“Okay, I am on my way. Marble Mountain, right. I know where it is. Out by China Beach. Right. Thanks.”
Staff Sergeant McAbee clipped the receiver back into its case and offered the gunny a half-smile.
“I’m headed out to the ship to see Carlos,” McAbee told the gunnery sergeant, and in two giant steps the six foot, two inch Marine jumped in the jeep and roared away, slinging gravel and dirt.
Mack held the jeep driver’s M-16 in his right hand by its pistol grip as the two Marines raced northward on Highway 1. The lance corporal behind the wheel beat the horn button with the heel of his right hand each time they passed groups of Vietnamese walking or riding bicycles, motor scooters, or carts along the roadside. He never released his foot from the accelerator pedal that he kept planted against the floorboard. When he passed the people, he left them choking in a swirl of dirt and gravel.
A few kilometers north of the bridge that crosses the Song Ky Lam, the driver skidded the jeep in a right turn off of Highway 1 and onto Route 4, which headed east through Hoi An. At the beach that Marines had nicknamed the Riviera the roadway bent northward and then ran parallel to the beach, leading past the Marble Mountain air facility and terminating at the tip of a peninsula called China Beach.
The jeep slid to a stop in front of the Marble Mountain tower and operations terminal. Ron McAbee was already out of the vehicle and running to the door when the driver switched off the ignition.
“Top Gunderson,” Mack said as he hurried to a counter where a sergeant stood on one side helping two pilots opposite him with paperwork. The three Marines looked blank-faced at the staff sergeant.
“Big guy,” McAbee continued, “Master sergeant from 1st Division Ops on Hill 327. He would have come here to catch a ride to the Repose.”
“Can’t help you, Staff,” the sergeant behind the counter said. The two pilots shook their heads. “I just came on duty, and the sergeant I relieved has gone to chow.”
“You have anything headed out to the Repose?” Mack then asked.
“Not unless you can frag a chop out there,” the sergeant offered. “Try hitting some of the squadron operations sections. They might have a crew needing to fly a sortie.”
One of the pilots, a captain, looked at McAbee. “That’s probably a wasted shot, Staff Sergeant,” he said. “Just about anything flyable is supporting operations down by the Que Son Hills. Charlie burned up a bunch of Marines down there. Then units started taking hits from all over. You can try, but you might be better off spending your time heading on up to China Beach or into Da Nang and catching a boat out to the ship.”
McAbee could already see the writing on the wall. He walked back to the jeep and collapsed in the passenger seat.
“Well, Cadillac,” he told the driver, “want to take a spin up to China Beach? Maybe into Da Nang?”
The lance corporal behind the wheel looked at McAbee.
“Lot of shit between here and there,” he said. “I will if you want me to, but lot of shit goes down on this road. Charlie will clip a few rounds at us, at least.”
McAbee looked at the Marine, and then at the afternoon sun dropping lower in the western sky. If Gunderson had been here, he was already gone now. He had no guarantees that anything going outbound would be at China Beach or in Da Nang.
“I guess it’s not worth the risk,” he muttered. “Let’s get back to Baldy, and I’ll buy you a Coke.”
Ron McAbee slept again on the bunker with Yankee. The evening was cool, but he could not lay on the cot next to Carlos’s bed. The sight of his best friend’s clothes and footlocker, and not knowing if he was dead or alive, was something he could do without.
As he lay on his poncho liner, he thought about his chore tomorrow, having to pack his buddy’s gear. He had watched other Marines in other units do it. No one in the sniper hooch had had to do it until now. Now they had two men to pack out.
THE NEXT MORNING, David Sommers stuck his head through the door. He saw Mack folding Carlos’s clothes and separating out gear that he had to turn back to regimental supply.
“Want some help?” Sommers asked.
Mack shook his head no, and said nothing.
When he snapped the combination padlock shut on the hasp that fed through the three grommets in the top flaps of Carlos’s sea bag, closing the satchel shut, he simply let it fall by Hathcock’s cot, and he walked out the door. He needed to take a breather before packing out Perry.
