Most of these Marines had lost count of how many nights the Apache had serenaded them with her bloody music, sung by slowly dying victims. Each night that she performed her gruesome act, the tortured lullaby did its work on the minds of the men who sat helplessly listening. It had become a well-worn tune, but remained effective.
Psychological warfare, the Intel and Ops guys called it. For the grunts, just more bad dreams. Leaving the Apache behind made going north into Quang Tri, Ashau, and other equally delightful shit holes seem almost attractive.
At daylight, a patrol cautiously crossed the wide fields below Hill 55 and entered the forest. Even the hardest grunt had difficulty handling the sight when they finally located the two men.
Neither of the prisoners showed any signs of bullet or stab wounds. The Marines concluded that the Apache had spent the night peeling and cutting the derma away from the men’s flesh while they cried out from the pain. She had sliced numerous gashes across their faces, and from the neck down, had skinned them.
No doubt the Apache had taken her time. Perhaps she skinned one man while the other watched, making sure the screams lasted through most of the night. She was an artist at her work, sculpting nightmares.
The patrol cut the men from the trees where the Apache had left them tied, and zipped the bloody corpses inside body bags. Now, well into the morning, the Marines dragged the two dead soldiers up Hill 55 where the South Vietnamese liaison could then take them home.
MEANWHILE AT Chu Lai, 1st Division Marines finished packing and began their movement north.
“That’s about it,” Carlos Hathcock said as he pushed up the tailgate on the six-by truck. He and the other snipers had loaded their heaviest equipment onto the bed of the big vehicle bound for Hill 55, the snipers’ new home.
“Worst is over,” Jim Land said in a sarcastic tone as he wiped sweat off his arms and face with his utility jacket. “All we have to do now is carry this other mountain of gear to the flight line, and get on the chopper.”
“Hope it’s a darn site cooler up on that hill than down in this hole,” Carlos said as he slipped his uniform top back on.
“Don’t count on it,” Master Sergeant Reinke said, picking up his seabag and two rifle cases. “We gotta go a lot more north and a whole lot higher up to find anything cool.”
“Wait a second, Top, don’t go knocking our new place prematurely. I found a nice hooch for us, set out on Finger 4, with two good sandbagged emplacements. It’s an excellent vantage point that covers two sides of the hill and a lot of country,” Land said as he lifted his seabag and rifles onto the back of a truck that would take the six men to a row of helicopters waiting at the flight line. “And sitting out on that finger, we ought to catch plenty of breezes.”
“Yes, sir, breezes off incoming fire, I’ll bet,” Top Reinke said with a smile as he piled his gear aboard, too.
Marines from the 25th and 26th regiments, deployed to Vietnam from the recently reactivated 5th Division at Camp Pendleton, had already begun movement this October morning. Their infantry battalions traveled both by helicopter and ground transport to the Hill 55 compound where Land’s snipers would join them.
That same day in October 1966, Marine Corps numbers had swelled to 60,000 now serving in Vietnam. Their areas of responsibility since March 1965 had grown from eight square miles around Da Nang to more than 1,800 square miles and one million people. Current plans estimated that this area of responsibility would expand to covering 2,700 square miles and two million people.
During that eighteen-month period, Marines in Vietnam carried out 150 regimental- and battalion-sized operations, killing 7,300 enemy, and fought more than 200,000 small unit actions, accounting for an additional 4,000 enemy dead.
In those same months, more than 9,000 Marines suffered wounds in combat, eighty percent of whom returned to duty. Sadly, however, nearly 1,700 Marines died in action.
Lieutenant General Lewis W. Walt, nominated for his third star by President Johnson in February, held overall leadership of the eighteen infantry battalions and supporting Marine air and ground units in Vietnam as Commanding General, III Marine Amphibious Force. Until March, General Walt had also directly commanded 3rd Marine Division. However, with the escalation of Marine numbers in Vietnam, Major General Wood B. Kyle assumed Walt’s command of 3rd Division. Major General Herman Nickerson commanded 1st Marine Division.
