Marine Sniper

by Charles Henderson

  From where the Ho Chi Minh and Sihanouk trails meet inside Laos on the Vietnamese border, a lacework of roads, footpaths, and tunnels branch out across the rugged mountains, following ridges and streams across the breadth of Vietnam to the rice lands that Duc Pho’s solitary hill overlooks.

  On that hill, Carlos Hathcock sat with his spotter* watching this “Indian Country,” slowly scanning the miles of terrain spread out before them, and hunting and killing “Charlie”—Charlie the man, Charlie the woman, and Charlie the twelve-year-old boy.

  That youngster had ridden a long way, judging from the salt rings that encrusted his shirt. He had peddled and pushed that rifle-laden bike since before daybreak. The sun was just setting now above the rugged peaks of the mountains that make up the high backbone of Vietnam, the Annamite Cordillera. No doubt the rifles had almost reached their destination when this Marine sniper had halted their transport and, in the process, killed a child.

  He wondered if the men who lay waiting for that delivery had seen their cargo stopped dead by his bullet. To him it was cowardly to send a child to do a soldier’s work, and as he leaned back against the sandbags and lit a cigarette, he shook his head. He thought of occasions on which the Viet Cong had wired three-and four-year-old children as booby traps and had blown away the unlucky Marines who stopped and offered the tots chewing gum or chocolate, and of the Marines who had accepted cold sodas from slightly older children. The sodas had been poured into cups filled with tiny shards of broken glass, mixed with chipped ice. It did not take many stories like those before a Marine learned to stay clear of children.

  Hathcock stood and dusted the seat of his trousers, and as Roberts departed up the hill, disappearing behind large rocks, he took one final look down the narrow road that led to the mountains and the setting sun. This was his favorite time of day. It had always been special for him, ever since he was a kid staying with his grandmother in the countryside near Little Rock, Arkansas. It seemed long ago now. He wondered what she would have thought about his killing the boy this day. Would she understand that he had no choice?

  He looked at the graying sky and wished he could be home. “Tour’s almost done, Carlos,” he said to himself, trying to kill the pang of homesickness that struck. “Golly, I’ll bet Sonny has grown a foot taller by now.” In a few months he’d be home to celebrate his twenty-fifth birthday, and eighth year in the Marine Corps, with his wife, Josephine, and his little boy, Carlos Norman Hathcock III.

  For now, he closed out another day on his hilltop position. Here, he was one small part of a special landing force operation called Deckhouse IV that had been dovetailed into another operation called Desoto, now underway for several weeks.

  Marines from 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, served as the main force in this operation, clearing the Duc Pho area of Viet Cong concentrations.

  Hathcock had positioned the gun on a finger of the solitary hill so that he could cover much of the area between the coast and the mountains, but, sitting there on the hill also made him a target for daily fire from below. Those long shots sent lead splattering on the big rocks around the Marine sniper’s nest, yet as long as he and Roberts kept low in their position, they were relatively safe.

  From the hill, the snipers provided a blocking force and some security for the battalion during their sweeps through this broad, flat countryside. Hathcock’s duty on this operation exercised very little of his ability as a sniper, requiring minimal stealth, just sharpshooting with the heavy machine gun. It was a sort of carnival shooting gallery where Viet Cong, rather than tin ducks and clay pipes, were the targets.

  Hathcock had pioneered using the .50-caliber machine gun as a sniper weapon. The big gun’s seven hundred-grain bullets offered a stable trajectory for nearly three thousand yards, extending the sniper’s range of highly accurate fire well beyond two thousand yards, more than double the capability of his .30-06 rifle. The .50’s cyclic rate was slow enough to allow for single shots with no difficulty. And, mounted on its T-and-E, a traversing and elevating tripod that accurately adjusted the machine-gun’s fire with geared control knobs, the system served as a steady and finely tuned aiming platform for the eight-power telescopic sight, which was necessary to precisely train the gun on its distant targets.

  The Marine sniper stretched. He was more tired than usual and glad the operation would soon end.

  A STAR-FILLED SKY GREETED CARLOS HATHCOCK THE FOLLOWING morning. He sat in the dark, cross-legged behind his machine gun, waiting for the sun to share its new light with the enormous valley below. It would be a very busy day.