Mack had not eaten breakfast. He did not feel like it this morning. He walked to the Operations tent instead.
“Can I call division on your phone, Gunny?” McAbee said to the gunnery sergeant sitting behind the desk. It did not look as if the man had moved since yesterday. He wore the same utility uniform. His coffee mug showed the same stains on the outside lip.
The Marine said nothing and nudged the field phone toward Mack.
“Thanks,” Mack said as he turned the crank on the canvas-covered box.
“Top Gunderson? He there?” McAbee said.
“Shit, Moose,” Mack began, “you heard about Carlos, I’m sure. Any word on his condition?
“Thank God!”
“I’m not sure if that is good or bad, Mack,” Moose Gunderson said. “Carlos is burned over ninety-percent of his body. Half of that is third-degree burns.
“Carlos had them call me yesterday. I talked to the doctor and he said that most people die after a few weeks with the severity of Carlos’s burns. They’re loading him on a plane to San Antonio right now. His only real chance is getting to the burn center there at Brooke Hospital.”
“How is Carlos doing?” Mack asked. “I mean, is he conscious? In a lot of pain?”
“Oh, he’s been talking a blue streak since yesterday,” Gunderson said. “You know him. He’s gonna be all right whether or not he is. He’s acting like it’s just a scratch. He don’t want anybody worrying.
“Doctors gave me an address, if you want to write him in Texas.”
That night, Ron McAbee wrote Carlos a long letter. He told him how it was just good luck that they both did not go on that amtrac together. He told him how he drove all over the area trying to catch a ride to the ship, and that he was awfully sorry he could not get out there. He told him that Moose Gunderson had filled him in, and had given him the address for the burn center. He told him that he had heard “Joli Blond” play on the radio and because Carlos said nothing about it, he had ignored it. He told him he was sorry.
CARLOS REMEMBERED READING Mack’s letter several weeks after he had arrived at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. But now, as he lay in his bed in Virginia Beach, nearly thirty years later, he also thought of the pain. He had endured the horror of daily debridement, having the scabbing flesh of his terrible burns scraped away. They put him in whirlpool baths, and then tried as gently as possible to remove the dead tissue. But there was no gentle that was gentle enough.
Later they began to surgically transplant skin to those full-thickness burned areas of his body. Since he had so little skin left that was not damaged, doctors had to use donor skin and skin from specially grown pigs.
However, as Carlos lay in his bed, living the last hours of his life, he considered the physical pain as nothing compared to the mental anguish he suffered, not only from the disabling effects that the burns had on him, but from the multiple sclerosis that he believed the injury had set off in him.
Throughout the early 1970s life had become a daily fight for him. Stress from pushing himself to remain active in the Marine Corps left him often disagreeable. Despite his efforts to rebuild himself. Despite his efforts to make his badly scarred body flex and stretch into shooting positions. Despite pushing himself so hard he often passed out on the firing line. He would never shoot a rifle again as he once had. He could not even hold a decent group.
Moose Gunderson had rejoined the Marine Corps Shooting Team after finishing his tour in Vietnam, and spent hours each day practicing positions and shooting groups
with Carlos on the 1,000-inch range.4
Hathcock could only manage shooting from the prone position with any accuracy. He had spent several hours lying on his belly with the rifle sling cinched tightly around his upper arm, working to stabilize his technique.
“Carlos, you look a little peaked,” Moose said, seeing Hathcock’s face, wet and pasty-white.
“I do feel a little light-headed,” Carlos responded.
He had the heavy leather shooting jacket strapped tightly around him, so his movements resembled those of the Tin Woodsman in The Wizard of Oz. The tail of the black coat struck Hathcock at the thighs and clinched snugly at his neck, allowing nearly no ventilation on this hot Virginia afternoon.
Carlos pulled the tail of the shooting sling that he had cinched above the biceps of his left arm. As he released the pressure and let the loop fall past his elbow so that he could lay down his rifle, blood suddenly gushed from his sleeve.
“Oops,” Hathcock said, trying to chuckle. He smiled at Gunderson, who immediately noticed the blood. “Guess I sprung a leak someplace.”