With the expansion of Marine forces, 3rd Division now moved from Da Nang into the northern reaches of I Corps. As many as seven battalions of Marines and three ARVN battalions, since early August, had fought the North Vietnamese Army’s 324-Bravo Division and their reinforcing elements. Daily, the Communist enemy to the north sent scores of fresh troops southward, continually replacing the NVA soldiers they had lost in the battles.
During July alone, in northern Quang Tri Province, Marines killed 824 of the enemy. From early August through the end of January, Marines in this fight, called Operation Prairie, would kill an additional 1,397 enemy soldiers, most of whom were NVA regulars.
This 3rd Division hunting ground began at the 1954 Demarcation Line, the 17th parallel, better known as the Demilitarized Zone, and stretched east to west along the Ben Ha River, just above Highway 9. From that northern border, the Division’s territories reached southward to the Hai Van Pass outside Da Nang.
Their new Tactical Area of Responsibility included such garden spots as Khe Sanh, Con Tien, The Rock Pile, Camp Carroll, the Ashau Valley, Dong Ha, Quang Tri, Hue, and Phu Bai.
1st Marine Division’s new TAOR stretched from the Hai Van Pass westward to Cambodia, and southward to Phu Cat. It included its own variety of unpleasant attractions such as Charlie Ridge, Happy Valley, Dodge City, Elephant Valley, Antenna Valley, Que Son Hills, and the Riviera. Marines and soldiers alike called it Oklahoma Territory, westward from Da Nang, and Arizona Territory southward. Both famous as “Indian Country.”
While 1st Division headquarters joined III MAF at the top of Freedom Hill, identified on the maps as Hill 327, Captain Land and his sniper unit boarded an H-34D helicopter bound for Hill 55. Each man carried a seabag filled with his most important personal possessions, and packed in cases slung over their shoulders, their rifles.
The snipers’ weaponry included several M-14s, as well as a number of Model 700 Remington .30-06 Springfield rifles with Redfield 3 × 9 power scopes, and Model 70 Winchester .30-06 Springfield rifles with 10-power Unertl scopes. They fired full-copper-jacketed, 173-grain, Sierra boat-tail bullets set in match cartridges, manufactured to exact specifications by the Lake City Arsenal.
With the top-grade ammunition, all of the rifles held groups in a less than one-inch wad. Describing it, Carlos would hold his index finger and thumb together in front of his face, and say with a grin, “Tighter than a gnat’s ass.”
Although heavily laden on the helicopter, Land believed that the overland route up Highway 1 from Chu Lai to Da Nang presented too great a risk for their most important equipment, riding aboard the cargo trucks.
Between these two major compounds lay miles of potential ambush sites. Hot spots such as the Que Son Hills and the several hamlets of Cam Ne, places always certain to offer American caravans ample helpings of VC fire.
“I heard that your trucks got held up at that big iron bridge, a few miles south of the turnoff that heads up here from Highway 1,” a captain from 3rd Division Operations said to Jim Land, and extended his hand to greet the new Hill 55 tenants.
“No, Skipper,” Land said, dropping from the tailgate of a truck that had carried him and his snipers and their most valued gear from the compound’s landing zone. “I hadn’t heard that.”
After a quick handshake, Land walked to his team’s new hooch, and lifted its screen door, which lay sideways, twisted on its bottom hinge and torn away from the door at the top. Debris, discarded during the previous inhabitants’ departure, littered the floor and the area in front and behind the hardbacked shelter. Most of the screens that wrapped the ho
och as a continuous series of windows from shoulder height to the metal rooftop flapped from big tears.
“Looks like we’ll be a while before we need the gear, anyway,” Land then said. “Know what’s going on?”
“They apparently took some hits when they approached the bridge,” the operations captain said. “According to the sitrep, a few of the trucks got dusted with small-arms fire, no one hit. I guess the cargo is no worse for wear. But they are held up until a unit can get the bridge cleared.”
“Looks like folks that lived here before left in a hurry,” Burke said as he began picking up trash.
Carlos joined him in the work.
