Inside the Crosshairs
Page 21
In “Observations of a Platoon Leader,” Graves noted that the typical mission of the enemy snipers was to harass U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. “The sniper,” he wrote, “is used in areas where enemy strength is nominal, and where he can demonstrate to the inhabitants that the Viet Cong can resist a larger government or U.S. force. Primarily, such light resistance is for propaganda purposes.”
Graves continued by writing that the VC/NVA snipers were effective in holding up a superior force while their comrades withdrew. He warned that the enemy snipers frequently kept open areas, waterways, and roads under observation for possible targets. “To destroy the sniper,” Graves wrote, “closure must be executed with speed and aggressiveness for the sniper is usually prepared to escape on preplanned routes. Thus fire and maneuver come into play—fire to pin the sniper in place while the maneuver element closes to destroy him. Grenade launchers should be used to the utmost, their fires concentrated on trees and other suspected sniper locations.”
The former platoon leader added that artillery and mortar fire support could also be used to directly engage the enemy marksmen or to cut off their route of escape. In conclusion, Graves provides another warning: “Aggressiveness is often the key to success or failure in destroying a sniper; but, be cautious not to over-react to the sniper and be drawn into a baited ambush.”
It is difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the VC/NVA snipers. The VC/NVA snipers did not have the luxury of firing as many rounds during initial or refresher training as their American opponents. In the Sea Tiger article about the NVA sniper lieutenant, discussed on this page, Major Russell concluded, “Their training, although longer, can’t begin to compare to ours.” Russell added that although the NVA sniper trainees were new recruits straight off the farm or out of the village, Marine snipers were mostly selected from the ranks. The Marine snipers, according to Russell, were “hand-picked, already combat-hardened veterans.”
Of course, many of the NVA snipers and the VC they trained also became experienced veterans. Since they were in South Vietnam for the duration, as opposed to the one-year tour of the Americans, at least some of the VC/NVA snipers who survived became skilled marksmen. In the same interview in which he discussed harassment fire by “Teatime Charlie,” Carlton Sherwood noted the results and impact of a more effective NVA sharpshooter.
Sherwood recalls, “Let me tell you another sniper story. This was in Quang Tri Province. The whole battalion was walking in the bush just off Route 1. It was rolling hill country. We got a sniper who knew how to shoot. This guy was about a half mile away. Each shot got a guy right between the eyes. He got about five men. We had no idea where he was shooting from. The whole battalion went to ground. This one sniper held us up the whole day. Next day, same thing. Nobody wanted to stand up anymore. The battalion commander called in air strikes—bombs, napalm, 20-mm cannon for one sniper! They laid in on the ridge line where we thought he was. After the air strike, we walked for about an hour when ‘bang!’ another guy went down. At that point we’d made about a mile and a half in two days. Then we tried to flank him with two platoons, which is what the battalion CO should have done in the first place. Night came on and do you know he actually took pot shots at us in the dark! The CO called in another air strike and do you know what? When the jets came in I could hear ping, ping, ping, that motherfucker was shooting at the goddamned jets.
“We never found him,” Sherwood concluded. “Eleven hundred guys, the meanest fighting force in the world, held up by one man.”
Despite such individual success, there is no evidence that the North Vietnamese made any attempts to expand the use of snipers beyond their initial efforts, nor did they ever assume anything other than primarily a defensive role. Stories such as Carlton Sherwood’s about one sniper slowing an entire battalion are not unique even though the VC/NVA sniper role was relatively minor in terms of the overall war.
*The complete document is in Appendix F.
†Ivy Books, 1997.
CHAPTER 14
The Assessment
ALTHOUGH U.S. forces won every major battle in South Vietnam before their withdrawal, history records the war as the country’s first defeat. As the years have passed, most Americans have begun to realize that the loss came not from the failure of their military but rather from the lack of national support and concessions made at the conference table.
Deciphering exactly what occurred in regard to Vietnam is complicated by a myriad of factors, not the least of which is the “fog” of combat that obscures much of what happens when weapons are in use. Men separated by only a few feet or even fighting side-by-side often see and experience entirely different aspects of the same battle. Combat infantrymen throughout history have focused on accomplishing their missions and surviving rather than recording their experiences. Senior military and political leaders who do write about their observations of war are often more interested in their own reputations than in accurately presenting events. Further clouding the real events are the war historians, who rarely fail to bring their own agendas to their descriptions.
Capturing the essence of the Vietnam War in writing has proved to be an even greater challenge than writing about other conflicts because of the complexities of the nonconventional battles and campaigns and the characteristics of the men who did the actual fighting. Most of the war’s encounters occurred in remote jungles or watery rice paddy battlegrounds between small elements with no news reporters or military history unit personnel present.
Added to this void was the fact that records and files not extracted with U.S. units during their withdrawal ended up in the hands of the North Vietnamese when Saigon fell in 1975. Access to these files and those maintained by the North Vietnamese during the war remains extremely limited.