“Here, let me give you a hand with that,” Moose said, unhooking the several straps down the front that held the shooting jacket closed around Carlos.
As Gunderson released the last strap, Hathcock peeled it back and let it slip off his shoulders.
What used to be a yellow cotton shooting-team sweatshirt was soaked red, and now dripped blood down Carlos’s trousers without the pressure of the shooting jacket straps to constrain it. His skin, losing its elasticity from the burn scars, now broke open and bled with very little pressure or strain.
Moose Gunderson was a tough Marine. Tough as they come. Shooting team Marines used to joke, “He’s so hard that he’s got muscles in his do-do.” However, the sight of his friend Carlos sent the battle-hardened Marine back-stepping.
“Shit!” Gunderson said, gasping a breath. Then a prankish smile crept across his face as he looked at his friend’s wide eyes. “Carlos, I’d throw up if I didn’t have such a hard stomach.”
Hathcock laughed out loud, while Moose filled a canteen cup with water he drained from a yellow and red plastic insulated jug, and then handed it to Carlos.
TIME AFTER TIME, Hathcock endured the same sort of experience, trying to get himself back in shape. Carlos never quit trying. He joined the other Marksmanship Training Unit Marines in their daily physical training, struggling through calisthenics, running, and performing pull-ups. It took him months before he could raise his chin above the bar even once. He finally accomplished two pull-ups, once, and that stood as his record for the rest of his life.
Carlos’s stubborn nature would not allow him to accept assistance. He carried his own gear when he fired the rifle, and he pulled his own targets when it was his turn in the butts. He wore white cotton gloves to protect his fragile skin from the steel and wooden framework of the target carriage. By the time he finished the relay, bloodstains spread from his palms to the tops of the gloves, and from the fingertips to the blue knit cuffs.
At the end of his target duty, he went to a hydrant and rinsed the gloves, so that he could use them later that day or the following morning. Any of the Marines serving with Carlos would have gladly pulled his targets for him. Yet the proud Marine sniper could not allow it. If it was at all humanly possible for him to do, he did it himself.
Carlos smiled as he lay on the bed, his eyes still closed, yet he saw the bright sun and black pavement in his mind as he relived walking across the parking lot at Weapons Training Battalion after another day of shooting. He began to stagger as he made his way between a second row of cars, trying to reach the armory window that opened behind the Weapons Training Battalion headquarters building, located at the east end of the parking lot.
A team member saw Carlos weaving across the asphalt, and shouted, “Hey! You all right?”
The Marine ran to Hathcock in time to see the sniper’s eyes roll upward and his knees buckle. But rather than grabbing Carlos, the team member snatched the rapidly collapsing staff sergeant’s rifle instead.
It amused Carlos to remember that incident. So typical of a shooting team Marine. Scrapes heal, lumps and bruises fade away. But damage to a rifle will forever change its shooting characteristics.
IN FEBRUARY 1972, Carlos transferred to Camp Lejeune where he discovered one thing he could do well on a shooting team. Coach it. That year he gave 2nd Marine Division a championship, and in 1973 Hathcock moved back to Quantico, Virginia, as a shooting coach on his beloved Marine Corps Shooting Team.
Paradise disappeared for him as he pinned on gunnery sergeant stripes. The USS Simon Lake, a Navy ship based at Rota, Spain, needed a new NCO in charge of the Marine detachment aboard it. Carlos’s name fell out of the hat for the duty. In October 1973, he reported aboard to Captain Howard Lovingood, a former enlisted Marine.
The captain took Gunny Hathcock’s wounds into account when he required his Marines to drill and physically train. Lovingood knew the price Carlos had paid and respected the capabilities that he still had intact. Hathcock performed outstandingly in his leadership of the detachment Marines.
However, when Lovingood transferred in July 1974 and a by-the-book captain named Walter A. Peeples assumed command of the Simon Lake Marine Detachment, any allowances made out of respect for Hathcock’s wounds left with Howard Lovingood.
