Silent Warrior

by Charles Henderson

  “Next time you put your crosshairs on a moving target,” Carlos told the Marines, “you’ll have rounds in your chambers. It’s gonna be Homer the Hotdog in his black pajamas at the other end. So, now is the time to get solid and hard. Don’t waste it because you’re pointing at a gas can.”

  EACH MORNING BEFORE class, Carlos and Burke visited the 26th Marines S-2 office on their return walk from breakfast. The snipers hoped to get news of a VC avenue that would provide them with the opportunity to initiate their students. Pop their cherries, as the instructors put it. A well-traveled path would offer the snipers several positions and enemy targets.

  Finally, the opportunity came. The gunnery sergeant, whose shaved head glistened in the morning sunlight, told Carlos and Burke about an area southeast of Hill 55.

  “It’s a wide, clear area several miles long with a big bend south about dead center,” the gunny said. “You’ve got heavy cover on both sides that connects to some pretty hot areas. The past few days, we’ve had sighting reports of several VC patrols crossing at different spots.”

  “Sounds like just the thing we’re looking for, Gunny,” Carlos said, and hurried to the sniper hooch to report his news to Captain Land.

  HUMIDITY FROM THE nearby sea and the early morning’s cool air left layers of fog creeping along the hillside, clinging in the ravines and channels that had eroded from the top. Along the higher parts of the valley, the fog spread thin in a translucent veil, a sheer white shroud caressing the ground and trees. Where the earth fell to gullies and other low-lying places, the fog rolled thick, white, and heavy. Puffy as marshmallows.

  In a silent procession, each man draped with camouflage, their skin painted green and bush hats pulled low above their eyes, Carlos Hathcock and John Burke led their twelve sniper students along a down-sloping trail. Passing the last line of green-painted hooches, the snipers followed the path toward the picket lines and listening posts that guarded the wire surrounding Hill 55.

  On a flat area approaching the wire, Carlos gathered the snipers in a U-shaped formation, to inspect them and their equipment. He made sure the men had taped covers on their scopes to keep the wet air from condensing water on the lenses. He checked ammo pouches, canteens, and packs. Then he asked if anyone had questions. Were they clear about this day’s mission, their shooting partner, and which instructor the two of them would join in the field? Were they certain of the positions of their primary and secondary rally points? Could they find them in a panic?

  Satisfied, Hathcock waved his right hand forward with his index finger pointed down the trail, signaling the men to move ahead.

  One by one, as the camouflaged Marines, sporting bush hats and hunting rifles, passed the watching sentries, Carlos could hear voices muttering from the sandbag-protected holes.

  “There goes murder incorporated,” he heard one man say to a watch-post partner. “Cold-blooded fuckers.”

  Carlos knew his students had heard the various comments, too. The words had humiliated him because he never considered himself cold-blooded. He had compassion. He had never murdered anyone either. But he could deal with it. Don’t let the bastards wear you down.

  What worried him was that some of his students might enjoy such comments. They might boast about it. Murder incorporated. Cold-blooded fuckers. Macho and hard.

  A bad attitude for a sniper.

  “Form me a school circle,” Carlos whispered to the man behind him after the group had cleared the last security perimeter and entered a thicket of chest-high bushes. The student passed the word to the next, who passed it to the next.

  They squatted in the fog where the slope of Hill 55 turned flat and joined the valley. Although not a man to make speeches, Carlos knelt in the center of the circle, and spoke from his heart.

  “You probably heard the comments those troops made about us as we walked by them a while ago,” Carlos began. “I don’t know if it’s the first time you heard anybody say that about you or not. Maybe you, yourselves, have said it. But you better know right now, we don’t commit murder. We are not murder incorporated. We ain’t cold-blooded either. Every single one of you has scruples. I have scruples.

  “Anybody we draw down our sights on and squeeze off a round at is the enemy. We make sure. He has to carry some sort of military equipment or a rifle. Something to make you absolutely certain he’s a bad guy. It ain’t murder. Killing that VC will prevent him from killing your fellow Marines.

