Marine Sniper

by Charles Henderson

  “Staff Sergeant Hathcock, is Staff Sergeant McAbee with you?” The sergeant major’s transmission was weak and Carlos strained to hear.

  Hathcock pressed the large, rectangular black button on the handset and heard the powerful lineal amplifier whine as he keyed the radio. When the shrill sound of the radio “powering up” peaked, he answered, shouting, “Yes sir, he’s right here with me.”

  “You two know better!” the sergeant major shouted, trying to be heard.

  The crackling message came clear, and Hathcock shook his head. “Everybody else was out, and we had this job—” Hathcock could hear the whine of the sergeant major’s signal walking over his and knew that the senior Marine had lost his temper. He waited until the channel cleared.

  “We’re headed home today!” Hathcock shouted.

  “Where are you two standing right now?” the sergeant major shouted back.

  McAbee looked at the map, and the lance corporal who operated the radios said, “This mountain is called My Dong.”

  Carlos smiled and keyed the radio. “Right now, we are standing on My Dong.”

  THE NEXT DAY HATHCOCK AND MCABEE WERE STANDING STIFFLY AT attention in front of the sergeant major. “I get tired of the wild stories coming in here telling how Charlie finally got you. And how high the bounty is on your head! You’re both staff NCOs…I want a degree more responsibility out of both of you.”

  “Sergeant Major,” Hathcock said, “Staff Sergeant McAbee is our armorer. We need him out where we operate. And I’ve got my snipers all paired and that leaves him and me. What do we do, go off separately by ourselves?”

  “No. But you don’t disappear for a week either. I don’t expect you to just sit in camp. But I expect responsible leadership from both of you! The only way you two go to the field together is if your entire platoon is committed and both of you are required to maintain control over that tribe of yours.”

  Hathcock smiled. At this moment, the sergeant major reminded him of another Marine. A Marine who became so frustrated with his disappearing that he confined him to his quarters to slow him down.

  “You got a deal, Sergeant Major.”

  Both Marines walked directly to the operations tent after shaking hands with the sergeant major and reassuring him that his worries were now over.

  “What’s going on?” Hathcock asked the operations chief.

  The month of September began with 7th Marines still pursuing two NVA regiments that they forced from the Hiep Duc Valley. With the enemy fragmented and scattered to the east and north, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, went to Fire Support Base Ross where India Company conducted a night move to a blocking position northeast of the fire base. Because they made only light contact with the NVA, three companies of 3rd Battalion moved on and began a northwesterly sweep through Nghi Ha Valley. While 3rd Battalion moved northwest, 1st Battalion, along with Mike Company from 3rd Battalion, set up blocking positions along the draws leading into the Phu Loc Valley while 3rd Battalion pushed toward them.

  When Carlos went to the operations tent, he found that in two days, September 16, 1969, the operation would end, and 1st Battalion would move back to their area of operation in the eastern Que Son hills.

  “We can go there,” Hathcock told McAbee. “Our snipers will be concentrated right there. The 90th NVA may be blown away, but the 3rd and 36th NVA regiments, the GK-33, and the 1st Viet Cong Regiment are all prime for the pickin’ down yonder. We could organize a regular operation against them.”

  “You gonna tell Sergeant Major Puckett?”

  “Yeah. It’s just a short jump down there, and with all our people already working with the battalions, he’ll see the logic.”

  That night McAbee worked late on the rifles while Carlos cleaned both their gear. He was excited about what the operation down south might reveal.

  “Reckon Perry can handle things back here?”

  “Sure. His team will run local security operations while we’re gone.”

  The September heat kept the night nearly as hot as the day with the humidity lingering at above 90 percent. On these hot nights, most of the Marines slept outside.

  Yankee followed at Ron McAbee’s heels as the Marine laid a poncho liner and air mattress on top of the sandbags that covered the roof of the bunker outside the staff NCO hooch on the night of September 15, the day before he and Carlos would leave for the eastern side of the Que Son hills. Yankee always slept next to Mack since the six-foot two-inch Marine had arrived. He liked Yankee sleeping at his side because of the dog’s uncanny ability to sense incoming fire before any shell impacted. Yankee’s low, throaty growl was the big, blond Marine’s early-warning system.

