She knew that Carlos’s shooting could not last forever. He had to do something else, other than compete with the rifle. She prayed for that day to come each time she watched her neighbors at Quantico enjoy weekends and evenings with their husbands.
But, hidden in her thoughts, also loomed the war, and she considered herself lucky compared to her friends whose husbands now fought in Vietnam. Each night on the news Jo watched wounded American soldiers looking into the cameras as their buddies lifted them onto helicopters. She saw the faces of men who, to her, looked too much like her husband.
Tonight, on the news, President Nixon talked of the prospects of peace with honor, yet during this very month of April 1969, as Hathcock drove through Texas, the United States reached its peak of military involvement in Vietnam with 543,400 American servicemen committed to combat there.
While Jo watched the nightly news, the telephone rang. She looked at the clock and reckoned Carlos had finally Teached San Antonio. “That must be your daddy,” she said to her son as she walked to the telephone.
“Hello.”
“Honey. I got here all right, but I have a little bad news,” Hathcock said calmly. “I can’t shoot down here this weekend. I’ve gotta come home.”
“Carlos, what’s wrong?”
“I no more than walked in here and Gunner Bartlett told me not to unpack. I have orders waiting on me at Quantico, and I have to go straight back tomorrow.”
“Carlos! Orders where?”
Jo felt the awful emptiness swell in her stomach as she asked. She held her breath as Hathcock tried to sound cheerful about his next assignment. “Well, it’s to that big shootin’ match across the pond.”
“Oh, no, Carlos. You’ve already been. You just got back. They must have made a mistake!”
“I don’t know. I sure didn’t ask for these orders, but I don’t think it’s a mistake. Jo, I’ll be home tomorrow night or Sunday morning at the latest. We’ll talk about it then. I love you.”
“I love you, Carlos.”
16. Return to Vietnam
“AIN’T CHANGED MUCH,” Hathcock said as he put out his hand to a sandy-haired Marine with a strawberry complexion who stood on the plywood porch of a hard-backed tent on Hill 55. “Looks like they improved the hooches some since *67. I’m Staff Sergeant Hathcock.”
Gunnery Sergeant David Sommers took the outstretched hand of the slim-built Marine who Sgt. Maj. Clinton A. Puckett, a man who would later become only the sixth Marine to hold the title Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, had assigned him to sponsor. Sommers had already heard much about Hathcock, and he wondered how such a slight looking man could command such a reputation. He had expected a much larger, tougher looking Marine.
“I’m Gunny Sommers, 7th Marine Regiments’ career planner and Headquarters Company’s company gunnery sergeant. I also keep house in this hooch. I’ve got you a cot all the way down at the end.”
Sommers opened the screen door, and Hathcock stepped inside the hard-back tent, which had a tin roof and long canvas awnings over each window. New metal cots replaced the old wooden ones that he had known two years earlier, and new plywood covered the floor.
Hathcock looked toward the end of the hooch and saw his cot. And there, atop his new bed, sleeping in the breeze that blew through the rear screen door, lay a shaggy red dog.
“Yankee!” David Sommers yelled, clapping his hands loudly. “Get off there! Get! Get!”
The dog awoke with a start, sprang from the cot, lunged into the screen door, knocking it wide open, and bounded outside like a startled burglar.
That dog!” Sommers said frustratedly. I’ve never seen him inside before. Usually you couldn’t get him inside any kind of hooch, even if you threw a steak on the floor.”
The slim but hard-muscled gunnery sergeant walked to the cot where the dog had left dirty paw marks and began sweeping off debris with his hand. “Yankee’s really not a bad dog,” he said. “I guess he’s like any other dog…”
“Or Marine,” Hathcock said, looking back at the front door where Yankee now sat, his tongue lolling out the side of his open mouth and tail wagging across the ground, raising a cloud of dust. Hathcock whistled and knelt to one knee, and seeing the invitation, the dog nosed open the door and trotted to his new-found friend.
“He must sense something about you. Nobody could have gotten him back inside this hooch. I would have taken money on it. That dog is really picky about who he chooses as his friends.”
“What you got around your neck?” Hathcock said to the dog, ruffling the fur on Yankee’s throat and noticing a military dog tag fastened to a makeshift collar that someone had fashioned from an old belt. As Carlos read the tag he laughed.
It read: “Yankee” on the first line, followed by a row of numbers on the second and the initials USMC on the third line. Sex was indicated by the letter M, religion simply said, “All,” But it was the last item that brought on the chuckles—“Blood Type: Dog.”
“We’ll have to go down to LZ Baldy if he ever gets shot,” Hathcock said, grinning. “That Army camp is about the closest source of doggie blood.”
Both Marines laughed, and Sommers said, “I don’t think Yankee would like it. He’d probably rather try to get by without it.”
“Sure a fine-looking dog,” Carlos said. “Does he do any tricks?”
“He’s full of ’em. But the smartest thing about him is that he knows an attack is coming ahead of time. You hear him start growling, head for the bunker. I don’t know how he can tell, but a couple of minutes after he starts growling we’ll start getting hit.”
Gunnery Sergeant Sommers took Hathcock’s sea bag and set it in the corner next to a foot locker. He looked out the door at the heat waves that boiled across the horizon and said, “I guess you know all about Arizona Territory.”
“Pretty much. But it sure looks a lot different now. I remember there being a whole lot more trees.”
“There were more trees. The war has gotten a lot worse since you were here last. Mostly what you see now is broken trees and bare fields.”
Hathcock stood next to Sommers and looked out at the hills and valley below where forests had once flourished thick and green but which now revealed mostly gray skeletons in leafless desolation. “Arizona Territory. That all used to be a free fire zone. We never patrolled over there, just shot across at Charlie.”
“We operate out there today,” Sommers said. “Still lots of bad guys. Mostly the 90th Regiment and the 2nd NVA division. I think that we do most of our fighting there. One hot spot in particular is a little valley between here and Charlie Ridge. It has more shootouts than a Saturday night western. Troops call it Dodge City.”
“1st Battalion, 26th Marines is over there. A good friend of mine, Boo Boo Barker, is with mem,” Hathcock said.
“Since I’ve been here, that’s where a lot of the action has been.”
“How long have you been here?” Hathcock asked.
“I reported to 7th Marines in late November. I didn’t really like the idea of coming to Hill 55 because mis place stays under constant artillery and rocket attacks and lots of lob-bombs.”
Hathcock nodded his head, “I know about lob-bombs. Charlie sets off explosives underneath a satchel charge and lobs the thing in your lap. It’s kind of like blowing a firecracker under a tin can.”