  “Your units chose you, and we screened you with several things in mind. One principle we looked for in each one of you, and what we keep looking for, is you must value human life. You never take one casually.

  “I don’t like being called murderer or cold-blooded. I’m not either one. Just remember, those guys don’t know any better. It’s up to you to teach them better.

  “We’re just cogs around a big wheel. We’re no higher on the food chain and no worse than any line trooper out there. We just do a different kind of job. We’re another tool of the battalion, just like a radioman or a supply clerk, or a rifleman in a fire team.”

  Carlos stood slowly and carefully looked above the brush that had hidden their school circle.

  “We’re gonna move out two by two in intervals,” he whispered to the men. “We are in Charlie’s country right now. So it’s heads-up time. Life and death. From here on this ain’t practice. It’s real.

  “Remember, slow and deliberate movement. Pay attention to your cover. Most important, pay attention to what’s happening out there. Smell it, taste it, feel it, and hear it.

  “Charlie is paying attention. He can smell a cigarette a mile away. You got on flu-flu juice or deodorant, he’ll smell you. Break a stick, talk, cough, sniffle your nose, he’ll hear it. Move without thinking, jerk or twitch, slap at a bug, and he’s gonna see you. And then he’ll do his level best to kill you.

  “Don’t forget, control keeps you alive. Let your fear, your wits, or your discipline get out of control, and Charlie will use it against you.

  “We are the aggressor. We are the hunter. Charlie is the squirrel. And we’re gonna get him. One shot, one kill.”

  Land, Reinke, Wilson, and Roberts had gone ahead of Carlos, Burke, and the class. They waited along the route where each instructor would pick up a pair of students as they passed. From that point, the three Marines would stalk to a preselected hide where they would spend the day watching a likely avenue.

  At day’s end, at a designated time, Land had instructed that each team would retreat south of their original route and join the other teams at the primary rally point he had chosen and had coordinated with the regiment operations section. Once the students and instructors had regrouped, they would patrol their way back home.

  Carlos Hathcock had taken the last team from the group. A sergeant and a corporal. John Burke had taken the next to last team, two lance corporals, and moved to a hide at the edge of the clearing, 1000 meters to Hathcock’s east. Their main rally point lay directly south of Gunny Wilson, who had the middle team. The route home looped far south from the way they had gone out.

  By nine that morning the fog had disappeared, and the foliage that surrounded Sergeant Hathcock and the two students had long ago dried. Now, as the sun climbed high in the east, its heat sent swarms of gnats hovering in the shade of the bushes and trees.

  The corporal who took his turn behind the spotting scope right of Carlos slapped his ear.

  “Fuckin’ bugs!” he grumbled. “Feels like they’re gonna crawl in my head and eat my brain.”

  Carlos said nothing. The gnats swarmed his ears, too. And the sergeant’s to his left as well. He made a mental note.

  Two hours more. The heat cracked the shades of green greasepaint on the snipers’ faces. They still had seen nothing.

  “Shouldn’t we move to a better spot?” the corporal whispered to Hathcock. An hour ago he had traded spotter duties with the sergeant, who now peered through the green, foot-long, 20-power spotting scope.

  “
Shhhhh,” Carlos whispered. He made another mental note.

  Five more hours passed. The three Marines had not moved. They had heard no shots from any of the other teams. Nothing moved except a breeze from the west. Yet Carlos considered the day very successful so far. It taught an important lesson in patience. Sometimes a sniper might lay in one spot a day and a night, and see nothing.

  Slowly, Hathcock moved his canteen to his mouth and sipped water. The sergeant followed suit in the same manner. He would make a good sniper, Carlos concluded. However, the corporal was trouble.

  He was a good marksman and very smart with tactics, land navigation, and with fire and air support coordination. But his mind wandered. He lacked the discipline to remain still.

  The slowly strengthening breeze swept through the wide stretch of fields and tree lines that extended below the small rise where the three men lay. It had taken away the gnats, but large flies now dive-bombed through the branches above the snipers.

