Ray Doner, Erich Kollmar, John Britt, and Henderson drank beer and ate ham sandwiches. Carlos sipped a Sprite and finished a bag of potato chips. Woody Dougan held fast to the ladder.
Britt first noticed the large fins cutting in and out of the waves that rose high above the boat. Then Carlos took note and laughed. “Looks like we got us a bunch!”
John Britt answered him, “Sure as hell don’t want to go over the side.”
Woody Dougan threw up again, leaning his head over the side.
“Stick it out too far, and a shark just might jump out and take your head,” Quigley joked to Dougan.
One at a time the clothespins popped off the outriggers. Tom Quigley grabbed the first rod and gave it a hard jerk.
“It’s a big one,” he said, and looked at the men. “Who wants first crack?”
“Carlos,” several of them said together.
“If we only snag one, Carlos ought to have the honors, since the rest of us live around here,” Ray Doner said.
Hathcock flashed a wide smile at his friends and took the heavy rod. He locked his knees against the gunwales and pulled up on the wooden handle and then let it drop. As it dropped, he cranked the big reel.
“You need some help?” Quigley said, reaching to hold Carlos by the shoulders.
“Don’t need no help,” Hathcock growled as he fought the shark. “Just stay out of my way!”
Quigley laughed and stepped back, but not so far that he could not reach Carlos before he went over the side, should the big shark pull him off balance or he slip on the wet deck. Then he looked back at the other men, all of them laughing and cheering their hero on in his battle with the shark.
“You sure he’s okay?” he said to them softly, hoping Carlos did not hear him. No one answered him.
“I’d feel better if he would sit in that fighting chair,” McKinley called from his seat where he operated the engines in coordination with Carlos and the big fish.
Quigley put a harness over Hathcock’s back and one at a time fed Carlos’s arms through the loops and then fastened the harness to eyelets on each side of the fishing reel. But the Marine sniper stood his ground when the first mate tried to guide him back to the fighting chair. Carlos wanted to feel the fish against his knees and back as he leaned over the fantail and pulled back, drawing the fish closer with each cycle.
After a half-hour of watching Carlos fight, the captain called from his station, “I’m going to have to insist he sit in that fighting chair. He looks tired.”
Carlos glared over his shoulder at the man seated above and behind him. Then he looked at Tom Quigley and let the big man guide him back to the chair, where Hathcock finished the fish in another fifteen minutes.
It was a blue shark, well over 300 pounds. The largest fish Carlos had ever caught.
They took pictures of Hathcock and his fish as it lay alongside the boat in clear water as the growing waves tossed the boat ever higher. Once they finished with the camera, Tom Quigley reached over the side and cut the leader, allowing the shark to swim free.
“No point in killing a creature we can’t eat,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Carlos agreed. “That steel leader and hook will dissolve after a while. He’ll be good as new, but I bet he don’t bite no more hooks.”
Ray Doner pulled in a shark and released it. So did Erich Kollmar and John Britt. Henderson waited to be last, and fought his shark for an hour. Well over ten-feet in length, Quigley estimated the fish weighed several hundred pounds.
Each time the writer managed to pull the shark close enough to the boat for a picture, the great fish swam out, stripping off-line, spinning the reel against its drag. He had set it at the maximum tension that would prevent the line from snapping under the shark’s pull. Nonetheless, the fish stripped off-line easily.
After pulling the shark to the boat three successive times, the writer called to his friends, “Who else wants a turn at this? I think three times counts as a catch.”
Ray Doner took the rod and fought the shark to the boat once more. Then Tom Quigley cut the line.
Woody Dougan still held fast to the ladder.
“You mind if we go in a little early?” Tom McKinley called down from his station. “You Marines proved your point to me. Drinking beer, smoking cigars, eating ham sandwiches while catching five sharks in these conditions has me convinced.”
Tom Quigley laughed. “The skipper is tough as they come. It’s got to be bad for him to want to head home early.”