  A Marine major stood behind Hathcock’s right shoulder. He scanned the brightening horizon through powerful, green binoculars. Hathcock’s wispy white feather quivered in his hatband as a steady westward breeze dried the dampness left by the ground fog and overnight dew. No one spoke.

  Both Hathcock and the major listened for the sound of helicopters. That sound would signal the beginning of a final sweep through this area.

  A dog barked in the darkness far below the group of Marines, and Hathcock glanced at the cooking fires that flickered near the huts where the dog lived. There, Vietnamese farmers prepared for another workday. He gazed farther out into the early morning grayness where other firelights twinkled. Viet Cong, he thought.

  The major stuffed a load of chewing tobacco into his mouth and said, “Won’t be long—sun’s just about up. Sergeant, how does it look through your scope?”

  Hathcock put his eye to the long and slender rifle scope mounted on the machine gun. He shook his head. “Still too dark. But when the frogs land, we should have plenty of light.”

  When he first came to this lonely hilltop, he had zeroed the gun sight to place his shots dead-on at twenty-five hundred yards, and now, from this sandbagged, promontory nest, he easily covered the entire valley with his deadly fire.

  The sniper’s victims never knew what hit them when his brand of whispering death struck—they only heard the heavy bullet’s impact if he missed.

  Today, Hathcock’s gun would again serve as a blocking force for the battalion, turning the fleeing enemy back into the sweep, where they would either die or fall prisoner to the Marines. If they gambled to run, they must get by the sniper, who was already becoming famous among the Viet Cong as “Long Tra’ng”—The White Feather. To get by him, they must cross several hundred yards of open rice fields, flooded ankle deep in water.

  The sniper waited and listened. He heard the distant mumbling of two Marines crouched up the hill among the rocks behind him. They had a radio beside them and were waiting to hear from the sweep leader that the operation had begun.

  The distant sound of helicopters caught Hathcock’s attention. Almost simultaneously, the radio crackled, “Red Man, Red Man. Evil Eyes three-six. Over.” The Marine sitting next to the radio picked up the handset, answering the call, “Evil Eyes three-six. Red Man. Go ahead, over.” The response came, “Roger, Red Man. Evil Eyes three-six at point Tango. Over.”

  The major searched the horizon and easily picked up three helicopter silhouettes racing toward him just above the treetops. “I’ve got them,” the major said. “Tell them we’re ready here.”

  “Evil Eyes three-six, Roger and tallyho. Red Man is ready,” the radio operator responded.

  The sweep began with three twin-rotor, CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters letting off their passengers in three “hot” landing zones. The chatter of small-arms fire filled the air as helicopters swept down the ridge lines, just above the treetops, and set down. In half a minute, this first wave of choppers was up and away, leaving the Marines to face the hostile fire that greeted them.

  Farther to the west, other twin-rotor aircraft landed, unloading another company, blocking “Charlie’s” hope for escape to the mountain ridges there. The two companies would push the entrenched Viet Cong out and into a cross-fire or into the blocking forces who now waited.

  Hathcock watched the jungle that edged the expanse of flooded rice p
addies beneath him. His eyes carefully searched each stretch of dense cover. Soon he realized that he could relax his grip on the machine-gun’s handles. From the sounds of the fighting, the Viet Cong would not easily give up the security that their trenches and the tree cover offered. They held on as the Marines closed toward them. Hathcock knew that it would be a while before he had any work.

  The warm orange of the morning turned white as the sun climbed toward noon. The major stood staring through his binoculars, searching the trees and hedgerows for VC sneaking out of the sweep. Sweat trickled down Hathcock’s neck as he scanned the tree line with his sniper scope.

  The intense fighting had sent several Viet Cong retreating toward the southwest, only to meet the ambushing fire of blocking forces stationed there. The VC knew that the east’s open fields would expose them, so they attempted to turn west, only to confront the widespread rifle squads of the flanking company. Hundreds died that day. Many others surrendered. By the end of February 1967, the landing force claimed more than a thousand Viet Cong confirmed dead, and they counted another thousand probable dead.