  As McAbee stretched out on his poncho liner—both of his boots unlaced but still on his feet—he took off his glasses and set them on the row of sandbags that ringed the bunker just below the roof. A stir of air relieved the steaminess of the night and soon lulled both the Marine and the red dog to sleep. Yankee slept with his head resting on Mack’s chest.

  In the distance the crackle of radio static, muffled inside the operations tent, and the low drone of the generators, scattered on the hill, gave the Marines who stood watch in the towers and along the wire a sense of hypnotic tranquility. A bright moon rose, sending a shimmering silver light over the camp.

  During the early morning hours something caused Yankee to stir from his sleep. The silvery moon sparkled in his clear, brown eyes as he pointed his ears and tasted the air with his nose. And deep within him, like the distant rumble of a faraway storm’s thunder, Yankee began to growl.

  It wasn’t a loud growl at first, just a sound of uneasiness that quivered inside his throat, quiet and unheard. But whatever doubt the dog had suddenly vanished, and, sitting up on his haunches, he gave a full, barrel-chested growl.

  Mack’s eyes popped open. He saw his bedtime companion snarling at the still quiet night, hackles raised and teeth bared. Ron McAbee knew that was no false alarm. He swung his feet down and yelled, “Incoming! Incoming!”

  The next sound that Ron McAbee heard was the grinding noise of glass and plastic crunching beneath his boot. He had stepped on his glasses.

  “Shit!” he swore leaping off the bunker. He stepped inside the shelter as the sound of explosions shook the camp.

  Nothing could make him feel worse than he already felt. Without his glasses he was useless as a sniper or spotter. Without his glasses, Hathcock would have to take Corporal Perry down to join 1st Battalion.

  “Here, have a shot,” a voice in the bunker’s darkness said. It was Hathcock, and he handed a bottle of Jim Beam to Mack.

  The two men lay drinking whiskey together while the dust from explosions swirled around them. The previous afternoon, they had noticed a small funeral procession passing near their camp. It seemed strange to both Marines that the men bearing the casket could only carry the large box (slung on two stout poles) a few yards at a time before having to set it down and rest. The men were outside the wire so Hathcock ran to operations and told the officer on duty.

  “It’s nothing. Forget about it,” the Marine told them.

  “You don’t care that these gooners are probably carrying rockets or 120-millimeter mortars in that casket?” Hathcock asked.

  “We had enough trouble with your partner there taking potshots at the tombstone and getting the village chief all riled. Ask McAbee about that seventy five bucks coming out of his pay because of his little shooting spree. Now you want us to go roust a funeral in case there may be rockets in the casket? Are you going to pay the go-min money when the village chief comes raising hell this time?”

  “Well, how about if Mack and me go down there and check them out?”

  “No!”

  They went to their hooch and got the same bottle of Jim Beam they were working on now and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in the bunker.

  “I thought we killed this thing last night,” Mack said handing the bottle back to Hathcock.

  “No. I
thought it might come in handy for another night down here, so I saved it. Want some more?”

  “No. That little bit’s all I care to drink tonight. You?”

  “No. Need a clear head for tomorrow.”

  “You gotta wait for me to go get another pair of glasses tomorrow. I can get a jeep at first light, drive to Da Nang, and be back here by noon or a little after.”

  “That convoy is pulling out first thing tomorrow morning. I better take Perry and make sure we get down there.”

  “Come on, Carlos. There’s an afternoon supply helicopter that will go down there, and we can fly instead of ride. Think how sore you’re gonna be when you get there, riding in the back of that six-by all that way.”

  “You think that they can give you a pair of glasses by noon?”

  “I’m positive. In fact, I’ll call ahead and the doc over at the aid station can read them my prescription over the phone. I’ll be back by noon and we’ll be down there by the middle of the afternoon. I promise!”

  “Okay, Mack. Plan B. I’ll wait here and get all our gear double-checked while you’re getting your glasses.”