Hathcock and his friends agreed. They had done what they set out to do. Ray Doner waved to McKinley to head for home.
That night at one of Montauk Point’s more colorful pool hall bars, five of the six men reveled in their day’s accomplishment. They stood and drank beer beneath the mounted front half of a great white shark, enjoying this moment in life, and their day with Carlos Hathcock.
For several months after their fishing event, people at Montauk Point, Long Island, still talked about the “crazy Marines” who went shark fishing in fifteen-foot seas, rain, and a gale. They also spoke with pride that Carlos Hathcock had gone out from there and caught shark.
18
Honors
CONSCIOUS THOUGHT RETURNED to Carlos Hathcock, yet his world remained dark. He willed his eyes open for a few seconds, seeing only pale-green light cast from a source somewhere above his bed. Then he let his eyes fall shut. His body still felt the motion from the sea. It was good to remember such a time.
These were the good memories. Yet so were many of those from Vietnam, the Marine Corps, and his life of teaching Marines that the deadliest thing on the battlefield is one well-aimed shot.
How many times had he said that?
At least several hundred. He had long ago lost count of the receptions, graduations, balls, shows, and tributes with him in the spotlight. At each of them, he had always concluded his remarks with the phrase “. . . one well-aimed shot.”
Within his heart, he felt satisfaction. His life had significant meaning for hundreds of thousands of people. Not just soldiers or Marines, but students, teachers, mothers, sisters, just plain people who identified with the standards of honor and decency that he had exemplified throughout his life.
AS CARLOS LAY in his bed, feeling proud, his mind’s eye carried him back to a warm summer day at Marine Barracks, 8th and I streets, Washington, D.C. It was August 25, 1989, one of the greatest days of his lifetime.
“Carlos, you old horse thief,” David Sommers said with a laugh, extending his hand to his friend. When the president had named General Alfred M. Gray Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Marines, in turn, selected Sommers as their top enlisted man to serve at the Commandant’s side.
Hathcock took Sommers’s tan uniform shirt’s short sleeve in his fingers and traced the three up and four down stripes indicating the rank of sergeant major. However, in the open space between the three upward-pointing chevrons and the four downward-curving rockers was the symbol that only one man on active duty could wear: a tiny Marine Corps emblem flanked by a star at each side. Sergeant major of the United States Marine Corps.
Hathcock took Sommers’s hand, and in a moment the clasp turned to slaps on the shoulders, and then the two Marines hugged. Tears streamed from the corners of Carlos’s eyes. He felt extremely proud of his friend.
Sergeant Major Sommers chuckled because he, too, felt a lump gather in his throat and his eyes moistened.
“Oh, I puddle up a lot these days,” Carlos said, laughing, too, and looking at Jo who had accompanied her husband with Sonny on this important day.
Sommers had also invited writer Charles Henderson and his wife for this special occasion. He and the sergeant major had known each other at Quantico in 1983, before the idea of writing Marine Sniper had ever taken shape. Henderson had graduated earlier that same year from The Basic School, making the transition from enlisted Marine to officer, and had just returned from combat duty in Beirut when he first met Sommers, then sergea
nt major of The Basic School. The writer stood with his wife several paces behind Carlos, and next to Jo and Sonny Hathcock, watching the two old friends greet each other.
The sergeant major had sent a driver to Virginia Beach to bring Hathcock and his family to Washington, D.C., for this special day. Henderson had driven there the previous evening from his present duty assignment in New York City.
“Colonel Pete Pace, commanding officer here at 8th and I, is anxious to meet you, Carlos,” the sergeant major said, leading the small group along the sidewalk, around the parade field, and into the headquarters building.
Respecting protocol, Sommers handed escort of the visitors to the Marine Barracks’ sergeant major. He then led the people to the colonel’s office.