  Two frightened Viet Cong guerrillas carefully crawled through the brush at the edge of one water-covered rice field. They could hear the Marines closing swiftly behind them.

  The two men searched the field’s borders and saw nothing, and yet both men knew crossing it could mean certain death. Sweat soaked through their shirts. Their hair lay plastered flat and dripping. Their eyes burned from the perspiration that ran off their brows and down their faces. A decision could wait no longer.

  When the men stood to run, Hathcock spotted them in his scope and said to the major, “Sir, two are breaking out on the left.”

  “Shoot to the side of them. Try to turn them back into the sweep.”

  Hathcock pressed the trigger and sent the first shot into the water ahead of the men. They had no place to hide, yet they kept running toward the far side of the rice field.

  He sent two more shots down the hill, but the guerrillas continued to charge across the shining surface of the field. They seemed to be moving through the shin-deep mud and water in slow motion, their legs pumping like pistons and their feet splashing in the mire.

  “Major, they’re not turning,” Hathcock said.

  “Kill them,” the major responded.

  The sniper placed his scope’s cross hairs on the first man and pressed the butterfly. The soldier splashed down dead in the muddy water.

  “Good shot,” the major said. He took the binoculars from his eyes and leaned slightly to his right, spitting a load of tobacco juice to one side of the sandbagged nest.

  The second man wheeled, almost falling, and broke to his right, still headed away from the sweep. Carlos Hathcock laid his scope’s cross hairs on the VC’s back and again mashed the machine-gun’s trigger. The second man tumbled into the water.

  No one else broke out of the tree line during that day’s sweep. When it was over, the major walked back to the command post, located on the other side of the hill, for an appraisal of the day’s operation, and Hathcock waited and watched through the afternoon. He suspected that once the dogs had called off their hunt, “Homer the Hamburger” might show himself. For Hathcock, the Viet Cong had only two families—the Hamburgers and the Hot Dogs. They were all named Homer.

  Sure enough, just as he had expected, he spotted a figure slipping from the trees to the edge of a distant rice field. He knelt and put his face in the water, and when Carlos put his scope on him, he could see a Chinese K-44 rifle slung across his back.

  A lieutenant from a company that had participated in the sweep now sat next to the Marine sniper, staring through binoculars.

  “You see him down there?” Hathcock asked the young officer.

  The lieutenant shifted the binoculars toward the direction that the machine gun now pointed and found the Viet Cong soldier, still drinking. “I got him. How far you judge that to be?”

  “Twenty-five hundred yards. He’s right on the spot where I zeroed this gun when I first got here.”

  The lieutenant laughed, and Hathcock said, “Let’s see if I can’t rain all over his parade.” He took a firm grip on the gun’s two wooden handles, took a short breath, and began pressing the trigger, waiting for the recoil’s surprise.

  The lieutenant watched. He felt strange because even at this distance he could see the man’s face and his eyes. He had never looked at a man’s eyes just as a bullet killed him. The young officer jerked as the machine gun belched a single round down the hill. At that precise second, the enemy soldier started to rise and caught the bullet just below his chin.

  The lieutenant saw the soldier kicking in the dirt and shouted, “You missed!”

  In his Arkansas, low voice, Hathcock drawled, “He’s dead, sir. They just flop around a lot when you shoot ’em in the head.”

  Hathcock never connected with a longer shot.

  Later that day, he saw a Viet Cong soldier coming down a trail. On the same trail, an old woman was carrying waterfilled buckets hung on the ends of a long pole, which she balanced across her shoulders like a yoke. She was teetering up the path when the Marine sniper’s bullet struck the dirt between the soldier’s legs and ricocheted over the woman’s head. The frightened man charged right at her, and she attempted to set down her load. But, just as she began to squat, the soldier struck her head-on. The woman tumbled over backward into the dirt, spilling her buckets and losing her pole.

  Hathcock had a chance at a second shot, but his laughter took charge of his aim. He continued chuckling as he dismantled the big machine gun. It was a satisfying end to his long watch atop the hill at Duc Pho.

  THE WEAPONS PLATOON RETOOK POSSESSION OF THEIR M-2 .50-CALiber machine gun that had served as Carlos Hathcock’s sniper weapon during his stay on the Duc Pho hilltop.