  Before Hathcock had gotten off his cot the following morning, Ron McAbee had already gone to the motor pool and drawn a jeep. He and three Marines, who volunteered to ride shotgun, raced the nearly thirty miles to the hospital at Da Nang. Mack would be back at LZ Baldy before noon.

  Hathcock sat in the mess tent sipping coffee at 7:30 on the morning of September 16. Across from him sat his good friend Staff Sergeant Boone, a counterintelligence Marine. They talked about a patrol that would leave LZ Baldy at 8:30 A.M. and move toward the Que Son area, and Boone invited him to come.

  Hathcock turned down Boone’s invitation, but after nearly thirty minutes of speculating on what the patrol might encounter, Hathcock began to think better of it. He was already tired of sitting around camp, doing nothing, waiting for McAbee to return. He looked at his watch and realized that he had four more hours to wait for his friend and then two hours to wait for the helicopter.

  Boone was halfway out the door when Hathcock shouted to him, “Boone, I’m going. Let me go get Perry and I’ll meet you at your hooch.

  “Perry!” Hathcock shouted as he pulled open the screen door on the sniper platoon’s command hooch.

  The junior Marine sat straight up, wide eyed and startled. “What’s happening? Something happen?”

  “Where’s your gear?” Hathcock said, slinging two rifles over his shoulder and strapping down his pack.

  “In my hooch. Why? What—?”

  “Grab your gear. Meet me back here in ten minutes. Better yet, meet me over at the CIT hooch. We’re going on a special patrol.”

  Ten minutes later, Perry stood next to Hathcock watching a line of five amtracs* parked with their motors running, waiting for the “all aboard” signal to move out.

  “If somebody is gonna take a hit, we need to be where we can help fast. So I guess we ought to get on the middle tractor.

  “Hold my rifle while I climb on top. I’ll pull up the gear and then you can climb up,” Carlos told the London, Ohio, native as the two Marines walked to the third amtrac.

  In a minute, both snipers sat with six other Marines. One of them was a first lieutenant who had just arrived in Vietnam. This was his first mission.

  “Staff Sergeant Carlos Hathcock,” Hathcock said, extending his hand to the officer who seemed more friendly than most.

  “Lieutenant Ed Hyland,” the Marine said, shaking Hathcock’s hand.

  “This is my partner, Corporal John Perry,” Hathcock told the officer.

  “You’re snipers?”

  “Yes, Sir. I’m the sniper platoon sergeant, and Perry, here, is one of our ace trigger pullers.”

  “What’s with that white feather in your hat? I thought that snipers were masters of camouflage. Isn’t that kind of a giveaway.”

  “Yes, Sir. I wear it anyway. It’s been my trademark ever since 1966. I’ve got ninety-three confirmed kills and I don’t know how many thousands of hours of trigger time, and I’ve only taken it off my hat once. That was when I snuck into an NVA general’s compound and zapped him.”

  Perry, taken by the opportunity to brag about his leader, said, “Staff Sergeant Hathcock has the biggest bounty on his head in Vietnam. It’s more than ten-thousand dollars!”

  The lieutenant blinked and Hathcock smiled. “I don’t really know how much it is. It’s three years pay, whatever that might be.

  “This is my second tour. The NVA published a wanted poster on me in 1966, and then last month I got word that they put it out on me again. I haven’t seen this new one. I suppose it’s still the same. However, now I do know what they call me.”

  “What’s that?” Hyland asked.

  “Long Tra’ng and then something after that, but mainly Long Tra’ng.”

  “White Feather,” the officer said, translating the Vietnamese language.

  “You speak Vietnamese?”

  “I understand some of it. I guess they’d call you Long Tra’ng du K’ich.”

  “That’s it.”

  “White Feather Sniper,” the officer said with a smile.

  The amtrac lurched forward and began rumbling down the roadway. Hathcock looked back through the dusty air toward LZ Baldy and thought of his friend. It would be all right. Mack would understand. But he still felt a pinch of guilt as he turned his eyes toward the fields and trees and huts and all the other places where Charlie might be hiding.

  The noise of the convoy was so loud that further attempts at conversation ceased. The Marines sat on top of the vehicles, rifles poised, magazines inserted, looking out with caution at a seemingly tranquil world.