  “Fuckin’ bugs,” the corporal muttered under his breath. “We seen nothing but bugs. Fuck this shit.”

  Carlos shifted his eyes at the corporal, then back at the grass growing across the flats. He watched how it now bent under the pressure of the more rapidly moving air. The sergeant to Hathcock’s left carefully turned the focus adjustment on the spotting scope, reading the mirage. He gauged a windage estimate from the angle that it boiled its heat waves upward.

  Laying his hand next to the ground, hidden well below a line of grass that grew in front of the three men, the sergeant showed four fingers and pointed left, signaling that the sniper should consider four minutes left windage. Carlos judged the adjustment needed was double that, but said nothing. He watched the corporal turn the knob on the right side of his rifle scope, six minutes left.

  The sergeant slowly panned the spotting scope right and left, carefully searching for movement, a flash, anything that might signal an approaching enemy. Carlos had watched the sergeant work, feeling pleased with this student, when he noticed that the Marine had suddenly frozen in place.

  Following the spotting scope’s line of sight, Carlos saw what had stopped the sergeant. Hidden well in the shadows, beneath low branches, a man dressed in black squatted.

  Carlos thought to himself, “Okay now we’re gonna find out who guessed the wind right.”

  Very softly Carlos whispered to the corporal, “Slowly and deliberately, start scoping the tree line on the far left. Don’t shoot yet.”

  Like oozing tar, the corporal glided his rifle’s aim leftward, searching the trees. When he saw the man squatting, he fixed his aim on the center of the target.

  Carlos raised his binoculars and looked closely at the man.

  “He’s got a rifle,” Carlos softly whispered. “Don’t shoot. Not yet.”

  Like a deer, the man suddenly sprang up and ran out of the trees, an SKS rifle in his hand. Crossing fifty yards of clear area, he then disappeared into an island of bushes and tall weeds.

  “It’s okay,” Carlos whispered. “He can’t go nowhere without us seein’ him. Not unless he’s got some tunnels in there. Besides, the direction he’s goin’ he’ll find five other sniper teams waitin’ on him.”

  Discipline had now taken hold of the corporal. He was on the rifle. He wanted this shot.

  “Keep watchin’ those trees where old Homer ran out,” Carlos whispered to the sergeant, who had turned the spotting scope after the running VC.

  Just as Carlos had finished speaking, another VC, and then another, and then three others broke from the tree line and entered the thicket where the first man had disappeared.

  “They’re heading east,” the sergeant whispered to Carlos. “Bet they’re gonna join an ambush back near the base.”

  They were the first words the sergeant had uttered since the three Marines had crawled into their hide.

  Carlos smiled.

  “Before you shoot,” Carlos whispered to the corporal, “let’s see what cover they aim to get to next.”

  Ten minutes later, the first man darted from the trees, ran 100 yards, and then dove behind a paddy dike. He raised his head for a moment, searching his surroundings, and then waved to his comrades.

  “We got ’em now,” Carlos said.

  Spread several yards apart, running single file, the remaining five guerrillas darted from the trees to join their point man.

  “Shoot the last one out,” Carlos whispered in his most relaxed tone. “Take your time.”

  The corporal’s rifle cracked its shot, and the last man fell backward. Then he got up.

  The others kept running, and with his own Winchester rifle Carlos shot the fourth man in line. The sergeant fired within a split second, as well, and blew dust behind the third man.

  The last man, who had fallen backward, ran past his dead comrade when the corporal fired a second shot, dropping the soldier.

  “They’re gonna try to get as far away from us as fast as they can,” Carlos said. “Let’s fall back from here and try to get around behind them. Set up in a new hide, in case they come back this way, or send company. This much shooting, they know exactly where we are right now.”

  Cautiously, the three snipers moved westward, and then followed the forest cover north for a quarter mile. From their new position they could see the trees that stood out from their previous hide, and the island of tall foliage where the six Viet Cong had hidden.