A final consideration in studying the Vietnam War is the polarization it created. Emotional views of the war still influence those who attempt to write about the period. In a 1986 letter, Lieutenant General Stanley R. Larsen, USA (Ret.), commander of the II Field Force in Vietnam from August 1965 to August 1967, provided an observation on the difficulties of recording the accurate history of the conflict: “More needs to be written about the Vietnam War, but unfortunately, these studies must consider that they are covering a ‘lost’ war run by politicians determined to beat out a no-win war, who were afraid to make difficult decisions, and certainly never aimed at MacArthur’s famous truism, ‘There is no substitution for victory.’ ”
Larsen was correct about the need for more written information about the Vietnam conflict. However, the publication of such material does not, in itself, necessarily remedy the situation—indeed, it often obscures the truth further. Any analysis of writings on or about Vietnam—official or unofficial—must factor in the self-interest and/or the agenda of the authors and the intended audience. While that statement applies to the assessment of all writing, it is particularly important in the evaluation of material on the already complex, emotionally laden subject of Vietnam. For example, several political leaders of the period, some now deceased, penned self-serving memoirs that avoided responsibility for their decisions during the war and placed the blame for the fall of Saigon and the South Vietnamese government everywhere and anywhere but on themselves.
A few senior military officials have recorded their stories, and thus enhanced their reputations, while other high-ranking military commanders of the time have died or can no longer physically or mentally offer recollections. For years no one seemed interested in their comments; now many are no longer able to contribute.*
Making the task of investigating the war even more difficult is the fact that to date neither the U.S. Army nor the U.S. Marine Corps has produced any definitive history of its involvement in the war. In the early 1970s, the Department of the Army published a series of pamphlet-size works called Vietnam Studies that were written by a few veteran senior commanders and staff officers. The Marine Corps has offered a somewhat better effort wit
h its series, “U.S. Marines in Vietnam,” that has been published over the last twenty years. Neither service’s publications, however, devote more than a few lines to the development of snipers or to their operations, and those limited entries contribute little to the understanding of sniper employment or effectiveness.
The most detailed official explanation of sniper operations in Vietnam by either service appears in Sharpening the Combat Edge: The Use of Analysis to Reinforce Military Judgment by Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell and Major General Ira A. Hunt Jr., published in 1974 as part of the Vietnam Studies series. In the four-page summary subtitled “Sniper Program,” the authors include a brief history of the development of army marksmen in the 9th Infantry Division and conclude that it “was one of the most successful programs we undertook.”
The three primary pioneers of sniper training and organization in Vietnam—Marine majors Robert Russell and Jim Land and army major Willis Powell—wrote official and unofficial reports for their superiors. While the content of these writings was, of course, limited by the priorities of combat, the authors still had an agenda.
Most of the original Marine and army snipers and sniper instructors came from the peacetime shooting teams and were very aware that they needed to demonstrate how precision marksmanship could complement infantry units in combat, thus guaranteeing the continuation, and perhaps expansion, of competition shooting teams and matches after the war concluded.
Unofficial accounts of snipers in Vietnam have done better than the official sources in telling the story, but they, too, have their deficiencies. The most detailed books to date on snipers in Vietnam are The Long Range War: Sniping in Vietnam, published in 1994, and The One Round War: USMC Scout-Snipers in Vietnam, released two years later. Both of these books, written by Peter R. Senich and published by Paladin Press, contain extensive illustrations and photographs in an oversize 9-by-11-inch format.
Written for gun enthusiasts and those already familiar with long-range shooting, those books do provide a great deal of information, and their illustrations are the best to be found in print. Unfortunately, the $39.95 cost of The Long Range War and $59.95 for The One Round War, combined with the lack of wide distribution by the publisher, has prevented those pioneer volumes from gaining any substantial readership or acceptance.
Two books about individual Marine snipers in Vietnam and a collection of sniper stories, which includes several marksmen in Vietnam, have also added to the general information about snipers in the war. The first, Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills by Charles Henderson, presents the story of Carlos Hathcock. This work, which first appeared in 1986, is one of the best-selling books on the Vietnam War. Although some senior Marine commanders and other snipers and infantry veterans question portions of the stories as Henderson presents them,† there is no doubt that Hathcock attained a deserved reputation in the competition shooting community as one of the all-time best marksmen in the Corps. His ninety-three kills in Vietnam also place him near the top of the list of that conflict’s successful snipers.
Henderson’s book does provide many insights on sniper training and operations. However, Hathcock’s experiences were not at all typical of the experiences of the ordinary Marine or army sniper in Vietnam. According to Henderson, Hathcock was one of the few Marine snipers—and possibly the only one—allowed to operate independently or semi-dependently rather than as a member of a two-man team secured by at least a squad of infantry. Henderson’s book provides a story about a brave, sure-shot Marine but does not offer a general history of snipers in Vietnam or an account representative of the ordinary snipers who filled the regimental and recon battalion scout-sniper platoons.
