Silent Warrior

by Charles Henderson

  THE TAN, SMILING face of a tall, dark-haired lance corporal, who stood leaning in the doorway of the sniper hooch in Chu Lai, Vietnam, began growing bright in Carlos’s mind. The lad held a warm can of Orange Crush in his left hand, and leaned his right shoulder against the doorjamb while resting his right foot on his boot toe, crossed in front of his left. He wore a green sateen Marine Corps utility cover tilted back on his head, the band wet with sweat, and the dampness creeping up the sides of the hat’s starched and ironed crown.

  Carlos always liked to remember his friend and partner, John Roland Burke, like that. Smiling.

  Both Hathcock and Burke shot the same zero, so when they switched duty on the sniper rifle, neither Marine had to make any adjustments. Ron McAbee was the only other Marine in Hathcock’s entire life who also shot the same rifle sight settings as he did.

  However, remembering John Burke also caused Hathcock’s heart to ache. Of the more than 600 men that Carlos trained into qualified snipers, Burke was the only one of them that he knew of who had not come home from the war. Anyone would point out to the Marine sniper that 599 out of 600 represented quite a record. It told of the superior training that Carlos provided these men. But for Carlos that made no difference. Each of them had a face and family, people who loved them. They had an entire life ahead of them. To have one of them die in combat remained unacceptable to Hathcock.

  Carlos tried to move his mind from the sadness that came with remembering John Burke. He focused more on that smiling face. That hot day in Chu Lai. Jim Land had just begun to organize the sniper unit and school, and everyone there was new.

  Those days seemed carefree now. Although in reality they had been anything but carefree. Once they moved to Hill 55 life in the field became very serious.

  How many times had he and Burke confronted impossibility and made reality of it? The three days in Elephant Valley had been one of those seeming impossibilities.

  It had actually been fun, in a dark way. He and John had encountered an entire company of North Vietnamese Army replacement troops hiking along a faint roadway that bordered a rice field in the middle of Elephant Valley.

  Neither sniper had dreamed that they could do much more against that many enemy soldiers than pick off a few of them and then run. However, Carlos’s strategy of taking out the men who wore pistol belts first proved sound. Without leadership the frightened company dove for cover behind a long rice paddy dike.

  It might seem the best move to the unschooled, but Carlos knew that diving behind that dike was the worst thing a patrol could do. It was almost suicidal. They should have turned into the fire, returned their own fire, and attacked the ambush. For many, this immediate action tactic was a hard lesson to learn, but hundreds of dead soldiers who had sought cover in the killing zone stood as testament to its folly.

  The NVA had lain behind that paddy dike for three days with no water while Burke and Hathcock lost count of the kills they made during those days and nights. The two snipers had taken turns catnapping while the other kept illumination rounds called into the valley through the dark hours.

  Running low on ammunition, the two Marines called in artillery salvos to finish their work that third day while they retreated up the slopes and around the mountain called Dong Den.

  One thing about having Burke as a partner, neither man ever let impossibility cloud his thinking. Perhaps that is what finally used up Burke’s life—facing impossible odds because the lives of his fellow Marines depended on his courage, his will to fight against bad odds.

  But, then, they never considered enemy strength, because they always planned to hit and escape. Much the same tactic that the Viet Cong had used for decades. As long as they could hit, then disappear, it didn’t matter how many of the enemy they faced. The sniper controlled where, when, and how to fight. With that he controlled the battle. He never gave the enemy the opportunity to launch an attack on him. His elusiveness left the enemy with no idea of where, when, or how to find him.

  This chess match of deception had played itself to the extreme as he and Burke had faced and methodically taken out the majority of an enemy sniper platoon, trained in the north expressly to eliminate Carlos Hathcock. It was a private, very personal war that they waged in the midst of the greater conflict.

  How many missions had he made with Burke? Most of them, he thought. He had several with Jim Land, a few with Charlie Roberts, but most were with John Burke.

  Next to Carlos, the young lance corporal was the best sniper in the division. Together, the two snipers made a team capable of accomplishing the seemingly impossible. Thus, it was no wonder to Carlos that he and Burke more often than most faced the unusual and even the bizarre.

  Over time, a special bond grows between men facing the extreme together. The two snipers had lived at life’s edge, side by side, for eight months. They survived on peanut butter and John Wayne crackers. Placed their trust in each other and their faith in God. Burke had become more of a brother to Carlos than simply a partner or fellow Marine. Although the last time Carlos had seen John Burke was in the spring of 1967, the memory of him that day remained clear in every detail.

  He could see himself joking with Burke and the other snipers while standing behind the diesel “six-by” truck, waiting to climb in the back of the canvas-covered cargo bed and make the rough trip to Chu Lai. Carlos had dreaded how his kidneys would ache after the long ride in the hard-bouncing truck. Burke and the other snipers had kidded about drinking plenty of beer so that the kidneys would flush good after the jolting.

  Carlos nearly cried when he said good-bye to Burke that day. He remembered looking out of the dark canvas cavern as the diesel droned down Hill 55, and seeing John Burke waving farewell in the billows of red dust. His smile. Wide and happy. Showing the purity of his soul.

  He thought of Burke and how he, too, loved shooting. John had excellent talent and would certainly have found himself competing in Quantico on the Big Team. Carlos would have enjoyed shooting with his friend. After the work of war, the pleasure of competition would have made up much for both of them. Shooting. Competition. Nothing in his life had ever seemed more satisfying.

  “LICK ’EM AND stick ’em Privates,” a scratchy voice droned over the public-address system. A hundred Marine Corps recruits wearing yellow sweatshirts and green herringbone utility trousers frantically raced to patch the bullet holes in the fifty targets. They slapped black adhesive paper patches over the black centers of the targets, and white adhesive patches over the white areas. The recruits used many more white patches than black.

  A sergeant seated inside a shack at the center of the line of targets lowered in the butts at Camp Pendleton’s shooting range began to shout over the loudspeakers, “Hurry up! Hurry up, Privates. Another relay of shooters is ready on the firing line.”

  “Stand by!” the sergeant cried out, and paused, waiting for the secondhand on the wall clock in the target shack to cross the twelve o’clock position. “Targets!” he continued.

  Fifty targets rose together from the butts, and in that same instant forty-nine bullets ripped through the paper pasted on cheesecloth.

  Recruit Private Carlos Hathcock adjusted his knee slightly and closed his eyes for a second and then opened them. The black center of the target remained in the center of his sight. He let out half a breath, allowing the front sight blade of the M-1 rifle to stop in the center of the black bull’s-eye. As it settled, he began increasing pressure on his right index finger, drawing back the trigger. He was in his bubble.

  When the rifle cracked, sending his shot 200 yards downrange and into the target, he placed a pencil mark on the center of the small target picture in his shooter’s data book.

  “I think I got a pretty good one off that time,” he thought to himself.

  In a few seconds, the target rose with a white marker in the center of the black bull’s-eye. A recruit in the butts beneath the target pushed a white painted metal disk on the end of a pole in the air. With it
he covered the center of the target, indicating Hathcock’s score: a five.1

  A voice came from behind Carlos. “Where is your point of aim, Private?”

  “Sir, at six o’clock bull, sir,” Carlos said to the primary marksmanship instructor, reciting what the Guidebook for Marines taught.

  “You made an excellent shot, but why is your call at center mast?”

  “Sir, that is where the private last saw the front sight blade when the bullet broke, sir,” Carlos answered respectfully in the third person, as was the custom for recruits speaking to any Marine.

  “But you know to hold at six o’clock bull?” the instructor asked in a way that was more a reminder than a question.

  “Sir, yes, sir,” Carlos answered.

  Carlos took a second .30-06-caliber round from the loading block and slid it into the rifle’s chamber, sliding the butt back into his right shoulder. He laid his cheek back to the exact same spot on the stock where it had been when he had shot the first bull’s-eye. Taking a breath, relaxing, closing his eyes, and reopening them, the target again rested center mast on his sight blade.

