Silent Warrior

by Charles Henderson

  However, Colonel Ba knew better. Brigadier Le was a hopeless romantic. An idealist among hardened pragmatists. None of these men on their own matched Hathcock. Ba politely retorted Le’s confidence and told General Tran that persistence of the old plan would, with certainty, bring failure. One by one, Long Tra’ng du K’ich would kill these ten men, too.

  The plan devised by Colonel Ba, the more experienced field commander who had risen from a lowly enlisted soldier to his present station of leadership, with great promise to rise much higher, called for organizing ten five-men squads. Each of the ten remaining snipers would lead these squads.

  These squads would work in coordination, always prepared to encounter White Feather. Should one team make contact, the others would close with their support. In this way, they could bring the skill and cunning of all ten phantom hunters and forty more disciplined warriors to bare on this illusive and deadly quarry.

  Tran Van Tra agreed with the plan, but frowned at the thought of this prospect. How can one man require so much from them? Not only did he kill efficiently, but he caused great internal friction among the Communist forces. His cost of manpower far exceeded the numbers he took out of action.

  “SERGEANT HATHCOCK,” MAJOR Wight called into the sniper hooch. “You and Staff Sergeant Roberts pack your trash, and catch a ride south. Got an operation near Phu Cat. You’ll bivouac on a hilltop called Duc Pho.”

  “Now, sir?” Hathcock answered, raising on his elbows where he lay on the floor.

  “Now,” the major said.

  “What about my partner here?” Carlos said, smiling and pointing with his thumb to John Burke, who lay on the floor across the hooch from Hathcock.

  “You and Roberts,” Wight answered. “I want Burke to pick up with the new guys we have to train. You’re too short, and he needs to get used to working with others.”

  Carlos looked at his partner and smiled. He put his right hand up, near his face, directly in his line of sight, and held his thumb and index finger nearly together, allowing only a slight gap between them.

  “Short,” Hathcock said, laughing. “I am so short I gotta use a stepladder to get out of the rack. I can walk under a snake’s belly wearing a top hat.”

  Then Carlos paused and frowned, turning his eyes toward Gunny Wilson, who sat on a stool cleaning his rifle, which he had dismantled, neatly laying the parts on a grease-stained towel he had spread across the top of the field desk.

  “No, Gunny, I take that back. I’m not short,” Hathcock said, and laughed even harder. “I’m next!”

  At Duc Pho, Staff Sergeant Roberts and Sergeant Hathcock spent the remainder of February sitting on a tall hill that overlooked a great flatland bordered on the west by high, jungle-covered mountains, and on the east by the South China Sea. Highway 1 ran north and south directly at the foot of this hill. Behind it, eastward, a patchwork of rice fields faded into sand and the beach. Just across Highway 1 and the western base of the hill, rice fields stretched northward and southward as far as a person could see, and extended westward to the edge of the jungle, and the first steep slopes of the Annamite mountains.

  Viet Cong thrived in the mountains and surrounding jungles that edged the thousands of rice paddies. Thus the operation that Hathcock and Roberts had joined included an entire United States Marine Corps landing force.

  At the end of February 1967, the force had claimed more than 1,000 enemy confirmed kills, and more than 1,000 listed as probable kills. Carlos Hathcock had gone to Duc Pho credited with sixty-five confirmed kills. He returned to Hill 55 on the first of March with seventy-five confirmed enemy dead to his credit.

  Before Duc Pho, his longest confirmed kill was at nearly 1,200 yards. When he returned, he had a new record of 2,500 yards, more than double the distance. Among those longshot kills that he made from the hilltop, a twelve-year-old boy at more than 1,500 yards.

  He had pushed and ridden a rifle- and ammunition-laden bicycle from the western jungles and deep valleys between the high ridges to the flatlands below Duc Pho. Carlos first noticed him as he tottered along the far end of a narrow roadway that stretched the length of a dike that divided the rice fields, and then wound into a small village next to Highway 1. As he drew closer, Hathcock realized he carried rifles on the bicycle.