“Skipper,” Gunny Wilson said to Land, “I’m going on a prowl for some hammers and nails, and whatever other tools and material I can scrounge.”
Land nodded his approval, and watched the Marine jog up a path that led from Finger 4 to the headquarters compound on the hilltop. Then, seeing the gunny glance back, Land shouted to Wilson, “Get some paint, too.”
Master Sergeant Reinke walked down a path toward the entrances of two large fighting holes ringed with sandbags stacked three high and two bags across. Land and the operations captain followed him and talked.
“Hooch is a little ratty,” Land said, “but we can fix that. Hard to beat these firing positions, though. From here, we can control a decent part of this hill face. Plus, camping on this finger we’re out of the way, and have plenty of room to set up our sniper classes.”
“Good area, but there’s one downside,” the operations captain said.
“What could that be?” Land asked.
“Front row seats for the Apache,” the captain said.
Land gave the Marine a puzzled look. “Apache?”
“I’ll let your Intel guys fill you in; I don’t want to rob their thunder,” the captain said. “Right now, I need to catch my ride up to Phu Bai. But I will tell you this: She’s the devil.”
The captain took several steps up the path toward headquarters, then he turned toward Land and said, “And I do mean the devil.”
Several hours later, the snipers finished their cleanup. Carlos Hathcock had rebuilt the screen door, straightened and reattached the hinges, and nailed it back in place. Burke and Roberts had policed all the trash and cleaned the hooch. Reinke and Wilson fixed screens and repaired holes in the roof while Land divided his time with each project, overseeing the work, and repainted the sign that stood to the left of the hooch’s front door.
With a small can of red and another of yellow paint that Gunny Wilson picked up after someone had left the two cans sitting unattended next to a new sign at the supply tents, Land lettered in yellow over a red background 1ST MARDIV SCOUT/SNIPER UNIT AND SCHOOL.
While they waited for the truck, Land and his Marines further busied themselves stacking sandbags around the rear of their hooch. Its back door faced outward on Finger 4, toward the rice fields and jungles below, vulnerable to enemy gunfire.
When the truck carrying the remainder of their gear finally arrived, a lieutenant from 26th Marines intelligence section stepped off its running board, where he had hitched a ride from the headquarters area.
After a sweaty handshake, Land and the lieutenant examined area maps while the snipers unloaded their equipment and set up their cots, cabinets, tables, and workbenches.
The intelligence officer pointed out enemy strongholds, places like Charlie Ridge, Dodge City, and Happy Valley. Then he went into detail about the Apache.
He showed Land on the maps her more frequent operating areas, and graphically described several of her torture techniques. He told of a civilian contractor she had captured. She had tied a basket on his head in which she enclosed several hungry rats.
The lieutenant concluded the horror story by telling of the two South Vietnamese soldiers she had tortured all night and, that very morning, had left tied to the trees below their hooch, skinned.
“Get her and you can write your own ticket here,” the lieutenant said.
Jim Land said nothing. He just stood with his arms folded, quietly watching the setting sun.
“Downside all right,” he muttered under his breath.
WITHIN THE MONTH, Land commenced the first scout/sniper class. All six of the Marines instructed the students, assigned there from various battalions throughout the 1st Marine Division. They divided teaching chores according to each sniper’s best skills. Carlos Hathcock focused on marksmanship development and individual tactics.
A critical part of Hathcock’s shooting fundamentals involved a marksman’s thorough familiarity with his rifle and his ability to adapt the various firing positions to accommodate his body, and still provide himself a solid platform.
“Snapping-in,” as Marines called it, provided Carlos’s students the opportunity to develop an intimate familiarity with both their rifles and their shooting positions.
While leaves from Maine to California turned golden and red, everything remained a dust-covered green in Vietnam. The heat waves rippled across the valley as twelve sniper students sat in a line on the edge of Hill 55’s fourth finger. Here men with empty rifles, contorting their bodies into various shooting positions, trained their sights and dry-fired the weapons. They sought stability. Smoothness. Trigger control. A snap with no bounce.