Pete Pace did not wait for Hathcock to enter the room before he was at the door shaking hands and introducing his teenaged son, who had come to the barracks to meet the legendary Marine sniper. Both father and son were sincere Carlos Hathcock fans, and true believers of the value of one well-aimed shot.
Tall and dark-haired, Pace looked too young to be a colonel, yet the ribbons on his uniform shirt and the eagles on his collar quickly convinced anyone that this Marine had seen most sides of the Corps, and his share of combat. He had a gentle nature and kindness in him, tempered with discipline and respect for the chain of command, and appropriate behavior among differing ranks. Put simply, to Marines, Colonel Pete Pace had class.
“We have a special ceremony that the staff NCO’s want to perform for you this afternoon,” the colonel said cheerfully, his tall, dark-haired son following in trace with the group as they crossed the street, south of the Marine Corps’ oldest active post.
“They have a new library at the staff barracks,” Pace continued, and said no more until the group entered a room filled with every staff noncommissioned officer stationed at Marine Barracks, 8th and I streets, Washington, D.C.
Tears streamed from Hathcock’s eyes as he saw the hand-carved, burnished wood sign above the library’s doorway. It read: GUNNERY SERGEANT CARLOS N. HATHCOCK LIBRARY.
“I think usually you’re supposed to be dead to get something named after you,” Pace said, jokingly. Then he added in a serious tone, “I am not aware of any other place or facility in the Marine Corps that does carry the name of a still-living person.”
Carlos stood before his family, friends, and smiling brethren, struggling to speak. He could only beg their forgiveness for his tears and his inability to make a proper speech, and added, “Now you really made me puddle up.”
The Corps can offer no greater honor to one of its own than to preserve his or her name on the face of a building, facility, or in this case, a library. Carlos knew this grand gesture usually went to famous generals or Medal of Honor heroes. To be alive and to see one’s own name enshrined on a building humbled Carlos more than anything had ever before in his life.
At 6:30 that evening, the writer, his wife, Carlos, and his family walked up the back steps of the commandant of the Marine Corps’ home, located at the far end of the 8th and I parade field. General Al Gray greeted the group at the door, and invited them inside to the reception held in Carlos Hathcock’s honor. High government officials and senior officers of the Marine Corps filled the historic residence, each of them also excited to meet this night’s honored guest.
“I want you boys to come upstairs with me,” General Gray said to the writer and Carlos. “I have something to show you.”
The three Marines wound their way through the crowd to a small upstairs room that had a wooden desk built into the corner. Above it, and at its sides, on both walls, matching wooden shelves stood lined with books and mementos. The burly, silver-haired Marine general pointed to the blue spine of a hardcover first edition of Marine Sniper.
“This is where I keep the books I like best,” he said.
Throughout the evening Carlos kept looking through the crowd. “I don’t see E. J. and Elly,” he said, referring to Jim Land and his wife, who had flown to Washington, D.C., that day from Denver, where Land headed a firearms company.
“Reckon something happened to them?” Carlos then asked, clearly worried about two of his dearest friends. “I know there is no way under the sun they would miss this unless something really bad happened.”
Later that night, Carlos discovered that Jim and Elly Land had come to the reception, but were turned away. An administrative error had kept their names off the guest list. So Jim and Elly found bleacher seats at the parade field and waited. After all, they had not made this trip to see the inside of the commandant’s home. They came to see Carlos honored. There was no way that either of the Lands would miss it.
At eight o’clock, as the summer sky grew dark, guests began walking from the back of General Gray’s home, along the sidewalk that led to the center seats, reserved for special guests. Then at 8:30, the stadium lights dimmed and a spotlight turned to the end of the parade field where Carlos Hathcock stood with the commandant and the sergeant major of the Marine Corps. Together, they marched to the first row, center seats, where Jo and Sonny had gone earlier.
Several thousand people packed the stands that lined the south and the west sides of the parade field. Billed as the best show in Washington, D.C., visitors often waited many weeks to obtain tickets.