  Ahead of the column, a mine sweep team carefully cleared the way, giving Hathcock a sense of security. Not perfect security, however. He only felt that when he was on his feet, in his element, stalking the enemy. In the bush he made his own luck. Here, his luck rested squarely in the hands of fate and the amtrac driver.

  The amtrac came to a jolting halt, bouncing low on its tanklike treads, causing its three antennae to whip and snap through the air. Hathcock looked back at Corporal Perry and at Lieutenant Hyland who sat next to him.

  “I think we’re going to follow that trail off to the left,” the officer shouted, pointing at some tracks left days earlier by a similar patrol.

  Carlos didn’t like it. He thought of the hand grenades tied in a daisy chain along the cane field.

  One after another, the heavy, armored transports crept off the highway, and as the number three amtrac creeped along the gravel shoulder, starting its turn, Hathcock’s entire world disappeared in a booming, ringing, earth-shattering explosion.

  Fifty startled Marines scrambled for cover as gunfire erupted from the nearby trees. They saw a forty-foot high column of fire rise from the amtrac on which Hathcock and the seven other Marines had ridden. It filled the air with an acrid pall of billowy, black smoke.

  Beneath that smoke, between the flames, Hathcock opened his eyes and saw nothing but blackness and fire. Something heavy pinned his legs. He felt the hair on his neck, his eyebrows, and the top of his head singe and curl. Panic suddenly flashed through his mind and sent his heart pounding—“I’m gonna die!” He had to run. He had to get away.

  Hathcock reached for the dead weight that pinned his legs and saw that it was the body of the lieutenant who had spoken to him only seconds earlier. He was already on fire.

  “Save him! Got to save him!” Hathcock suddenly thought. And without thinking of his own life, he took the young officer by his flaming clothes and hurled him off the side of the burning vehicle. As he looked at the tangled bodies of the other Marines, who had been whole and well only a second ago, he saw their slow, groggy motion among the flames and instinctively began hurling them off too.

  He didn’t notice when he threw Corporal Perry clear of the inferno. All the Marines were equally important to him—brother Marines who would otherwise die. He grabbed th
em randomly and tossed. Privates First Class Roberto Barrera, Lawrence Head, Keith Spencer, and Thurman Trussell, and Lance Corporal Earl Thibodeaux.

  He himself was on fire. His trousers were burning, his chest and arms and neck were burning. And as another explosion rumbled beneath his feet and fire belched skyward through the torn and bent hulk that seconds ago was an amtrac, Hathcock blindly jumped through the wall of flames. He had no idea what awaited him on the other side of that fiery curtain.

  Hathcock struggled to his feet from the gravel where he fell. He did not hear the clatter of machine-gun fire or the explosions of grenades. He saw the fire towering over him and could only hope to get away from that burning trap before it killed him.

  Inside his head he kept asking himself, “Why do I feel wet. I’m weighted down like I’m soaked. Why?”

  Hathcock staggered away from the blazing amtrac, holding his arms straight out from his sides. He knew he was hurt, but it was when he looked down at his arms that he realized his injury was beyond anything he had imagined.

  Skin hung down from his arms like bat wings, ragged and black, as though draped with moss six to eight inches in length. His heart sank as he stopped and sat on the side of the road. “Will I live?” he asked himself.

  “Roll him!” two frantic voices cried. “Quick! Roll him into the water!” Hathcock didn’t know that his clothes still burned, and the bandoleer of ammo draped over his shoulder and the six hand grenades that still hung on his cartridge belt were quite forgotten by him.

  Suddenly some Marines doused him in the muddy water next to the road. A few seconds later he was sitting in the dirt with his head bobbing and his lashless eyelids blinking over his sore eyes.

  A corpsman ran to Hathcock’s side and placed a canteen next to his lips. “Drink all this,” he ordered, and Hathcock drank. When the bottle was empty, the corpsman pressed another to his lips. “Drink all this too.” And he drank. He had finished three canteens of water when a tall black shadow stood over him.

  “Can you stand?” Hathcock heard Staff Sergeant Boone ask.