Below, in the fields, Vietnamese farmers had begun cutting and thrashing their rice crop at dawn. After binding the base of a bundle of rice stalks, the heads heavy with grain, the farmers and their families cut the plants and laid the bundles along the rows where they worked. Others then gathered the bundles, which they carried off several at a time. The workers suspended the bundles in flat wicker baskets tied at each end of long poles, which they balanced across their shoulders. They brought their loads to the edge of the field. There, holding a handful of the stalks at a time, women standing behind a small, foot-powered thrasher, stuffed the plant heads into the machine’s snout. Squatting below it, other women scooped the harvested grain into large pots. Nearby, women and older children poured rice into cloth bags that they then sewed shut with string and piled into a cart pulled by a water buffalo.
Through the morning, the Marine sniper students watched through their rifles’ scope sights as any worker would walk to or from the road. As the farmhand moved, a rifle would follow him. If he stopped, so did the weapon’s muzzle.
“Remember to breathe, relax, focus your aim, and at the same time, squeeze,” Carlos said to a student who held his scope’s crosshairs on the chest of one field hand. As the man carried a load of rice bundles, the sniper student gently titled his rifle down and to the right, keeping his sights fixed on his target until the trigger snapped the firing pin forward.
“That looked pretty good,” Carlos said. “How did it feel?”
“Felt fine. Really steady, Sergeant Hathcock,” the student answered. “But that guy looks a little ticked. He’s waving his hands and pointing up here.”
Carlos took the student’s rifle and trained the scope on the man below. He could see him talking to another farmer, both wearing flat, cone-shaped hats woven from straw. While one of the two workers began walking up the road toward a cluster of huts, the other put the pole and baskets back on his shoulder and returned to the field for another load.
“Don’t worry about it,” Carlos said as he handed the rifle back to the student. “It ain’t like we’re really shooting at ’em.”
Then Carlos took several steps backward and spoke in a loud voice to all twelve sniper trainees. “I want you to pick out one man, woman, or kid down there, it don’t matter, and follow your sights on ’em, and let that trigger break while they’re on the move. Remember, trigger control.”
Carlos paused for a moment, and added, “Most of the time when you take a shot at the enemy, he ain’t gonna stand still for you. So you have to get used to moving those crosshairs with the target, and still keeping good trigger control and a solid position.”
After taking a long drink of water, Carlos sat o
n the ground in a modified cross-ankle position. He tucked his rifle into his shoulder, his sling taut on his arm, and joined his students, snapping-in on the farmers below.
Before lunchtime, the workers suddenly left the field, leaving the thrasher and hundreds of rice bundles unattended. First, they gathered on the road. Then, as a group, they walked back to their village where two South Vietnamese police jeeps waited.
All dozen sniper students and Carlos had kept their scope sights focused on the people, watching and still snapping-in, as they proceeded along the narrow roadway.
“I think we may have a little problem,” Carlos said to himself, when he saw two police vehicles. So, when Gunny Wilson tromped down the path after lunch, his face slightly flushed, Hathcock had a good idea of what troubled his supervisor.
“Before you say anything, Gunny,” Carlos said as Wilson stopped in front of him with his arms crossed, “we have no ammunition loose out here, and I personally made sure every rifle chamber was clear.”
“I don’t doubt it, Sergeant Hathcock,” Wilson answered. “But the colonel had Captain Land standing tall after a village chief and four RVN cops had chewed his ears about you guys pointing your guns at their people.”
“We were just snapping-in, Gunny,” Carlos said. “They need practice on moving targets. What else are they going to be able to aim at?”
“Just snap-in on the barrels,” Wilson responded. “Keep your rifles pointed away from those farmers. Captain Land said so. If those students need practice on moving targets we’ll take ’em off the hill someplace. Sight in on the VC.”
Carlos knew better than to try to argue the point any more. As the gunny departed, Hathcock walked to the side of the sniper hooch and rolled back two fifty-five-gallon barrels, painted white with rows of black circles and silhouettes stenciled from top to bottom, all around each of them. He set the steel drums thirty feet apart. When the students returned from chow, Carlos divided the group, six men each, around the painted barrels.
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