school class taught by Russell and his staff. Kugler recalls that, even though all were qualified as expert marksmen, several of the Marines had been “volunteered” by their units because their commanders wanted to be rid of them; that method of eliminating problem Marines (by sending them to other assignments) was a common practice in all units that, in some cases, worked well for both units and the transferred Marines.

  Kugler says, “Two, I remember, specifically as friends today, were ‘volunteered’ by the grunts. They were ‘shitbirds’ the grunts wanted gone. Irony was, they turned out to be great snipers. Over my two years in Vietnam, I would say 30 to 40 percent of the volunteers were grunt misfits who became great snipers.”

  Generally, however, field commanders followed the same selection procedures that the sniper school NCOs used. They also had the added advantage of having actually observed the actions of the men under fire and knowing how they reacted to killing the enemy.

  Most commanders wanted to fill their sniper school allocations with men who would make good representatives of their units and, more important, who would complete the school and return with training and a weapon that would assist the unit in accomplishing its mission. Unfortunately, the Marine and army sniper schools did not always have the capacity to train the number of snipers that the senior commanders and field units wanted, which meant that the number of volunteers seeking training frequently exceeded the limited school space.

  Terry Roderick of Cocoa, Florida, joined P Company, 75th Infantry (Ranger) from the army’s 5th Mechanized Infantry Division, near Quang Tri, in October 1969. In February 1970, his Ranger company received a single allocation for the 101st Airborne Division’s sniper school at Camp Evans. Roderick recalls, “When the opening for the school came to our company, I think I had the highest score with the M14 from basic training and they wanted to make sure they sent someone who would represent the company well. I’ve always been a good shot with a rifle and it was well known throughout the company since we had a lot of ‘shooting matches’ at the range where we went for ‘test firing’ our weapons before going out on missions.”

  Although recruiting snipers in the war zone was an imprecise science, the Marine scout-sniper school at Camp Pendleton, California, had more time and certainly safer conditions under which to select trainees. Yet its process closely resembled that of the Vietnam schools. Joseph T. Ward of Lakewood, Colorado, notes in his book, Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam, that a few days before completion of boot camp, he and his fellow Marines were offered the opportunity to volunteer for several schools. Ward, who had fired expert and “could put the bullet where it belonged,” volunteered to become a scout-sniper along with thirty-six others.

  Prolonge
d interviews by the scout-sniper school staff reduced that number to twenty-five, only twenty of whom would eventually graduate. That 80 percent completion rate was actually a bit above average. About a quarter of each class at Pendleton and in the army and Marine schools in Vietnam failed to complete the program successfully.

  Nearly all of the soldier and Marine sniper volunteers came from the ranks of the infantry. Little official information about their ages, hometowns, or other demographics was recorded at the time, and such information can be gathered now only by analyzing the recollections of the war’s veterans.

  Traditionally the Marine Corps, because of its smaller size and emphasis on preserving history, has performed better in maintaining records than the army. Marine archives from Vietnam, however, are as lacking in information on snipers as are the army’s. In 1984, Ronald H. Spector of the U.S. Army Center of Military History’s analysis branch published a pamphlet about the deficiencies in official accounts of the Vietnam War. Although the pamphlet addresses army record keeping, its findings apply to the Marine Corps as well.

  In “Researching the Vietnam Experience,” Spector explains, “In terms of sheer volume, the records relating to the Vietnam War appear to dwarf those of any previous American conflict. The war was the first to be fought in the age of the copying machine and the computer, and the influence of those innovations is reflected in the massive paper trail left by that conflict. There can be no debate about the quantity of documentation. Quality is another matter.

  “During the early years of the war, unit commanders, overworked and understaffed, often neglected or ignored army requirements concerning the preparation and preservation of reports and records.”

  Later in the war, when officials recognized that proper documentation and records management were not taking place, they attempted to correct the oversights. Spector comments, “The result was the rapid accumulation of masses of trivial and ephemeral material.” Spector also pointed out that studies as early as 1974 concluded that filing historical documents from Vietnam was complicated by the “tendency of units to destroy records rather than retire them.”

  Spector adds the important point that, unlike the paperwork from previous American conflicts, documentation of the Vietnam War is also extremely one-sided. At the conclusion of World War II, U.S. historians had access to masses of captured enemy archives as well as the opportunity to interview high-ranking military and political officials to determine their decision-making processes and the impact of American weapons and tactics. Nothing remotely similar exists from the Vietnam War.

  Another difficulty in record keeping of the Vietnam conflict that Spector does not cover is the loss of records due to combat operations. Despite elaborate security measures, no area in the war zone was completely safe from enemy attack. Unit headquarters and their administrative records were on occasion, especially during the Tet Offensive of 1968, destroyed by enemy attack. Still other records remained in Vietnam when Saigon surrendered in 1975 and fell into the hands of the North Vietnamese.

  From what information is available, it is apparent that in most ways the American sniper volunteers mirrored the profile of other soldier and Marine infantrymen in Vietnam. Of the 2.7 million Americans who served in Vietnam, 79 percent were high school graduates. Fully 75 percent were volunteers while 25 percent were draftees.‡

  While the average age of army and Marine infantrymen in Vietnam was nineteen and a half, sniper cadre tended to select candidates who were a year older because they sought the more mature and experienced. Many volunteers from the ranks already had been in-country for several months, adding a bit to their age.