  The Marine sniper placed his first shot into the front wheel of the bike, sending the boy and his load spilling across the road. When the boy grabbed a rifle, snapped one of the several banana-curved magazines into it, and began to fire up the hill, Carlos killed him.

  The vision of killing the small boy remained vivid with Hathcock the remainder of his life.

  MARCH BEGAN DRY in Vietnam. the tropical spring season seemed more like July in Georgia for the Marines assigned to the 1st Marine Division Scout/Sniper Unit. Carlos Hathcock now spent most days lying on a cot he dragged outside, wearing only his shorts, letting the sun darken the rest of his body to match his arms, hands, and face.

  News of his impact on the Communist forces had finally reached the reporters who covered the war for the world’s wire services, newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks. Hathcock did his best to avoid seeing any of them, and he refused to open his mouth for even the simplest questions. After all, he concluded, it had been an innocent enough looking article in the Sea Tiger, a Marine Corps newspaper printed in Da Nang by the III MAF Public Information Office, that had identified his and Captain Land’s names and faces to the enemy.

  That was last year, too, when he had far fewer kills and a much less notorious reputation.

  Yet even in his silence, and the refusal of the 1st Marine Division and the III MAF to discuss snipers, the Associated Press finally put out more ink on Carlos. The short item appeared in many of the larger U.S. newspapers, including the Raleigh News and Observer, a major daily that Jo Hathcock had delivered to their home at 1303 Bray Avenue in New Bern, North Carolina.

  The story had gone out in February, gleaned from idle-talking grunts, smiling at a friendly reporter who just wanted to shoot the breeze. Not an interview.

  Jo Hathcock read the article while Carlos sat at Duc Pho in his mountaintop shooting position. Until then she had believed what her husband had told her. He instructed sniper school students.

  Carlos had not lied. He had not told the whole truth either, which was as bad as a lie in Mrs. Hathcock’s mind. She wrote him a fiery letter, and enclosed a copy of the newspaper clipping.

  The story began:

  A SCOUT-SNIPER with the 1st Marine Division in Vietnam earned praise from his commanding officer for “making life miserable for the Viet Cong.” Sgt. Carlos N. Hathcock of New Bern is one of several “expert marksmen” credited with killing more than 65 enemy. Firing at ranges up to 1,125 yards, Hathcock and the “crew” have been picking off better than two enemy a day—without a friendly casualty.

  Reading the clipping had made the young sergeant sick to his stomach. Yet he still believed the lack of information had been for Jo’s own good. He was due to get home in a few weeks, and Major Wight had now begun to keep him inside the compound nearly every day.

  He had this tour in the bag. Now all he had to do was stack BBs and wait.

  DURING THE SEVERAL weeks since White Feather had killed the Communist sniper platoon leader, Colonel Ba had incorporated the men into the ten teams. He had them develop teamwork in the western mountains, ambushing Army Ranger and ARVN patrols well south of the country where the American sniper hunted.

  With the hot winds of March, he moved them northward to Brigadier Le’s headquarters, in the wide, flatland west of the mountains. Fifty men organized into ten small units that operated independently, yet in coordination so that when one struck the enemy, the others could fold in their support.

  White Feather might win a tactical battle against one or two snipers, or even three or four. But he certainly had no chance against fifty hardened guerrillas.

  CARLOS HATHCOCK AND John Burke had spent St. Patrick’s Day in the long valley beyond the
first mountain ridges west of Hill 55. The same valley where they had taken their first sniper class in October. They had lain near the head of the long meadow, close to the spot where the students had made their first kills.

  Now, as evening approached, the two snipers began to gather their equipment and return to the hill. Another empty day.

  For nearly two weeks, enemy activity had subsided noticeably in the areas west and southwest of the snipers’ base. At first it had given the Marines quartered on Hill 55 a respite. But after several days of hardly a gunshot or plume of smoke, men at the compound began to get edgy.

  In the past three days that Hathcock and Burke had hunted, they saw only a spotted boar hog that had obviously escaped his pen, and now sought the company of stray sows. He had thrashed his way through the brush behind the snipers, and Carlos had his pistol drawn, ready to shoot, when he saw the source of the noise.