  “We’ll keep a watch to the left, where they first came out, in case they got friends,” Carlos whispered. “But we gotta keep our eyes peeled to the east, too. They could try to swing back.”

  The shadows from the trees overhead the snipers now stretched across the land in front of them when they heard two almost simultaneous gunshots, east and around the bend in the tree line from their previous hide.

  “Bet that’s Burke,” Carlos whispered.

  Ten minutes later, one more shot echoed farther east.

  “They keep running into our folks,” Hathcock thought as he checked his watch and nudged his two students.

  “We better get moving to the rally point,” he whispered. “We’ll be walking back up the hill in the dark otherwise, and we don’t want to be doing that.”

  The sun cast long shadows at sharp angles when Carlos and his two students reached the rendezvous site. They were the last to join the group. Two by two the Marines set up a patrol formation and pushed toward home, crossing the wire in the twilight.

  “I kind of feel sorry for those poor gooners,” John Burke said to Carlos that night. He lay on his cot, his back propped against his seabag, wearing a T-shirt and trousers, rubbing one bare foot with the other.

  “Why’s that?” Carlos asked, sitting on the side of his cot, writing in a notebook.

  “They never could get across those flats,” Burke said. “Every time they broke out of the trees and tried to run across, somebody shot at them. Finally, those last two just quit putting their noses out.”

  “We did put a dent in their game plan, I suppose,” Carlos said as he continued writing, never looking up from the page.

  Three of the sniper students logged kills that day, Carlos claiming the fourth.

  Their class’s first test against the enemy proved successful, Hathcock concluded. Yet the misses still bothered him. He wrote more in his notebook, and Burke began to snore.

  “Windage and range estimations,” Carlos mumbled to himself, still writing. “We’re gonna have to find more time to concentrate on those two items.”

  During their subsequent missions, after several days of range finding and wind guessing, the twelve students’ percentages rose dramatically. In total, Land, his men, and their students recorded seventy-two kills in less than a month.

  By early November, the first class of students had departed Hill 55, and returned to their units, veteran snipers.

  4

  The Frenchman

  “MONSIEUR METZ, SIR,” a Vietnamese lad, who looked no more than sixteen, said in the local French diale
ct. “We’re going home tonight, yes?”

  “Yes, Huong,” the man who called himself Philip Metz answered.

  He stood on a concrete floor in a brick and iron building across the Cambodian border, washing his hands in a deep metal sink. Behind him, on the cold, hard floor, four naked bodies lay side by side. Blood running from their opened throats flowed into a metal drain set into the concrete.

  “I am finished for now. We will leave as soon as it is dark,” he continued while wiping his hands on a brown-stained piece of cloth that at one time had been part of a flour sack.

  The building in which the man had just washed his hands supported a rust-streaked metal roof and a wide front porch that extended the full length of the structure. Two separate doors, flanked by tall iron-barred windows, led inside. At one time it had served as a plantation overseer’s house, typical of those built in French Indochina by white western colonists during the early 1900s.

  On the cool concrete floor of the porch, eight Viet Cong guerrillas, dressed in black shirts and shorts, and wearing rope-soled sandals, sat in a circle. At each man’s side lay his rifle. They spoke in soft voices, sipping tea and eating rice with a fish and vegetable topping. From a platter in the center of their circle, the soldiers nibbled six-inch long rolls made of a nearly transparent thin noodle-pastry wrapped around vegetables and meat and then fried. Before each bite, the men dipped the inch-thick rolls in a golden sauce in which floated pieces of very hot red pepper and finely chopped chives.

  A teapot steamed on a hibachi nearby where an old woman waited. She watched the men eat, ready to respond to them should any need arise.

  Philip Metz walked through the door to the left of where the men sat eating, and stepped to the porch’s edge. As he leaned against a support post, he lit his dark brown calabash pipe.

  He had come to Indochina when he was barely more than a boy. At fifteen, he had left his home in Chartres while most Europeans spoke of their concern about Germany’s chancellor, Adolf Hitler, but did little more than speak.