“Do I need to explain anything to you men, or did you get it all?” Land said sourly.
“We got it all, sir,” Reinke said.
“What time we humpin’ out there, Skipper?” Hathcock said quickly, hoping to smooth over the mood of his captain.
“Plan on a zero four wake up. We’ll start down the hill at four thirty. We should be back in position well before daylight.”
THE I CORPS’ DARKNESS THAT MORNING WAS BLACKER THAN ANY night Hathcock could remember. The dark shapes of the bushes and grass blended with the sky, offering his eyes no firm definition of form. He searched the horizon for a line of reference—straining his eyes, he finally saw the hilltops standing mute against the starless heavens.
As the troop of snipers descended into the black valley, Hathcock looked down at the river and its broad, flat bend. There he would spend his second day on this operation—and possibly, it occurred to him, his last day on earth.
Hathcock thought of the conversation he overheard the night before. He knew that Land had been right—it was foolish to move back into that flat two days in a row.
Hathcock sniffed the air, searching for the familiar scent of river mud and mildew. It was a sign that they were nearing their trek’s end. But at this point, all he could smell was the sour odor of sweat from his fellow snipers as they made their way across the flats toward the small knoll that would be their rally point.
There, the three teams checked their bearings and departed in three directions.
For Hathcock, the sound of his breathing and heart beating seemed amplified in the predawn’s stillness—as loud to him as the roar of the broad, muddy river fifty yards ahead. The two men had reached their firing point, and they crouched in the brush.
Soon Burke and Reinke, Roberts and Wilson also lay in position, awaiting the first gray light of day.
Hathcock focused on the input of his senses to keep his sharpness. He tasted the hint of salt in the air and smelled the faint fragrance of fish coming from a shallow cove where the river water eddied in a foamy swirl. In the distance he saw and heard a flock of white birds suddenly rise up screeching from the shallows. He also heard something else downriver—it was the faint clank of metal.
Slowly, yet deliberately, he shifted his scope to his right, trying to find the source of the sound. He thought he saw a flicker through the dense brush. He listened and heard the clanking again, but he saw nothing more as the sound now moved across his front and slowly made its way to his left.
“Burke and the Top will get these guys, too,” he whispered to Land.
“Shushhh,” came the captain’s response, as Land leaned on his elbows and continued scanning the opposite side of the river with his twenty-power spotting scope.
Hathcock glanced at his wristwatch. It was exactly eight o’clock.
Burke and Reinke had taken their positions on the sandy point of the river bend and had a broad view of a gap in the brush where a shallow ditch emerged from the low grass and brush and joined the river. There they saw the enemy patrol slowly emerge from the pale green undergrowth that had hidden their movement between here and the hill.
Carefully, Burke set his scope’s reticle on the point man’s head and began squeezing the trigger on his rifle.
Land flinched when he heard the sudden crack of the Winchester a short distance to his left. He looked at Hathcock and then lay behind his spotting scope, searching the far bank for the target at which Burke had shot. A second shot echoed through the wide valley—and then a third.
Suddenly the air was alive with heavy bullets cracking through the tops of the bushes and the tall grass in which the six snipers lay.
“What in the hell?” Land said aloud. “God damn quad-.51s. They’re going to cut this riverbank into pieces with their heavy machine guns.”
“Where they at?” Hathcock asked anxiously.
“Up on the hill. Right where I thought they would be. Only I thought they’d be shooting rockets or mortars, not .51s. They must have a hell of a lot of shit up there. We’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge, now!”
In the midst of the crackling shower of .51-caliber machine-gun fire, streaked with red tracers, Land sent two, red-star, cluster pyrotechnics skyward. The six snipers scrambled for their lives, running toward the low knoll that offered protection from the half-dozen four-barrel machine guns the Viet Cong had trained on them. The ground was checkered with rice fields, and knee deep in mud. Roberts and Wilson sprinted first through one of the paddies, followed by Burke—then Hathcock, Land, and Reinke.