Peeples pushed Hathcock. Tested him physically. And when Carlos failed the Marine Corps Physical Fitness Test and could not climb a steel ladder to an elevated gun position, he sent the Marine sniper packing. Carlos was crushed.
However, the stern Captain Peeples may well have saved Hathcock’s life by sending him to the doctors at Marine Barracks Rota, Spain. By May 1975, Hathcock was at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, where doctors discovered that multiple sclerosis was rapidly destroying the sniper’s nervous system and muscles.
Carlos always looked back at that time with mixed feelings. He believed that Peeples could have shown more compassion and respect for him. However, he was thankful that he received help. It also put him in the position to return to Quantico. This time as the first-ever Senior Sniper of the Marine Corps, and NCO in charge of the newly established United States Marine Corps Scout/Sniper Instructor School.
JIM LAND, NOW a Major serving as Marksmanship Coordinator at Headquarters Marine Corps, had worked with others involved in Marine Corps marksmanship and had developed the concept of a permanent Marine Corps Scout/Sniper specialty field with its own Table of Organization and Table of Organization and Table of Equipment. In 1977, Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Louis H. Wilson, established scout/snipers as part of the Marine Corps’ infantry battalion support elements. He authorized the three active duty and one reserve divisions to establish scout/sniper schools. Each infantry company would have a Surveillance and Target Acquisition Platoon, made up of scouts and snipers.
As part of the Marine Corps’ Marksmanship Training Unit, General Wilson had authorized the creation of the Marine Corps Scout/Sniper Instructor School. Captain Jack Cuddy headed the school as its first officer-in-charge, with Hathcock as his senior enlisted scout/sniper instructor.
For the next two years, Carlos lived what he considered nearly a dream come true. An entire training and tactics philosophy and curriculum grew for the most part from Hathcock’s experiences and insight. The Marine Corps valued what he had in his head, respecting his advice.
During the two years, Carlos worked from before daylight until after dark, and often on weekends. He had the coffee made in the morning before anyone else arrived, and he turned out the lights at night. He trained not only sniper instructors for the division schools, but Navy Seals and other operations specialists, Army and Air Force specialists, too, and government civilians working in the FBI, the intelligence community, and hostage rescue specialists.
The long hours pushed him over the line, and the multiple sclerosis advanced rapidly. Doctors prescribed heavy dosages of Valium for the pain. Car
los took thirty milligrams a day. He also began drinking every day, and quickly became addicted to the Valium.
IN JANUARY 1979, the Marine Sniper finally collapsed.
Carlos Hathcock awoke in a hospital bed, numb from the neck down. Several days later, he recovered feeling in the right side of his body, but never again in the left side. Making matters worse, he could not eat, he could not sleep, and began shaking violently. It was withdrawal from the Valium.
Several weeks later, Carlos returned to Bethesda for a follow-up examination by the head of the National Naval Medical Center’s neurology department.
“How are we doing today, Gunny Hathcock?” the doctor asked Carlos, meeting him and Jo in the lobby area of Bethesda’s neurology department.
Hathcock smiled and stood straight in his Marine Corps green alpha uniform, to show the doctor he was still fit. “Good as ever,” Carlos responded, tucking his chin and puffing his chest. His gold shooting badges sparkled under several rows of ribbons pinned exactly one-eighth inch above the left breast pocket of the green surge blouse that he wore.
“Well then, let me watch you walk down the hallway to the examination room,” the doctor said.
After seeing every other step a stagger, the doctor followed the sniper into the room. He watched as Carlos struggled simply to seat himself on the edge of the padded examination table with a wide strip of white paper stretched down its middle.
“Take off your blouse and hang it on the rack in the corner,” the doctor continued. Carlos struggled with the buttons. The fingers of his left hand slipped and shook as he pulled the cloth over each button. Sweat beaded on Carlos’s forehead and above his lip.
“Now,” the doctor said, “extend your right arm straight out from your shoulder, hold it there, and bending only your elbow, touch your nose with your index finger.”
It reminded Carlos of a sobriety test he had seen policemen perform on drunk driving suspects. He smiled as he brought his right index finger directly to the tip of his nose.
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