“You think my platoon…”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t start worrying about that right now. You start fresh with them. My point is to be aware that the stuff is real popular among the troops. Just file it away and keep to your plan. Those troops you have are real good men, they just needed some leadership.”
“I got that right off,” Hathcock answered. “I just solved a big part of that problem.”
Sommers smiled. “Yeah. I sent that sergeant over to the police tent. He’ll finish out his last two weeks in-country passing out toilet paper and getting the shiners burned.”
“That was a good sniper when I had him back in ’67. What happened?”
“He stayed here too long. He’s tired, I guess.”
“No. I don’t buy that. He had twenty-one confirmed kills and quit. When he quit, he quit altogether.”
“Too bad,” Sommers said. “He’s had a shit-bird reputation since I’ve been here.”
Hathcock looked at me gunnery sergeant curiously, “In the conversation I had with my snipers, one Marine mentioned that they haven’t had the opportunity to go on operations, that they’ve been pulling shit detail instead.”
Sommers nodded. “That platoon has never produced anything that would give anyone an idea of what they do, other than wander around with deer rifles and pick off stragglers. The sergeant major uses them for whatever has to be done on die hill because they don’t seem to serve any other useful purpose. You’ll have your hands full changing all of that.”
“Gunny, I’m informing you officially that my men are in training tomorrow. That has priority over shit detail. They’ll be zeroing their rifles and getting ready to go on patrol.”
“I’m all for that. But there’re a lot of folks who’ll bitch because somebody has to burn the shitters. They won’t like filling those quotas that your Marines filled.”
“It’s their quotas that my men were filling. It’s time to balance the books!”
“Staff Sergeant Hathcock, die sergeant major is going to raise hell. It’s nothing new for me. Like I said, I lead the sergeant major’s hit-parade. I have a hunch that you and I will be competing for that number one spot after this. It’s your choice right now. Once you make it, the sergeant major will be on you just like he’s on me.”
“There’s no choice to be made, Gunny. My snipers come ahead of my own pleasure. I’ve got a hunch mat fella I just relieved might have tried to get along and keep everybody happy. He was a good Marine when I first knew him. But you can only compromise so far. I think he chose to keep folks on the hill happy, and his Marines went to hell in a handbasket.”
Hathcock stood, “I’ve gotta go inspect my area and cut the troops loose. You eat chow yet?”
“No. I’ll wait for you to get back. We’ll go together.”
“Sounds good,” Hathcock said smiling.
Before the sun revealed any light to the black sky the following morning, Hathcock sat behind a field desk in the sniper platoon hooch. He glanced down a roster of names and from it paired a senior-ranked Marine with one of a junior grade on each of ten teams he organized. He took the odd man, a corporal from London, Ohio, named John Perry. He would rotate these combinations of men and equipment until each team satisfied him. Hathcock compared it to arranging marriages, since much of a team’s success depended on the compatibility of the two partners.
The Vietnamese summer, which extends throughout the major portion of the year, drying the monsoon season’s mud brick-hard in its blistering heat, had set in long before Carles arrived in-country during the final days of May 1969. Hot dust now covered this crackling world, its shades of green stripped treeless-brown by the bullets and napalm from a decade of fighting.
As Hathcock sat sweltering in the darkness before another sandpaper day in this dusty, hot land, the afternoon heat of South Carolina June broiled the left arm and face of Staff Sergeant Ronald H. McAbee. With his bare arm propped out the window, he drove his car through the sunny countryside near the house where his wife waited for him to arrive from Texas. He had left San Antonio the day before and slept in a roadside park in Alabama.
McAbee had spent two weeks at San Antonio with the Marine Corps Rifle Team> competing in the Texas State and NRA Regional rifle matches. Like his friend Carlos Hathcock, Ron McAbee departed from Texas with orders for Vietnam. During his tour at Quantico, he and Hathcock had become close friends-like brothers, he would tell anyone who asked.
Ron McAbee first met Hathcock at Camp Lejeune at the end of the Marine Corps rifle and pistol matches in the spring of 1967. McAbee had just finished shooting his .45 caliber “hard ball” pistol in the final day of individual competition when he met Hathcock in the red brick barracks at the rifle range near coastal North Carolina’s Sneed’s Ferry and Topsail Island. That night they crossed the tall bridge mat leads to the beach community and drank Jim Beam bourbon whiskey and water at a tavern there. McAbee was allergic to beer.
McAbee knew that Hathcock was in I Corps, but he did not know where. He guessed his friend would probably be at the 1st Marine Division’s Scout/Sniper School, now at Da Nang.
In fact, when Carlos arrived in Vietnam, he had been destined to teach at the sniper school. He had called the 1st Marine Division’s operations officer from the Da Nang airport when he arrived in-country. That colonel sent a jeep and driver for this very special Marine. He even offered him the position of senior instructor at the school, but Carlos wanted action,not classes. He told the colonel that he could do the 1st Marine Division more good with a platoon of his own.
Now, as dawn boiled above the South China Sea, Hathcock stood in the doorway of his sniper hooch waiting for his first muster. The fresh start for 7th Marines’ snipers.
Already, before others in the encampment above them had stirred, most of the sniper platoon sat below the sandbag wall of their command bunker, talking. This morning they wore a variety of uniforms from pickle colored sateen—the standard stateside Marine Corps issue—to jungle camouflage uniforms with slanted patch pockets. Others wore uniforms cut from the same design as the camouflage but in a solid green color like the sateen utilities. The effort was obvious and Hathcock accepted that for now.
Hathcock shouted, “Corporal Perry!” and a Marine leaped to his feet and snapped to attention in front of the hooch.
“Yes, Staff Sergeant Hathcock.”
“Supply have trouble keeping you people in uniforms?”
“Yes. We get one set of utilities at a time. Several of the troops didn’t have any, so they borrowed extras that some guys managed to rat hole, or they wore regular sateens. They’re all Marine Corps issue, though.”
“I can see that. We all need to be dressed alike, or at least close. I prefer cammies. Where’s the nearest supply point?”
“On the hill. But they don’t have any. If you want real utilities, you have to go down to the Force Service Regiment at Da Nang. But you gotta have paperwork from Division to get anything from them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. By the way, you’ll be my shooting partner, unless you work out better with someone else.”
“That’s fine, Staff Sergeant Hathcock.”
Hathcock spent the next hour reading the initial pairings of teams and answering questions about how flexible these partnerships would be. He explained that each man could have a combination of partners, no one would be teamed with any one man. But all partnerships must be close. Both members of the team must understand and be able to almost read his partner’s mind. This would take time, Hathcock told them.
By ten o’clock that morning, the twenty-two snipers were behind their rifles, outside the wire, shooting at targets seven hundred yards away, zeroing their sights for that distance.