  The hog busily rooted his way past the pair, gouging subterranean morsels of tubers and grubs from the earth with his powerful snout. They watched him graze his way across the meadow, eating the grass, then turning the soil to get the roots, too.

  “He’ll eventually run into a bunch of VC who’ll make pork chops and ribs out of him,” Carlos told Burke as they watched the hog.

  “They deserve him,” Burke said. “I would never butcher a big old boar like that. Even if you castrated him and fed him for six months, his meat would still have that foul stink to it. If you tried to make sausage with him, you’d have so much spice and red pepper in it that you couldn’t eat the stuff anyway. No, sir. I say let old Charlie have a feast on him.”

  Carlos began to chuckle, thinking about the hog a day ago. He had just finished fastening the top flap of his pack shut when Burke nudged the sergeant with his toe.

  Slowly Hathcock turned his eyes and saw the five men emerge from the same tree line, perhaps the same trail, as had the VC patrol they annihilated here in October.

  The sergeant flashed a wide smile at his partner.

  Burke laid his cheek against the stock of Hathcock’s sniper rifle, letting the scope’s crosshairs settle on the back of the last man—a small fellow wearing green shorts and a black shirt. A turtle-shell-shaped, dark green pith helmet tilted on his head. He carried an AK-47, fully automatic assault rifle.

  So did the guerrilla walking point. And as Carlos examined the three remaining soldiers with the spotting scope, he saw that two of them also carried the automatic rifles while the man walking in the center position of the line of five held a long rifle with a short scope attached to the top of its receiver.

  Carlos looked at Burke, who had already begun back pressure on the trigger, and nudged him. The lance corporal released his finger and glanced up at his sergeant. The white feather in Burke’s hat rustled in the breeze.

  Hathcock held his palm toward his partner indicating for him to wait. He wanted these men well away from any quick cover. Armed with new rifles and with a sniper at the center position, these men were no ordinary VC patrol.

  “Let them get well into the gap, almost to that little island of bushes,” the sergeant whispered. “If they reach cover, I want them where I can see them leave, if they decide to do that.

  “Once the point man is about ten or twenty yards from the bushes, drop the guy in the middle, carrying that sniper rifle. They look pretty well oiled, so make ’em count. I’ll go to work on tail-end Charlie with your M-14.”

  Burke felt for the white feather in his bush hat, and rubbed it for luck.

  Like nearly every Marine on Hill 55, and an increasing number at the surrounding outposts and fire bases, too, John Burke had begun wearing a white feather in his bush hat. It had become the fashion of the men who patrolled the bush to wear a white feather, after the news of the big bounty on Hathcock had spread.

  Even officers wore them. And it did not matter if the Marine wore a bush hat or a helmet, he fastened a white feather to the band around the base of its crown.

  The gesture made Carlos realize the closeness of his fellow Marines. They had painted targets on their backs to help protect their brother and confuse the enemy.

  Hathcock nudged Burke with his heel, and whispered, “Go ahead and turn one loose.”

  The lance corporal’s shot hit the patrol leader in the neck, nearly taking off his head as his spine popped in two from the bullet’s concussion.

  Simultaneously, Carlos sent an M-14 round directly into the last man’s chest, splitting his breast bone and destroying everything under it.

  The remaining three guerrillas dashed for the island of bushes. The same bushes the October patrol had tried to make. The VC opened fire, sending bullets chopping through the brush and over the heads of the two Marines.

  “Let’s just lay quiet,” Carlos said while branches and AK rounds popped overhead. “They’ll try to run for it, eventually, and we’ll get them. We got a full moon tonight, so let it get dark. Those hotdogs are done.”

  “They’re just wasting ammo,” Burke said, and was about to add to his comment when several automatic rifles began chattering somewhere in the distance behind them. The lance corporal’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped slightly open. Carlos could read the fear that now began to express itself in John Burke’s face.

  “Sounds like company,” Hathcock said. “I think Archer and his crew may have them tied up awhile in that ambush position they set up to cover our backs.”

  “I’m just glad they were bored enough to want to come hunting with us,” Burke said.