For the next two hours, the “President’s Own,” the United States Marine Band, marched and played with the United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps. The musical units posted at opposite ends of the parade field. Directly across from the audience, several companies of Marines wearing dress-blue jackets and white trousers stood in formation with M-1 rifles at their sides.
Centered among the units stood the United States Marine Corps Color Guard. The Colors Sergeant of the Marine Corps held the official flag of the United States of America. Next to him, another sergeant held the official Marine Corps Battle Colors, the head of the staff from which it flew festooned with colorful silk streamers representing every conflict, war, and expedition fought by United States Marines. Silver bands with the names of the battles engraved on them covered the staff. Flanked by riflemen, they marched forward and posted the colors.
Since this evening’s event was the annual parade for the sergeant major of the Marine Corps, David Sommers stepped to the center line and received the colors and formal honors. When he sat down, one of the greatest performances of music and precision drill that a person can see anywhere in the world began.
Tears streamed down Carlos’s cheeks throughout the entire two hours of drills, music, and ceremony. The Silent Drill Platoon drew cheers from the audience as they performed their intricate rifle drills with chrome bayonets fixed on their M-1 rifles, all polished brightly. Every move, every step, every turn, every toss of a rifle, came without oral command or cadence. The platoon of Marines, all junior enlisted men, demonstrated what teamwork truly meant.
Carlos stood and applauded when the three ranks of privates first class, lance corporals, and corporals, led by a sergeant, concluded their drill and marched back to their place in the formation of Marine Barracks companies. Then came the highlight event of the evening. The Marine Band played the War of 1812 Overture accompanied by gun crews firing actual artillery pieces in concert with the music.
Carlos was overwhelmed.
Then the moment that everyone who knew and loved Carlos Hathcock had waited for all day finally came.
The commander of the guard called out, “Sir, the parade is formed!”
Sergeant Major Sommers stepped to the center line and in his forceful, former drill instructor voice, he responded, “Pass in review!”
A Marine then led Carlos Hathcock to the side of his old friend. A voice on the public-address system announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s reviewing officers are Sergeant Major David W. Sommers, Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, and retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant Carlos N. Hathcock the Second!”
The entire mass of onlookers rose from the stands and applauded and cheered the
simple, dedicated American hero who grew up with a single ambition in life—to be a Marine.
Carlos staggered. David Sommers took his hand, and discreetly held him steady. As the colors of his country passed him, Carlos placed his hand over his heart. At the same time, David Sommers snapped a drill-instructor perfect salute.
Every Marine that marched past saluted their sergeant major with a hand salute, sword salute, or eyes right. And standing beside their sergeant major, deeply touched and standing at the best position of attention that his wobbly legs could hold him, they also saluted a great Marine, a living legend, Carlos Hathcock.
CARLOS NEVER AWOKE again. His breathing and his heart stopped at 5:30 Tuesday morning, February 23, 1999.
Lieutenant General Pete Pace grieved at his desk later that day when he received the news. Ten years ago, the colonel who admired Carlos Hathcock, like most Marines did, had watched from a seat near General Gray as the Marine Sniper received one of the greatest tributes given to any person. Now he wore three stars on each collar, and held command of the Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic.
He had found delight at his Norfolk, Virginia, duty station. For one reason, it had returned him to contact with one of his true heroes, who lived in nearby Virginia Beach. Carlos had been thrilled to see his friend now wearing so many stars on his collar. He believed the Marine Corps had made an excellent choice by promoting Pete Pace to a rank of such great authority.
Three days later, more than 600 people, each of them a friend of Carlos Hathcock, stood at his graveside and watched eight Norfolk police officers carry the man who had personally trained them in SWAT and sniper tactics to his final resting place. A botanical garden of flowers surrounded the grave site. Many of the people who stood in honor of their friend had traveled across the country for the privilege of personally paying respect. Dick Torykian had postponed important business that week and had traveled down from New York. Jim and Elly Land stood near him.
Silent Warrior Page 30