Hathcock pumped his legs like pistons as he drove them through the mire of mud and water. He looked to his right and saw Land, his square face flushed, his eyes opened wide and his mouth agape, inhaling every drop of air that he could force into his burning lungs.
The first three Marines disappeared into the brush and found their safety behind the knoll, while Hathcock, Land, and Reinke crossed the midpoint of the boggy rice field. Hathcock pulled his legs up and down as hard as he could and saw that bullets were exploding into the water around him.
“Go for it, Hathcock!” Land yelled. “They’ve got us bore-sighted.”
Hathcock suddenly looked back. “Top!” he hollered. “Are ya hit?”
The master sergeant’s head and shoulders were just above the muddy water. He appeared to be struggling to get back on his feet.
“You hit bad, Top?” Land yelled.
Reinke motioned to the Marines to go on and leave him.
“God damn it, Hathcock. Top’s hit. I can’t leave him there to die. You go ahead.”
“You can’t get him alone,” Hathcock yelled back to Land, and the two Marines ran toward their downed comrade who was splashing the water with his hands and trying to pull his body forward through the heavy mud.
“We ain’t gonna leave you out here for that Apache woman, Top,” Land called.
The two Marines reached Reinke. All around them bullets were pelting the water.
“Where you hit?” Land gasped.
“I’m not hit,” the master sergeant said. “I stepped in a fuckin’ hole. Grab hold and get me out of here.”
Hathcock and Land grasped the master sergeant near his armpits and pulled as hard as they could. Slowly, the sucking mud gave way and the Marine slid free, splashing in the water on his belly. The captain and Hathcock each lost their balance and fell to their hands and knees, soaking themselves in the mire.
“Gooooooo!” Land cried. The three Marines charged through the knee-deep mud and water. Hundreds of bullets sent tall, liquid shafts splashing up from the paddy’s surface.
Hathcock felt the blood surging through his veins at such pressure that his ears pounded and his vision blurred. He knew he was running for his life. He took a long stride through the deep muck and plunged headfirst into the black water, gulping what seemed gallons of filth before he breathed air again.
Land and Reinke were doing no better. Now that they had gotten near the low dike that retained the water in the rice paddy, the three exhausted Marines frantically swam on their bellies through the mire the last few yards. They emerged on dry land, caked from head to toe in stinking mud and, straining their last resources of strength, crossed the final few yards of open grassland. As Land, Reinke, and Hathcock fell behind the cover of the low knoll, they heard the first rounds of Marine mortar fire striking the enemy’s positions in the hills. All six men lay on the ground shaking, amazed that they had survived.
“I must have sucked in a gallon of that shit,” Land said, spitting kernels of mud and sod from his mouth.
“Better a bellyful of that than your ass full of lead,” Reinke said between heavy breaths.
Hathcock pulled a package of Salem cigarettes encased in a yellow plastic box from his soaked shirt pocket. “Well, I managed to keep something dry,” he said and put a white filter tip in his mouth.
“Anyone else for a dry cigarette?”
Land looked at the five Marines and then took
the package from Hathcock’s hands, “I don’t smoke, but I think this time I deserve a cigarette. That was just too damn close.”
Hathcock threw him the lighter and, holding it in his right hand, Land flipped the top back and struck the flame. As he drew the lighter toward the cigarette between his lips, his right hand, which was holding it, shook violently. Land’s entire body began to tremble so badly he couldn’t light the cigarette.
Hathcock took the captain’s hands and guided the flame toward the cigarette, which also shook in the Marine’s lips. The four men who lay watching them roared with laughter.
Land looked at them, drew the smoke in, and said, “Fuck every one of you! You’re shaking just as much as I am.”
Reinke and Hathcock lay on the ground laughing, and with a gasp Carlos said, “I don’t think I’d ever believed you could get so shook.”