  Hathcock fastened the long Unertl scope back on his sniper rifle—a match-conditioned, .30-06 Springfield caliber, Model-70 Winchester anchored at the receiver with precisely torqued screws that held it in a glass-bedded, Monte Carlo-style stock, above which the finely tuned barrel floated, less than the width of a dollar bill, allowing the barrel to flex freely when he fired the rifle. He again zeroed the weapon for seven hundred yards.

  With his NVA pack* strapped snugly to his back and his rifle shouldered, Carlos Hathcock waited at the landing zone for the helicopter that would take him back to Hill 55, his base of operations. He liked Hill 55 because it overlooked miles of Viet Cong-controlled countryside—hot spots like Elephant Valley to the north and, to the south, Antenna Valley. East of Hill 55 were the friendly strongholds of Marble Mountain and Da Nang, but to the west lay the badlands known as Charlie Ridge and Happy Valley.

  Hathcock felt glad to be getting back to his old hunting grounds. Charlie Roberts stood next to him and nudged him. “Looks like our frog.” He pointed toward the twin-rotor helicopter that had just cleared the horizon along the northwest coastline and now raced toward them, skimming the treetops.

  Hathcock said nothing to Roberts. It was typical of their relationship. They had never gotten along, and Hathcock politely endured the staff sergeant while suppressing his often felt frustration with the senior Marine. As they waited, Hathcock recalled the first day on Duc Pho and how Roberts had stood atop the rocks surrounding the sniper position, admiring the breathtaking view, and drew a hail of enemy fire. A senior NCO in the battalion had yanked Roberts off the rocks just as the shooting began and then questioned the reliability of both the Marines. That insult had deeply wounded Hathcock’s pride. From that day forward, the rift between the two men grew. Hathcock did his thing, and Roberts did his—mostly watching.

  Hathcock smiled and took off his bush hat, holding his white feather secure in the hatband with his thumb.

  MORE THAN SEVEN YEARS BEFORE, ON A WARM SPRING DAY IN 1959, Carlos Hathcock had stood in the Marine recruiter’s office in Little Rock, Arkansas, and watched his mother sign the papers giving him permission to join the Marine Corps. It was
May 20—the day of his seventeenth birthday. He was fulfilling what for him was already an old dream.

  That afternoon he got on a plane bound for San Diego, where he would have thirteen weeks at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in which to prove himself man enough to join the United State’s most elite society of warriors.

  Carlos stood five feet ten inches tall and weighed one hundred forty pounds. Although slight in build, he could run all day and lift a load equal to his weight over his head. He had developed this strength after dropping out of high school at age fifteen and going to work for a Little Rock concrete contractor, shoveling cement ten hours a day, six days a week.

  Boot camp wasn’t going to be any picnic, but Carlos had the physical stamina to withstand the long, punishing days and nights. As for the mental pressures, he would handle them with the strong self-discipline that he had developed at an early age when he was forced to shoulder the responsibilities of his family.

  Hathcock arrived at MCRD San Diego sitting on a brown, plastic-covered seat inside a dull gray bus with “U.S. Navy” stenciled on its side. He and approximately thirty other recruits had ridden it from Lindbergh Field to the recruit depot. Several of the young men talked loudly and smoked cigarettes, although the chubby, blond-haired Marine private who drove the bus had warned them that that wasn’t the best way to start their military careers.

  It was eleven o’clock of a warm, West Coast evening. The bus came to a halt, and a Marine sergeant wearing a tan uniform, with creases so sharp that they stood out a half inch from his chest, stepped briskly aboard.

  The sergeant wore black, spit-shined shoes, which glistened like patent leather, and a brown, beaver-felt campaign hat with a wide, flat brim. Centered on the hat was a coal black Marine Corps emblem. The Marine walked directly to where one of the cockiest recruits was sitting.

  During the ride from the airport, this loud-talking fellow boasted how tough his St. Louis gang had been. The young man wore his long and thick black hair heavily oiled and combed back in a ducktail. He sported a pack of Camels rolled in the sleeve of his black T-shirt. A smoking cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth.