Silent Warrior

by Charles Henderson

  The driver hit the brakes, sending two Marines lounging on boxes tumbling toward the front of the truck bed.

  Carlos snapped the goggles off his face and onto his helmet, and began searching the brush with his binoculars. Suddenly he dropped them and opened fire with the machine gun.

  “Ambush!” he screamed as he poured a stream of 700 grain bullets into the foliage.

  The two Marines who had tumbled, now stood in the front corners of the truck bed and fired their M-14 rifles at a dozen Viet Cong who fled toward a group of huts. Carlos had dropped one man with his machine gun, but followed several other smaller figures who carried large weapons in their hands and ammunition bandoliers strung across their shoulders.

  “The BAR Team!” Carlos shouted to the two Marines who fired their rifles beside him. He walked a stream of tracers up a rice paddy dike to the trail where the five women fled. Suddenly the machine gun stopped.

  Carlos pulled the charging handle and let it go. The bolt slid halfway and stopped. He released the receiver cover and used an empty shell casing to clear the jam. He laid the ammo belt back in the gun and slammed the lid shut. He drew the bolt back and let go. As he pressed his thumbs on the butterfly trigger, positioned between the gun’s handles, he realized that the BAR Team had disappeared from sight.

  Hathcock took a green package of cigarettes from a pocket on the front of his flak jacket, shook one out, and lit it. Leaning over the big gun, he stared at the tree line to where the BAR Team had escaped. A knot of frustration grew in his stomach and he slapped his hand on top of the machine gun. “So close,” he thought, “only to slip through my fingers. Damned gun jam, anyway.”

  He saw the women only once more while still serving as an MP at Chu Lai. It occurred a week later while Carlos was again on motorized patrol. The BAR Team apparently decided that the heavily armed caravan presented too much risk. So they fled, again to the west.

  Carlos released several bursts of fire while other Marines potshot with their M-14s. But the BAR Team held too much distance and cover for anyone to have a realistic chance at hitting them.

  BY THE LAST week of August, Jim Land had already arrived in Vietnam, receiving his marching orders from Major General Herman Nickerson, who had just assumed command of 1st Marine Division.

  Nickerson knew that Land had been one of the marksmanship officers at Quantico who selected rifles and equipment, established doctrine and tactics, and developed a viable table of equipment and organization for the first sniper organization in Vietnam. Major Robert A. Russell led the unit within 3rd Marine Division, under the command of Major General Lewis W. Walt.

  Captain Land had already spent half of his one-year overseas tour at Camp Butler commanding the base ordnance company when General Nickerson saw him there. Nickerson told Land that he was no ordnance officer, and that he had only thirty days to go to Vietnam, organize a 1st Marine Division sniper school and tactical unit, and have it operational.

  When Jim Land arrived at Chu Lai, he immediately began scouring the division’s personnel rosters, looking for the best sniper candidates to man his unit. On the rolls, he found Master Sergeant Donald L. Reinke, Gunnery Sergeant James D. Wilson, Staff Sergeant Charles A. Roberts, Sergeant Carlos N. Hathcock, and Lance Corporal John R. Burke. The captain requested that General Nickerson reassign the Marines to Temporary Additional Duty with him.

  He selected each of the five Marines because of their superior marksmanship skills, their adaptability and confidence in the field, and their mental stability. In addition, each of the men had a history of dedication to their missions and to the Marine Corps. The most important and common attribute to each, however, was his great respect for human life.

  CARLOS HATHCOCK PUSHED open the door to his new hooch with his boot toe. He carried a seabag on his shoulder and dragged a footlocker. The place was empty except for a Marine wrestling the end of a cot.

  The lance corporal sat on the floor, pulling with both hands and pushing with both feet, trying to maneuver the end stick in place on his cot. Still straining, he glanced at Sergeant Hathcock and then grunted as the device finally popped into place.

  “There’s an easier way of doing that,” Carlos said as he took a folded cot from a pile at the far end of the hooch and brought it where he had lain his footlocker and seabag.

  In a minute he had the canvas bed unfolded and one end stick in place. He walked back to the pile of cots and pulled out another end stick. Using it as a lever, he popped his cot’s other end stick in place in a matter of seconds.

  “After you put enough of these together, you figure out an easier way of doing business,” Carlos said with a smile.

  “I’m Lance Corporal Burke. John R.,” the Marine told Carlos. “Pretty much everybody just calls me Burke though.”

  Burke extended his hand and Carlos took it, giving it one shake and letting go.

  “Sergeant Hathcock, Carlos N.,” Carlos said, mimicking Burke’s introduction. “Pretty much everybody just calls me Sergeant Hathcock.”

  Both Marines walked to a pile of bedrolls next to the cots, and began searching for the cleanest and most serviceable of the bunch.

  “Be nice to have a pillow,” Carlos said as he pulled the knots out of the tie strings on his bedroll and let it unfurl on top of his cot.

  Burke looked at Hathcock and smiled. “Hold on just a minute, I got an idea.” Then he trotted outside.

  In a few minutes the youthful Marine from Alabama jogged back to the hooch and handed Carlos one of two empty sandbags he had gotten.

  “Wad up some old skivvies or utilities in ’em, and I think they’d make pretty good pillows,” Burke said.

  Carlos immediately liked John Burke. He stood nearly a head taller than Hathcock, with dark hair and a deeply tanned face that made his bright, wide smile stand out. Burke always seemed happy.

  THE SNIPERS SPENT September going on short patrols as a six-man team north and west of Chu Lai. Jim Land used a sniper tactics book written during World War I. Unbelievably it was the newest version available; however, the tactics proved to be sound. Land merely adapted them to the conditions, terrain, and enemy tactics of Vietnam. Rather than working the fringes of large units, Land adapted the methods to guerrilla warfare. The basics remained identical: Engage the enemy at great distance with one shot. Rely on cover and concealment as the primary defense.

  From the field training at Chu Lai and the guidelines that the World War I sniper manual provided, Land and his men developed a basic doctrine for Vietnam. Chief among these rules: One shot, one kill. Never fire a second shot from the same position. Never return to the same hide. Always remain alert: smelling, tasting, seeing, hearing, and feeling. Always be part of the environment: smelling, looking, and acting in unity with it. Always keep a good logbook. Never take a life casually.

  3

  Welcome to Da Nang

  SWEAT POURED FROM the lieutenant’s face while he sucked water from his canteen. It seemed to flow out of his skin as fast as he could drink it.

  With his right hand, he lifted the steel helmet covered with green camouflage fabric off his head, and with the same forearm he wiped the sweat from his eyes. They burned from the salty perspiration.

  Hungry and tired, he gazed across the valley below him. In another hour the unit he accompanied could be across and at a landing zone where helicopters would carry them home. Food, a cot, and getting the boots off his aching feet seemed a great reward to him now.

  Before daylight, he had eaten creamed chipped beef on toast, two eggs, bacon, and a grapefruit. On his way out of the chow hall he had emptied a container of salt packages into the cargo pocket on the right leg of his trousers.

  Now, waiting on the trail, he reached into that pocket and took out two of the brown paper packets. He tore the ends off, and dumped the salt they contained onto his tongue. The young Marine swigged more water, quickly washing the salt down his throat.

  “Pew,” he said, frowning at the bad taste. A Vietn
amese soldier, who squatted two feet from him, smiled.

  “Bad taste, huh,” he said.

  “That’s right Nguyen,” the lieutenant said. “Bad taste, but keeps heat cramps away.”

  The young officer had learned about taking the salt packets from the chow hall when he had prepared for this duty in Okinawa. The Marine had learned about heat the hard way.

  During the rappel phase of the combat preparation program, the sergeants instructing the lieutenant’s class took the men to the top of a cliff face. There, they spent the morning roping down, and then running up a trail to the top.

  There were three lieutenants in this group: himself and two classmates from his platoon at The Basic School.1 The rest of the men were junior enlisted Marines and Navy Hospital Corpsmen destined for reconnaissance or similar units.

  After two hours of the hard exercise in the Okinawan heat, several of the men became sick to their stomachs. Some threw up. Others simply sat in the shade, their faces pasty and wet.

  “Virus going around,” a crusty sergeant said to the three green officers as he walked by them, helping a lance corporal to a seat in the shade.

  The lieutenants rested beneath the shadow of the cliff, stomachs hurting, feeling dizzy, and sporting complexions like cold cans of beer. Pale and sweaty.

  The lieutenant’s two fellow officers headed down the trail to get aid from a Corpsman on duty at the cliff base. He and a Marine assistant sat by a green, jeep-style, tactical ambulance with a large red cross painted on the canvas that covered the vehicle’s cargo area.

  “Got anything to make me feel better?” the lieutenant, who had remained on the cliff top, asked the gruff instructor.

  The sergeant smiled.

  “Oh, now the officers want to listen?” he said. “I got the impression that you three gentlemen already knew everything you needed.”

  “Okay, Sergeant,” the lieutenant said, “I am humbled, and get the point. You have my attention.”

  The sergeant gave the lieutenant four salt packages, and said, “Pour these in your canteen cup, swish it around, and sit over there in the shade and sip it. Loosening your clothing will help, too. Heat cramps, sir. That’s all.”

  “Don’t want to get heat cramps, Nguyen,” the lieutenant said, and tossed two packets to the Vietnamese soldier.

  The American officer wore the tiger-stripe uniform typical of advisors assigned to work with South Vietnamese units. He was a trainer and observer.

  Two canteens and an ass pack dangled from the back of his cartridge belt. A K-Bar knife and several pouches of ammunition hung at his side. He had unhooked the buckle, and let his suspender straps transfer the load to his shoulders instead of his hips. A model M-1911A1 .45-caliber Colt pistol tucked in a black shoulder holster rode beneath his arm at his left side, over his metal-plated flak vest. In his hands he carried Colt’s latest rifle, the AR-15.

  Only a few years earlier, Americans serving as advisors in Vietnam could not carry firearms on patrol. The lieutenant was glad that rule had changed. This would be a bad place to go unarmed.

  The patrol had stopped at the side of a trail that led along a hogback mountain that 3rd Division Marines had named Charlie Ridge. Victor Charlie controlled this countryside. It was his ridge and valley, a prime spot for ambushes.

  The Marine looked down at the green, peaceful valley landscape, checkered with fields along the valley floor and dotted with random clusters of small huts. But the fields stood fallow and the huts empty. The South Vietnamese government, as part of their “Strategic Hamlet Program,” had relocated the valley’s resident farmers to “safer territory.”

  The lieutenant considered this, and blew a breath of air in disgust.

  “Farmers, right,” he said to himself. “Most likely Viet Cong.”

  These days, when patrols encountered anyone on this ridge or Dodge City and Happy Valley, below it, they treated those people as hostile. Almost anything that moved got shot. The ARVN took few prisoners here.

  In regard to this land, the lieutenant had long ago decided that those who weren’t VC before the relocation certainly had the motivation to join the VC afterward. Being forced from one’s ancestral land and homes did not sit well with him either. While he may have had a jaded attitude about the fidelity of the farmers, he nevertheless felt compassion for their plight.

  He had grown up working on his father’s farm in the south-central region of Kentucky, a short ride from the Tennessee line, near the town of Franklin. His family raised tobacco, corn, and beans, and ran a small herd of crossbred Angus/Hereford cattle.

  An honor roll student in high school, the young man received an ROTC scholarship. After graduating from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, he began his active duty payback in the Marines.

  Walking at the head of the second platoon, the lieutenant took small steps to maintain the wide interval both between him and the platoon ahead and the men who followed single file behind him.

  THE COMPANY-SIZED PATROL from Lien Ket 70 Division, Army of the Republic of Viet Nam [ARVN], had begun their trek at daybreak. The sun had now turned deep orange as it began to drift behind the mountains to the west.

  As the patrol wound its way off the ridge and turned eastward, a gunshot cracked the air.

  Soldiers dropped to cover, and fired blindly into the trees and undergrowth. When nothing responded to their barrage, they stopped shooting. The soldiers crouched nervously behind what cover they could find at the trail side, and waited for orders.

  Sprawled facedown in the dust, a pool of blood spreading beneath him, the Marine lieutenant lay motionless. The gap in the front of his flak jacket, which he had unzipped for better ventilation, had offered the enemy sniper an unprotected avenue to the American advisor’s heart.

  The .30-caliber bullet had shattered his breastbone and pulverized the vital organ and vessels beneath. He died in seconds.

  Shaken by the sudden death of the American, the Vietnamese major who led the patrol crouched next to his radio operator and reported the casualty.

  “Only one shot. Enemy not sighted,” he had advised his battalion headquarters. He told them that the gunman had hidden somewhere ahead and below them.

  Anxiety now rode heavy in the major’s heart. Darkness loomed. His patrol had fallen badly behind, and they faced at least another hour’s hike to reach their pickup point.

  Little things had slowed their progress all day long. Missed checkpoints, poor land navigation, more frequent rest stops than he had anticipated, unexpected investigations of suspected enemy positions.

  Pushed to the brink of panic, the major urged his men to step more quickly. He was anxious to reach the landing zone that lay just beyond this quickly darkening valley. From there, helicopters could whisk them out of this place.

  Watching the patrol from below, the Viet Cong sniper slid quietly from her firing point. Her face revealed French ancestry, yet her heart beat steadfastly for the Vietnamese that predominated her heritage. Dirty yet still hauntingly attractive, the woman crept silently back to the hiding places where her Viet Cong platoon waited.

  American intelligence officers had begun calling her the Apache. Her reputation exceeded the most gruesome tales told about Apache warriors in the American West. Burying a man in an anthill, burning him alive, bleeding him slowly to death with a thousand cuts paled in comparison to the tortures she had devised for her prisoners.

  Quietly, she informed her guerrillas that she had killed the American, and that the enemy company now advanced hastily toward the killing zone. Moving stealthily to their ambush positions, the Viet Cong platoon then lay silently as the sound of many footsteps approached them.

  The Apache waited until the first platoon had begun to pass the apex of her patrol’s ambush and the second platoon had strung itself dead center. Then she opened fire, signaling for the slaughter to commence. Her platoon’s rifles, machine guns, and command-detonated mines chewed the South Vietnamese patrol in half. Panic-stricken, the
company’s remnants fled in two directions, retreating as fast as they could run.

  Half of the first platoon, half of the third platoon, and nearly all of the second platoon lay dead or wounded. The Apache had scored a great victory.

  Saving celebration for later, she maneuvered her platoon quickly away from the site. She anticipated the possibility that the South Vietnamese unit could manage to regroup and launch a counterattack. Her men would likely prove ineffective at attempting to hold a defense, even against what was left of the ARVN company.

  Quiet as cats, the Apache and her platoon spread along a line through the forest. The black-clad guerrillas then stalked eastward, hoping to sweep in a straggler or two from the disarrayed unit.

  Two soldiers wearing tiger-stripe camouflage uniforms ran eastward. Both men had lost their helmets and rifles when they escaped the ambush. Now they hoped that they could quickly reach the landing zone, where their unit would regroup and where the helicopters would rescue them.

  Sweat soaked the men’s hair and faces. Their eyes opened wide in the darkness, trying to see what might lay ahead of them. The two unarmed soldiers ran, overcome with fear. They never thought to look down.

  As though struck by a lightning bolt, both men tumbled to the ground when their shins struck three parachute cords stretched among the trees. Just as the two soldiers fell, six Viet Cong swarmed them. The guerrillas tied their ARVN captives’ hands behind their backs, and gagged and blindfolded them.

  “Didi, didi mao,” the woman growled at the two men, telling them to move out quickly. She had more business tonight.

  Her soldiers tied cords around the prisoners’ necks, and led them like dogs as they rushed eastward.

  JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, screams echoed from the distant tree line below Hill 55. As 3rd Division Marines spent their last night on this dirty knob, southwest of Da Nang, the sickening despair of the two tortured men deprived them of sleep once again.