Land finally laughed too, after he saw one of the other men trying to put some purification tablets in a canteen spill half the water. Each one of them was astonished to find himself still alive.
The six snipers lay behind the knoll more than an hour, waiting for the exchange of fire to cease, and then they spent the remainder of the day cleaning their equipment, preparing to return to Hill 55 that night.
8
A Nightmare’s Witness
NONE OF THE SIX MARINES DISCUSSED THAT NEAR-DISASTER at the riverbend for several days after they returned to Hill 55. They felt embarrassed about it. But even if the mission was a failure in every other sense, it had reinforced Land’s and his men’s confidence in the tactical principles of sniping, which they were adapting by trial and error from those of World War I Europe and tailoring to the jungle environment of Vietnam.
The rule that one should never hunt the same ground twice—and never set a pattern or establish predictable habits—became profoundly important for Hathcock after that day on the river. He saw it as a major key to survival and success.
Hathcock began dissecting and analyzing every activity in which he, or the Marines under his supervision, involved themselves. He concluded that even the call of nature could have deadly results if the trip to the privy took place at approximately the same time each day. He was determined that the only consistent thing about him or the snipers he instructed would be their complete unpredictability.
Hathcock was beginning to regard sniper warfare in a new perspective. He saw it as a complex craft that required scientific skill, total self-discipline, and absolute awareness of every aspect of the sniper and his environment. This, he told his students, was not a goal for them to strive for but a necessity that they would master if they intended to survive. Mistakes meant death. “In this shooting match,” he told them, “second place is a body bag.”
The first class of the 1st Marine Division Scout/Sniper School commenced during November 1966. It was a learning experience for both student and instructor alike.
NOVEMBER ARRIVED AT HILL 55 WITH TORRENTS OF RAIN. INSIDE THE sniper school’s damp, hard-back tent, twenty wet and muddy Marines sat on long wooden benches listening to Captain Land welcoming them as the school’s first students. He told them that they would be divided into two-man teams and that each team would have the benefit of a sniper instructor who would not only take them through their paces at Hill 55 but accompany them on every assignment in the bush.
Like a football coach welcoming a new squad to summer practice, the captain stepped atop a wooden footlocker and began to preach to the men, telling them why they were so special and why they should work hard to succeed in the school.
“Gentlemen,” Land told the men, “you have been selected to become scout/snipers not because you are the meanest sons-of-a-bitches in the valley, nor was it for showin’ off what a tough guy you are to the gang back on the block. You were chosen not because you have muscles in your do-do, and not because you have potential to become some sort of cold-blooded killer who would just as soon blow the eyes out of a baby as step on a bug.
“Your units selected each of you to become snipers because you are good Marines—men who are well disciplined…courageous…duty-bound…and loyal to your country and your Corps. You have been screened and found to be in top physical condition, mentally sound, and very patient. Each man here has demonstrated to his commander that he has good moral character and a strong sense of values, among which he holds life sacred.
“These attributes are important to be a successful sniper. When you go on a mission, there is no crowd to applaud you—no one for whom you can flex your muscles or show how tough you are. When you go on a mission, you’re alone.
“You have to be strong enough to physically endure lying in the weeds day after day, letting the bugs crawl over you and bite you, letting the sun cook you and the rain boil you, shitting and pissing in your pants, but lying there. Lying there because you know that Charlie’s coming, and you’re gonna kill him.
“You don’t shoot the first gooner that walks into your field of fire, either. You select your target carefully, making sure that the gooner you kill is Charlie, so that you can waste the bastard with no doubts or remorse.
“When you kill ole Nguyen Schwartz, other than you added another digit to your company’s body count for that month, nobody will give a shit.
“But you give a shit! You acted as a professional. You identified and put an end to a man, a woman, or even a child who would have killed your best friend, most of your friend’s friends, and you. And that’s what is important to you.