  Common characteristics of potential snipers mentioned by their instructors and field commanders were familiarity with weapons and experience in the outdoors. An article on the selection of snipers in the May–June 1972 issue of Infantry says, “He must be an outdoorsman acting as a trapper and forest ranger with the cunning of a wild animal—all at the same time.”

  Some of the volunteers closely resembled that profile. Powell recalls that one of his best sniper students was a former big-game hunter and guide from Alaska. Many of the snipers grew up with weapons and as boys provided much of the meat for their family table through their marksmanship. A majority of the sniper volunteers were from the South, the Southwest, and the far West. Most came from rural areas and towns of less than 50,000 population.

  Of course, there were exceptions. Sometimes prior experience with hunting rifles had instilled more bad habits (such as improper holds and sighting problems) than good in a marksman and retraining was more difficult. Soldiers and Marines who had learned to shoot, and shoot well, in basic training were often the easiest to train. As a result, the ranks of snipers, although dominated by men from small towns or rural-route addresses, also contained shooters from New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, and other metropolitan areas.

  Most of the enlisted men selected for sniper training were from the lower ranks. The senior enlisted instructors in the sniper schools and the NCOs in charge of sniper units, particularly in the Marine Corps sniper platoons, came mostly from the ranks of the competition shooting teams. Later in the war some of those positions were filled by NCOs who had earned their stripes, either in Vietnam units or back in the States between tours of combat duty. Still other snipers volunteered to extend their tours in six-month increments and advanced from shooters to supervisors.

  Sniper school officers, like the senior NCOs, generally had prewar experience on their service’s competition shooting teams. Yet the officers involved in sniper positions faced a unique problem. To advance in rank, combat officers must command platoons, companies, and battalions. Leading sniper teams and instructing marksmanship do not enhance qualifications in front of a promotion board. Thus the officers had to make a choice between advancement potential on the one hand and their convictions about the importance of the sniper’s contribution on the other.

  Generally, officers attracted to sniper duty were drawn to it by their love of shooting and the personal job satisfaction it offered. Many, such as Russell and Powell, were “mustangs” who had lengthy service in the enlisted ranks before receiving their commissions. They were well aware that sniper service might prove detrimental to their careers, but they welcomed the opportunity nevertheless.

  While “prior service” officers with competition shooting experience established and initially administered the sniper training and operations in Vietnam, the program also attracted junior officers. Marine sniper platoons each had a lieutenant in command who usually served several months in an infantry unit before joining the shooters. Other than a few lieutenants in the 9th Infantry Division who took charge of their battalion’s teams and those officers assigned to the USAMTU, few army officers served with sniper units in Vietnam. In nearly every case, these lieutenants had already determined that they were not remaining in uniform after their initial tours of duty and sought sniper duty knowing that they had no future military careers.

  Unlike most units in Vietnam, where African Americans composed about 13 percent of the ranks and other minorities reflected about the same percentage as did their ethnic groups in the civilian population, Marine and army sniper teams were mostly white. Neither the Marines nor the army maintained exact figures on the race of snipers, but available evidence indicates only a small number of black and other minority snipers. Based on a study of morning reports and unit rosters, the memory of the participants, and other sources,§ it appears that only 3 or 4 percent of army and Marine Vietnam snipers were black. The numbers of Hispanic and Asia-Pacific Americans also amounted to only one fourth to one third of their overall percentage of servicemen.

  The army and Marine Corps, with no official doctrine on racial composition of snipers, seemed unconcerned with the imbalances. When asked about the discrepancies, some officials shrug it off as a mathematical probability that some specialties would attract fewer minorities while others attracted more. Other officials say that there
was no reason for the statistics—they just happened. A third school of thought suggests that minorities as a whole were reluctant to volunteer for any aspect of what they considered the “white man’s war.”

  The first two explanations may indicate a lack of conscious effort to analyze the situation, but the third rationalization is blatantly invalid. In fact, blacks and other minorities volunteered in numbers far above their population averages for other elite units such as the army’s paratroopers and the Marine Corps as a whole.

  The only other units in Vietnam with similarly small percentages of minorities were the army’s Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) companies‖ and the Marine Force Reconnaissance companies. The reconnaissance units and the snipers both sought volunteers with “out-in-the-woods” experience, a prerequisite that automatically eliminated many minorities from densely populated urban areas.

  The best explanation may lie in the sociological traits of blacks and Hispanics as a whole. African Americans and Latino cultures typically provide gregarious homes and neighborhoods where there is extensive interaction between individuals. Sniper operations, like those of the reconnaissance units, required extreme individualism where the “loner” type was much more comfortable than men who valued peer interaction.a

  Ultimately, it was the man and his ability to shoot that made the difference, not the color of his skin or his background. From the time he joined the ranks of the most highly trained marksmen, each man found his life dominated by being a sniper. His friends and family were his fellow shooters, and with his counterparts he developed a camaraderie and empathy that only those few who peer through the scope at a living human target truly understand.