  A guilty feeling swept him, and he eased his elbow forward on his knee, allowing the sight to move downward to the six o’clock position.

  “It just don’t make any sense. Where you aim ought to be where the bullet hits,” he thought to himself as he added one click of elevation to his rear sight aperture. “Not six inches below it. Here I am on qualification day, and he’s asking me questions.”

  Carlos closed his eyes, then opened them. Satisfied that his position was solid and aligned with the target, he squeezed the trigger.

  When the target was raised back up, a white spotter rested in the six o’clock position of the bull’s-eye. Carlos cleared a lump from his throat and wrote the score in his data book. Behind him, a recruit with Carlos’s scorecard noted the second bull’s-eye. Another five. Two in a row.

  While the target was in the butts, Carlos looked downrange, careful not to watch his hand as he adjusted his elevation back to its former setting. “What they don’t know won’t hurt ’em,” he told himself.

  The next shot struck center, in the V-ring.

  Carlos marked his call at six o’clock in his data book, and made a little check by the score. “Me and God will know it’s center mast,” he told himself.

  He had placed all of his shots sitting and kneeling at the 200 yard line in the black. As he rose to his feet, adjusting his sling tight to a “parade” position, the recruit keeping his score whispered, “Bet you drop one out here.”

  Carlos narrowed his eyes and glanced back over his shoulder at the fellow private. The young man smiled, and Hathcock went back inside his bubble. He focused his concentration on the target, placed his left elbow against his ribs, and rested the rifle on his palm.

  The day had begun gray. A cool breeze ruffled the red range flag on the left side of the berm bordering the range. The air was wet and heavy, and now a fine mist began to soak the cotton shooting jacket that Carlos wore. Even though it was July 1959, and usually warm in Southern California, the cold Pacific Ocean turned Hathcock’s breath into a white cloud. “Lights down, sights down,” he told himself.

  Fog drifted across the 200 yards of clear area between the shooting line and the targets as Carlos’s first shot broke paper on the left side of the bull’s-eye.

  “Nine o’clock,” he told himself as he marked the call on the page of his data book and picked up his second round in the standing or offhand position.

  He always tried not to think about the last shot or the next. Only this shot. As calm settled over him, the front sight blade of his M-1 rifle became so clear he could see the mill marks on its back.

  A second offhand bull’s-eye. It felt good.

  After his third bull’s-eye, Carlos glanced back at the private keeping his score. Hathcock avoided smiling at the fellow, but only looked him in the eye. The recruit smiled and gave Carlos an encouraging nod.

  His fourth and fifth shots also struck black. A clean score, sitting, kneeling, and offhand.

  Carlos loved the 200-yard rapid-fire, and the 300-yard rapid-fire almost as much. But four of his rounds drifted out of the black on the 300, and nearly wrecked his concentration. His shots had all struck in a tight cluster, but at the three o’clock position on the target, leaving the four rounds in the white.

  He felt like kicking himself. He had nothing but black through the entire 200-yard string of fire, and cleaned the 300 slow fire, too.

  “Damned wind,” he told himself as he walked back to the 500 yard line.

  “Pay attention to the range flags. This is where it is all made or lost,” he said aloud as he sat on his ready box and adjusted his sling around his left bicep. He slid the thick shooting glove on his left hand tight against the front sling swivel and pulled hard, tightening the loop around his arm so that his fingers felt as though they would burst.

  “Tight sling, solid position, adjust with your toes,” he said as he dropped to his knees when the targets rose. Although he knew the range officer in the booth at the center of the firing line had called out to commence firing, Carlos never really heard it. He only saw the targets and heard the noise on the loudspeakers.

  He never shot first. Never rushed. He looked one last time at the dial on the side of the rifle sight, making sure he had truly adjusted in his 500-yard dope.

  “Out on the right,” Carlos mumbled. He felt his heart pound seeing the red face of the disk come up in the center of the target. It was the fifth red face he had seen this day. Another four.