“I know that as grunts, it was easy for you to feel justified in killing the enemy when he attacked you—he was trying to kill you. If you attacked him, he also had a choice to fight or surrender—you did not murder him, because he died trying to kill you. That’s self-defense.
“As a sniper, you do not have that luxury. You will be killing the enemy when he is unaware of your presence. You will be assassinating him without giving him the option to run or fight, surrender or die. You will be, in a sense, committing murder on him—premeditated.
“To deal with this successfully, you must be mentally strong. You must believe in what you are doing—that these efforts are defeating our enemy and that your selected kills of their leaders and key personnel are preventing death and carnage that this enemy would otherwise bring upon your brothers.”
The captain stood silent, looking at his new students’ solemn faces, allowing this sermon to digest. He cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, the screening is not done. It has only begun. We want strong, good men—the best. We will weed out the ear, finger, and tooth collectors and send them packing. We will eliminate the hot dogs and cowards and send them packing with the dummies, liars, and thieves. I will tolerate none of these among my snipers.
“I will tolerate only hard work and dedication. You give us that, and we will make you the deadliest creature on earth—a sniper.”
The muggy tent erupted with cheers and whistles from the Marines. Hathcock stood near the back door, clapping.
THE RAIN CONTINUED FALLING THAT WARM NOVEMBER DAY. IT SOAKED the many rice fields, hedgerows, and jungles that surrounded Hill 55. At the edge of the barbed-wire perimeter that surrounded the Marine encampment atop the hill, a rifle squad passed through a checkpoint as they left the compound’s security. The Marines making up this patrol were mostly cooks, administrative clerks, and supply personnel. It was a chance for them to see action and earn medals.
The patrol was a routine one. They would walk down the hill to a crossroads, where they would check the local citizenry’s identification cards and possibly return with some Viet Cong suspects for interrogation.
Hathcock stood at the back door of the snipers’ hooch, looking at the gray afternoon and watching the distant figures walking at the sides of the water-covered road. Stepping back inside the hooch, he sat next to his cot and began cleaning his rifle. The sound of the rain spattering against the canvas left him relaxed, feeling warmly secure as he scrubbed the rifle’s bolt with a solvent-soaked rag. The solvent’
s pleasant, aromatic smell spread throughout the tent, wafted on the cool afternoon breeze that came through the hooch’s large, screened windows.
The quiet afternoon was suddenly shattered by the sound of rifle fire below the hill. The sound of a command-detonated mine exploding brought Hathcock to his feet. Even before he reached the door, he knew that the patrol that had just left Hill 55 had walked into an ambush.
He saw several Marines running for cover, trying to regroup and fight. But the enemy’s fire was heavy, and the best that the patrol could do was try to survive. The Viet Cong had set up their ambush in a tree line and planted claymore mines* along the edges of a rice paddy dike that served as a trail cutting across a series of rice fields. The Marine patrol frequently used it as a shortcut to the crossroads. When the patrol turned up the well-traveled pathway, the Viet Cong opened fire. They then detonated the claymores as the Marines leaped into the rice paddy—the VC’s killing zone.
Realizing their tragic error, the dazed Marines mounted the dike and turned their rifle fire toward the tree line as they ran for their lives. Four bodies, partially in the water, lay sprawled against the dike, including that of one Marine who lay unconscious from a round that penetrated his steel helmet, cut his scalp, and knocked him out.
“Damned VC,” Hathcock said, pounding the door with the heel of his hand. “It’s like trying to kill ants: You can burn ’em, poison ’em, and stomp on ’em, but they just keep crawling up out of the ground.”
The sergeant who led the patrol reported to the intelligence chief that four of his Marines had died on the rice paddy dike and that the remainder of the patrol, including two seriously wounded men, had made it back to the hill. His report had been accurate, except that the fourth Marine did not die on the dike.
A reinforced platoon descended on the ambush site, but the woman who had led the attack had already told her guerrillas to carry the living Marine away.
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