Inside the Crosshairs

  Some writers concentrate so much on mechanics and hardware that it often appears the rifles themselves killed the enemy, as if there were no soldier sighting down the barrel or through the scope before squeezing the trigger to send a bullet downrange; an accurate picture of sniper activity in Vietnam can come only through examining the men behind the crosshairs and their abilities to adapt to their unit and terrain environments. Snipers conducted their missions in triple-layered canopy jungle, on steep mountains, in scrub-covered coastal lowlands, and across open rice paddies. Some areas of operation were in remote regions far from any population; others were in locations with heavy concentrations of farmers and families; still others were near large villages. At times the snipers sought the elusive, loosely organized and poorly equipped Vietcong, who were less than enthusiastic about standing and fighting. On other occasions, army and Marine snipers opposed North Vietnamese regulars who were aggressive and well organized, armed, and trained for battle.

  Army and Marine snipers made whatever adjustments necessary to find, engage, and destroy whatever enemy they faced in whatever environments they found themselves. While their training, organization, utilization, and equipment varied, they shared the most important commonality—they were men who volunteered to be snipers, a unique group in a unique war. Nevertheless, in many ways they were not “super Marines” or “super soldiers”; rather, they closely resembled their brother infantrymen in the combat line units from which they came and to which many returned. Their ranks contained the good, the bad, and the indifferent, yet as a whole, Marine and army snipers in Vietnam set the standard by which military marksmen still operate.

  One important aspect of the snipers was age. While much has been written about the youth of the men who fought in Vietnam—the average age of Americans in Southeast Asia was nineteen and a half, compared to twenty-six years of age in World War II[35]—the U.S. armed forces in the war zone also had senior sergeants and officers with ten, twenty, or more years of experience providing training and leadership. Even though expanding numbers of combat units in the war’s early years and the escalating casualty rates reduced their numbers as the war continued, at no point in the conflict were American units without some degree of senior leadership.

  This mix of young, inexperienced soldiers and Marines with older, experienced senior NCOs and officers in Vietnam was equally evident in the sniper units of both services. Captain Robert Russell had twenty-two years’ experience as an enlisted and commissioned Marine, much of which he spent on competition shooting teams, when he established the sniper school for the 3rd Marine Division. All but one of his instructor staff were in their upper thirties or early forties with ten to twenty years’ experience as Marine marksmen. Sergeant Robert Goller, the youngest on the team at twenty-six, had eight years of competition shooting experience and had received a perfect 250 × 250 score in a 1961 rifle match.

  When he formed the 1st Marine Division sniper school. Captain Jim Land brought to Vietnam his expertise in having established the Marine sniper school in Hawaii in 1960 as well as having spent years on competition shooting teams. His NCO instructor staff mirrored Russell’s team in rank, age, and experience.

  The USAMTU team under the leadership of Major Willis Powell combined more than 170 years of active duty experience when it arrived in Vietnam to organize the 9th Infantry Division’s sniper school. Each member had fired on army shooting teams, and most were veterans of previous tours in Vietnam or the Korean War.

  While veteran competition shooters with decades of experience in uniform formed the instructor teams in Vietnam, the vast majority of those whom they trained as snipers came from the lower enlisted ranks and were serving their first tour of duty in the armed forces. Both services recruited sniper volunteers at the in-country replacement centers where new arrivals were in-processed. Recruits for sniper training also came from combat units in the field, which received periodic allocations for infantrymen.[36]

  Both the Marine Corps and the army used the same basic selection criteria for entry into their sniper-training programs. Indeed, the wording is so similar—at times identical—that it suggests the writers exchanged information when preparing Fleet Marine Force Manual (FMFM) 1-3B, “Sniping,” and the army’s Training Circular (TC) 23-14, “Sniper Training and Employment,” both published in 1969.

  Under sections labeled “Personnel Selection,” both manuals emphasize the importance of marksmanship, physical stamina, and mental condition of potential snipers. “The sniper trainee,” begins the selection requirements, “must be an expert marksman.” In addition to requiring the candidate to fire expert with military weapons, the criteria stress the importance of “an extensive hunting background” and experience in competition shooting if possible.

  The manuals note that snipers often engage in extended operations with limited sleep, food, and water—conditions that require excellent physical conditioning to maintain reflexes, muscular control, and stamina. According to the manuals, athletics, especially team sports, were a good background for building cooperation and self-confidence. Wearing glasses was a liability to a potential sniper not only because of the importance of excellent vision but also because the lenses might reflect light and compromise a sniper’s concealment or render him useless if they were lost or damaged. Since the Marine snipers primarily used bolt-action rifles, their selection criteria added that volunteers should be right-handed because the additional movement required by left-handed shooters to operate the bolt over the top of the scope increased the danger of detection.

  Long before the antitobacco campaigns swept across the United States, the armed forces declared that snipers should be nonsmokers. Smoke or a smoker’s cough could give away a sniper’s position. Even if a sniper did not smoke during a mission, the addiction might cause nervousness and irritation that would lower his efficiency.

  In reference to mental capacity, the services sought intelligence and emotional balance. A trainee had to be able to learn quickly and retain vast amounts of information on ballistics, ammunition, and optical devices in order to shoot accurately. He also had to be able to operate and maintain communications equipment, to call and direct artillery and air support, and to gather and report intelligence on the enemy and the terrain.

  Along with the ability to learn, the requirements for snipers called for innate talent for fieldcraft. He had to possess stealth and a sense of direction to reach his firing position undetected and to feel comfortable in the outdoors.

  Mental condition is clearly one of the most important characteristics of a good sniper even though the manuals gave it the same priority as physical conditioning and intelligence. The potential sniper had to exhibit characteristics of reliability, initiative, loyalty, discipline, and emotional stability. In short, a sniper had to be able to pull the trigger at the right time and in the right place.

  The 1969 edition of FMFM 1-3B explained the difference between ordinary Marine infantrymen and sharpshooters: “An infantry Marine, in the heat of battle, kills the enemy emotionally and reflexively, lest he be killed himself. A sniper, however, must kill calmly and deliberately, shooting carefully selected targets. He must not be susceptible to emotions of anxiety or remorse. Candidates, for instance, whose motivation towards sniper training rests mainly in the desire for prestige which may accrue to them in performing a unique function, may not be capable of cold rationality which the sniper’s job requires. A proper mental condition cannot be taught or instilled by training.”

  Manuals, of course, detail optimums that are not always possible or practical in combat conditions. The cadres of the various sniper schools were aware of the manual’s selection criteria and used them, and their own experience, to evaluate volunteers at the reception centers. Field commanders, although unlikely to have access to the manuals or time to peruse them while fighting the war, understood the basic physical and mental criteria for snipers from their personal combat experiences.

  The school cadres and f
ield commanders shared the knowledge that it took a very particular type of soldier or Marine to coldly peer through a telescopic sight and pull the trigger to deliver a fatal bullet to an unsuspecting and unwarned enemy. Not only must the potential sniper be able to accomplish that task, he also had to possess the mental toughness to do so repeatedly.

  Jim Land strongly believed in the importance of the psychological stability of potential snipers and questioned each candidate at length to determine if he had the correct mind-set for the job. Land later wrote in a foreword to Marine Sniper by Charles Henderson, “It takes a special kind of courage to be alone: to be alone with your thoughts; to be alone with your fears; to be alone with your doubts. This courage is not the superficial brand stimulated by the flow of adrenaline. Neither is it the courage that comes from the fear that others might think one a coward. It is the courage born of honor.

  “Honor on the battlefield is a sniper’s ethic. He shows it by the standards and discipline with which he lives life in combat. By the decency he shows his comrades. And by the rules he adheres to when meeting the enemy.

  “The sniper does not hate the enemy,” Land continued, “he respects him or her as a quarry. Psychologically, the only motives that will sustain the sniper is the knowledge that he is doing a necessary job and the confidence that he is the best person to do it. On the battlefield, hate will destroy any man—and a sniper quicker than most.”

  The sniper instructor also wrote of other characteristics he sought in trainees. Further, according to Land in the foreword, “The sniper is the big game hunter of the battlefield, and he needs all the skills of the woodsman, marksman, hunter, and poacher. He must possess the fieldcraft to be able to position himself for a killing shot, and he must be able to effectively place a single bullet into his intended target.”

  More recently, in One Shot—One Kill by Charles Sasser and Craig Roberts, Land, reflecting on his own experience as a marksman and sniper, added, “When you look through that scope, the first thing you see is the eyes. There is a lot of difference between shooting at a shadow, shooting at an outline, and shooting at a pair of eyes. It is amazing when you put that scope on somebody, the first thing that pops out at you is the eyes. Many men can’t do it at that point.”

  Senior commanders in Vietnam also had specific ideas about the characteristics of good snipers. General Frederick J. Kroesen Jr. (USA, Ret.), who commanded the 23rd Infantry (Americal) Division in 1971, simply states that a “good sniper” had to exhibit “selflessness” and “patience.”

  Lieutenant General Ormond R. Simpson (USMC, Ret.), who assumed command of the 1st Marine Division at Da Nang in December 1968, also had ideas about what he looked for in volunteers for his sniper school. According to Simpson, “Of course superior marksmanship was an absolute requirement that was never waived. Given this talent or ability, a good sniper needed to have infinite patience, even nature and temperament, ability to get along with his team member, willingness to remain in his position for often long periods of time regardless of rain or wind, the skill to move quietly and to escape detection. The judgment to fire only when there was a good chance for a kill with a single round. We could never use ‘trigger happy’ people in this program.”

  An article in the January-March 1969 edition of the 9th Infantry Division publication, Octofoil, provided insights into what Major Powell’s school looked for in potential army snipers. According to the article, “It [the sniper school] constantly seeks soldiers possessing special qualities—a good eye, ability to think quickly and remain cool in combat and, a prime requisite, the desire to learn.”

  The selection of potential snipers from replacement centers and from the ranks in the field was not a pure process. Ed Kugler, observed that firsthand as a scout-sniper with the 4th Marine Regiment. In March 1966. Kugler and several hundred other Marines arrived from the States at the Da Nang replacement center. Early on their first morning in Vietnam, Staff Sergeant Walt Sides, the platoon sergeant of the 4th Marine snipers, addressed the formation of replacements using a bullhorn. Sides, explaining that he worked with Captain Russell at the scout-sniper school, told the new arrivals they were looking for volunteers. Kugler recalls that the sergeant did such a great “sell job” of making the sniper role sound exciting that he and thirty or forty others stepped forward.

  Some of the volunteers were eliminated when their records showed that they had not qualified as experts on the rifle range. The sniper school NCO then interviewed the remainder, looking for what he termed “mental toughness.” At the completion of the interviews, only Kugler and three other replacements were selected by the NCO for transportation to Phu Bai.

  At Phu Bai, Kugler and the others joined another eight Marines (from infantry units already in Vietnam) for the second sniper school class taught by Russell and his staff. Kugler recalls that, even though all were qualified as expert marksmen, several of the Marines had been “volunteered” by their units because their commanders wanted to be rid of them; that method of eliminating problem Marines (by sending them to other assignments) was a common practice in all units that, in some cases, worked well for both units and the transferred Marines.

  Kugler says, “Two, I remember, specifically as friends today, were ‘volunteered’ by the grunts. They were ‘shitbirds’ the grunts wanted gone. Irony was, they turned out to be great snipers. Over my two years in Vietnam, I would say 30 to 40 percent of the volunteers were grunt misfits who became great snipers.”

  Generally, however, field commanders followed the same selection procedures that the sniper school NCOs used. They also had the added advantage of having actually observed the actions of the men under fire and knowing how they reacted to killing the enemy.

  Most commanders wanted to fill their sniper school allocations with men who would make good representatives of their units and, more important, who would complete the school and return with training and a weapon that would assist the unit in accomplishing its mission. Unfortunately, the Marine and army sniper schools did not always have the capacity to train the number of snipers that the senior commanders and field units wanted, which meant that the number of volunteers seeking training frequently exceeded the limited school space.

  Terry Roderick of Cocoa, Florida, joined P Company, 75th Infantry (Ranger) from the army’s 5th Mechanized Infantry Division, near Quang Tri, in October 1969. In February 1970, his Ranger company received a single allocation for the 101st Airborne Division’s sniper school at Camp Evans. Roderick recalls, “When the opening for the school came to our company, I think I had the highest score with the M14 from basic training and they wanted to make sure they sent someone who would represent the company well. I’ve always been a good shot with a rifle and it was well known throughout the company since we had a lot of ‘shooting matches’ at the range where we went for ‘test firing’ our weapons before going out on missions.”

  Although recruiting snipers in the war zone was an imprecise science, the Marine scout-sniper school at Camp Pendleton, California, had more time and certainly safer conditions under which to select trainees. Yet its process closely resembled that of the Vietnam schools. Joseph T. Ward of Lakewood, Colorado, notes in his book, Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam, that a few days before completion of boot camp, he and his fellow Marines were offered the opportunity to volunteer for several schools. Ward, who had fired expert and “could put the bullet where it belonged,” volunteered to become a scout-sniper along with thirty-six others.

  Prolonged interviews by the scout-sniper school staff reduced that number to twenty-five, only twenty of whom would eventually graduate. That 80 percent completion rate was actually a bit above average. About a quarter of each class at Pendleton and in the army and Marine schools in Vietnam failed to complete the program successfully.

  Nearly all of the soldier and Marine sniper volunteers came from the ranks of the infantry. Little official information about their ages, hometowns, or other demographics was recorded at the time, and such in
formation can be gathered now only by analyzing the recollections of the war’s veterans.

  Traditionally the Marine Corps, because of its smaller size and emphasis on preserving history, has performed better in maintaining records than the army. Marine archives from Vietnam, however, are as lacking in information on snipers as are the army’s. In 1984, Ronald H. Spector of the U.S. Army Center of Military History’s analysis branch published a pamphlet about the deficiencies in official accounts of the Vietnam War. Although the pamphlet addresses army record keeping, its findings apply to the Marine Corps as well.

  In “Researching the Vietnam Experience,” Spector explains, “In terms of sheer volume, the records relating to the Vietnam War appear to dwarf those of any previous American conflict. The war was the first to be fought in the age of the copying machine and the computer, and the influence of those innovations is reflected in the massive paper trail left by that conflict. There can be no debate about the quantity of documentation. Quality is another matter.

  “During the early years of the war, unit commanders, overworked and understaffed, often neglected or ignored army requirements concerning the preparation and preservation of reports and records.”

  Later in the war, when officials recognized that proper documentation and records management were not taking place, they attempted to correct the oversights. Spector comments, “The result was the rapid accumulation of masses of trivial and ephemeral material.” Spector also pointed out that studies as early as 1974 concluded that filing historical documents from Vietnam was complicated by the “tendency of units to destroy records rather than retire them.”