  Carlos cracked a smile at his partner. John felt better seeing it. He knew now that his sergeant was not worried.

  “Let’s keep sitting,” Hathcock said. “We’re going to get those hamburgers.”

  Suddenly gunfire opened from the tree line across the meadow, but well west of the island of bushes where the remaining members of the first VC squad hid. Red tracers arched through the evening sky, over the clearing, and chopped their way eastward in the tree line where the two Marines lay.

  At the moment the rifle fire walked its way to the Marines’ position, the three guerrillas darted from the small thicket and ran westward, trying to join their comrades who had now moved toward the snipers’ left flank.

  Less than 200 yards south of Hathcock and Burke, Lance Corporal Archer and his eighteen-man patrol began to fall back, closing their rear toward their two comrades, who opened fire on the three running men despite the hundreds of bullets that spattered and popped around them.

  Carlos killed one of the guerrillas and John dropped the other two.

  “I hope Archer’s on the radio getting a little help,” Hathcock said, now firing at Viet Cong who moved along the western end of the tree line from the north side of the clearing.

  He had no more than finished the words when both snipers felt panic surge through their bodies as someone or something thrashed and ran through the dense brush and trees behind them.

  “Keep your fire on them, Burke,” Carlos said, turning the M-14 toward their rear, ready to shoot. “Try to keep them from getting around the end and on our left flank!”

  Hathcock lay on his back, holding the rifle’s stock in his armpit, leveling it waist high for an average height man. In the now-fading evening light, he could see the shape of a person, and then another. He also saw the round steel helmets on their heads and called out, “Archer!”

  “Yo, Sergeant Hathcock!” the lance corporal responded. “You two alive?”

  “No, we’re ghosts talking to you!” Burke growled in a loud voice, still firing at the advancing VC.

  Carlos rolled back to his belly and opened fire again with the M-14. He dumped his pack filled with loaded magazines and loose rounds on the ground between Burke and him.

  “Hope this little bit of what we have lasts,” the sergeant said. “I think all Archer’s boys have are M-16 rounds and M-60 belts. And I don’t want to be trying to yank rounds out of those machine-gun belts with this bunch coming at us.”

  Archer slid t
o Hathcock’s left and opened fire.

  “We radioed operations when the shooting started,” the lance corporal told Hathcock. “I told them we would consolidate and set up a defense with you. I hope I gave the right grid coordinates.”

  Carlos looked at the Marine and said, “Let me see your map.”

  He unfolded it and compared it to his own. Then he smiled at his friend.

  “These numbers what you gave?” the sergeant asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Archer said, nodding his head.

  “That red spot is us,” Carlos said, pointing to Archer’s map. “If you read those coordinates, you did good.”

  Archer smiled.

  “We have a little close air support coming, and a couple of choppers with about seventy or eighty reinforcements, after the F-4s get finished,” the squad leader said, showing his teeth and raising his eyebrows.

  Carlos shot two more Viet Cong, and Burke killed three.

  WHEN THE PAIR reported to Top Reinke, just before midnight, the master sergeant bear-hugged them both. Then he frowned.

  “I gotta go let Major Wight know you’re back, and alive,” he said. “He wants a word with you, Sergeant Hathcock.”

  While Burke cleaned gear and put it away in the sniper hooch, Carlos and Top Reinke reported to the major, who sat, still in uniform, behind a field desk, writing in the light of a small candle. He looked up as Hathcock snapped his heels together and locked his closed hands at his sides, along his trouser seams.

  “You’re on restriction, Sergeant,” the major said in a quiet voice.

  “That it, sir?” Carlos said. “I can tell you what happened.”

  “That’s it, Sergeant,” Wight said, again in a quiet voice. “I heard, already. I’ll read your after-action report tomorrow.”

  Hathcock struck his heels together again, took one step backward, then placed his right toe behind his left heel, spun smartly in an about-face, and marched to the door.

  “Oh, and one other thing, Sergeant,” Wight said. “I don’t think it is a good idea to sunbathe on that cot anymore. Those snipers may well have come back to this roost.”