The second book about a Marine sniper in Southeast Asia, Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam by Joseph T. Ward, provides a better account of day-to-day activities of the precision marksmen as well as information on weapons and equipment. Ward’s personal narrative does include a bit of sniper history, but the source is his own recollections rather than official documents. The book’s greatest merit may very well be that it is the honest story of a low-ranking Marine sniper who did only one tour in Vietnam and in the corps and then quietly returned home to rejoin the ranks of civilians.
Interestingly, when Ward’s book was first released, several of the “old guard” of Marine competition marksmen expressed doubts about certain aspects of his kill ranges and his number of successful missions. Apparently these doubters had difficulty accepting that a one-tour Marine with no prior experience in competition shooting could be so successful. Support from fellow snipers and officers in Ward’s 5th Marine Regiment quickly quieted the doubters.
A third book, One Shot—One Kill by Charles Sasser and Craig Roberts provides stories in an oral history format about individual snipers in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Beirut. Linking the narrative are various bits and pieces of American sniper history, including a brief overview of the development of the marksmen during the Vietnam War.
While all of the official and some of the unofficial publications note problems and shortcomings of sniper operations, all have declared the use of the special marksmen to have been a successful aspect of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Yet no single source analyzes the “big picture” impact of specific actions. Some references provide statistics on the numbers of sniper missions and their outcomes for brief periods for specific units, but no source combines these numbers into any kind of definitive study.
Along with influences of a “lost cause” and limited access to the enemy’s archives, other factors reduce our ability to provide a complete, statistical analysis of sniper activities and accomplishments in Vietnam. Some army separate brigades and divisions made few or no reports at all on the number of their snipers, sniper operations, or the number of their snipers’ enemy contacts and kills. Only the Army Concept Team in Vietnam, as a part of its test, and the 9th Infantry Division, as a result of the interest of General Ewell in what he considered a personal project, kept any detailed records on soldier snipers.
Although the Marine regiments and reconnaissance battalions did a better job than the army in requiring and maintaining sniper records, they rarely collated them into external official reports. Some information that did make its way into the official record was lost or destroyed during the major offensives, such as Tet of 1968, or simply disappeared in transit.
The official records that are available are brief and contain few details. Typical of the limited accounts is the single paragraph in the twenty-page Combat After-Action Report of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, describing its participation in Operation Tuscaloosa, January 24–28, 1967. On page 8 of the report, under a paragraph labeled “Execution,” a short entry states that the battalion’s F Company, at 1740 hours on January 27, “observed 12 enemy” whom they engaged with organic weapons and an air strike. The paragraph concludes, “Scout-sniper team accounted for one enemy KIA confirmed.”
Entries in official army reports about snipers were also brief. One of the more detailed accounts appears in the “Operational Report—Lessons Learned for the 25th Infantry Division” for the three-month period ending on April 30, 1970. Page 40 of the report relates, “On April 21 at 2101 hours, snipers from B/2–27 Inf engaged five to six enemy at XS525993 with organic weapons and artillery resulting in two enemy killed. At 2050 hours on 23 April, snipers from C/2–27 Inf engaged three enemy soldiers at 260 meters southeast of the 21 April contact (XS542978) with organic weapons resulting in two enemy killed and the capture of 30 pounds of rice. Snipers from Recon Platoon/2–27 Inf engaged two enemy soldiers on 24 April at 0346 hours 80 meters southeast of the 21 April contact site (XS532996) with organic weapons resulting in two enemy killed.”
The “Operational Report” of the 3rd Brigade, 9th Infantry Division, for the three-month period ending October 31, 1969, provides a better cumulative total of sniper success but lacks details. According to page 20 of the brigade’s report, “From 26 July 1969 to 31 October 1969, snipers accounted for 47 enemy
eliminated in Long An Province. A total of 39 kills were attained at night utilizing a Starlight scope.”
Personal narratives and unofficial writing about snipers in Vietnam often rely on memory alone and contain gaps in information as well as unintended inaccuracies. In some cases, the analysis does not take into account the fact that snipers in the same unit were at times so dispersed that they never knew each other, let alone each other’s accomplishments or failures. The very nature of snipers and sniping reinforced this lack of interaction and the “clouding” of whatever information was available. In addition to their discretion among themselves, snipers talked to few outside their immediate ranks about their operations and engagements.
As the antiwar movement at home gained momentum and support from the American press, the snipers became even less communicative with those outside their own units. Marine and army public information officers, even though desperately seeking a positive slant on the war to show the media, avoided mention of successful snipers. As a result, for the Vietnam era, few newspaper or other media stories exist about snipers or their effectiveness.
Despite the controversy about the U.S. military’s assessing its accomplishments in Vietnam by the daily enemy body count, the numbers policy did readily lend itself to measuring the success of units and operations. Snipers, who engaged individual targets with superior weapons and scopes and had each kill verified by an officer, fit perfectly into the body count policy of attrition warfare.
Of course, because of battle conditions, distances, and the valiant efforts of the VC/NVA not to leave bodies behind, the snipers could not always determine the results of each shot. Every sniper maintained an account of both confirmed and possible kills. Snipers also kept records of each nonlethal wound they inflicted. However, because a slightly wounded VC/NVA nearly always escaped, those numbers were estimates at best.