  The wind became unyielding and unpredictable, gusting and shifting. Visibility also worsened. Anyone would be lucky to strike black now.

  Carlos studied the range flags. The ones nearest him fluttered rapidly. Those at the 300 yard line lay limp. The flags at the 200 rose and fell.

  A TELEPHONE RINGING pulled Carlos’s awareness from that rainy day at Camp Pendleton back to his bed. The room remained quiet and he could hear a voice somewhere, talking to whomever had called. The voice was familiar, but he could not place it.

  He felt himself smiling, remembering how he had won the high shooter award for his series in boot camp. That day he finished his qualification with a score of 241 out of a possible 250. He was only one shot away from tying the Marine Corps qualification record. That was his first trophy for shooting well.

  Lying silently, Carlos’s mind drifted into his early past. He thought of his mother and his father. Their lives had been difficult. His father drank excessively when Carlos was little. It prompted several separations between his parents. On those occasions his mother always took him to live at his grandmother’s home, at the end of Butler Road in Geyer Springs, Arkansas.

  She had a gray, rural route mailbox mounted on a post by the dusty gravel-covered road. Someone long ago had painted FRANCIS SWANNER on its side, in black block letters. Whenever his grandmother had an outgoing letter, Carlos always asked to take it out to the box. It wasn’t so much putting the letter inside that he enjoyed, but raising the small red metal flag. Carlos loved to snap it up from its resting position, signaling the postman to stop and pick up his grandmother’s letter.

  How could such a simple thing, he thought, mean so much to a kid?

  More than anything, however, Carlos, from the time he could first remember, loved shooting. He and his dog, Sassy, along with an old Mauser rifle his father had brought back from the war, passed many days alone in the woods, enjoying the best part of his life. His spirit thrived in the outdoors, in the country, and pushed against the walls of city life that constrained his need for freedom.

  AS A LAD in Kansas City, Kansas, while his mom and dad were together, Carlos had gotten a Daisy pump BB gun for his birthday. Of course, his parents thought that he would only shoot around the house, up in the trees or at cans.

  However, Carlos had an adventurer’s spirit. Day by day he expanded his hunting range until it reached the grounds of a nearby Catholi
c church.

  “Pigeons,” Carlos said as he raised the air rifle to his cheek and took aim.

  Several of the gray-and-white birds crowded on the edge of the church’s roof. Plink—a pigeon jumped just as the BB struck the gutter beneath him. Carlos moved closer.

  This time Carlos worked the pump on the rifle so much that he could barely snap it back in place. Carefully, he lined his sights on a pigeon.

  “Stop! Stop right now!” a voice shouted to him.

  Carlos dropped the BB gun from his cheek and turned to see four nuns running at him. He wanted to run. Flee the scene of the crime. But he knew better. In his disciplined home life, he had learned to stand and take responsibility for his actions.

  “Young man,” a nun whose face was pale and wrinkled said in a stern tone. “Thou shalt not kill! This church and its grounds are sanctuary for all of God’s creatures.”

  Carlos said, “Yes, ma’am.” He thought to himself, “I wonder if that applies to the mice in the basement?” He had always considered pigeons and starlings pests, too. They nest in rafters and leave a nasty mess.

  The nun reached to take the BB gun. When she pulled it, Carlos’s finger snagged on the trigger. Splat—the BB struck a sheet of water, puddled over with mud, in a flower bed only a foot away from Carlos and the nun. Speckles of mud splattered on both of their chests and faces. It left brown spots on her glasses, her white starched collar, and the white starched headpiece over which she had her black veil draped. Brown spots also speckled her pale face and tightly pursed lips.

  “I am sorry,” Carlos said sincerely, and let go of his gun.

  “I will keep this,” she said, “until your mother or father comes to retrieve it.”

  Young Hathcock walked home and confessed his sins to both of his parents, who forgave his transgression. However, no one went to the church to retrieve the BB gun.