July ended with the 7th Marines sniper platoon confirming seventy-two kills. Hathcock felt certain it was a record.
For Hathcock and his snipers, McAbee’s arrival had turned their lives sweet. His fine gunsmithing coupled with the keen training and leadership that Hathcock provided resulted in a platoon that became one of the best in Vietnam. For their outstanding achievement the platoon received a Presidential Unit Citation, one of the few platoons to ever receive such recognition.
Sergeant Major Puckett had a different view of things. Out of sight meant trouble to him. He felt that Hathcock or his second in command, McAbee, should be available—and accountable—at any given moment. It was a sound command-and-control philosophy shared by most Marines, and Puckett was undoubtedly right in feeling that the sniper sergeant had to take the responsibility of command as seriously as he took the business of getting out in the field and zapping “Charlie.”
Hathcock had a hard time sitting in his hooch and pushing papers, remaining by his radio and being always available for the sergeant major’s beck and call. Once Hathcock delegated assignments, he and McAbee grabbed their gear and went to the field too. As Hathcock saw it, the sergeant major could always reach him by radio. Most often he would be with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines.
He had built a bond with that company and its commander, a captain named Hoffman who had reached the enlisted rank of gunnery sergeant and received a battlefield commission. After the war the Marine Corps withdrew his temporary commission and made him a gunny once again. But because this captain “spoke the enlisted man’s language,” and was a “straight arrow,” Hathcock trusted him completely.
While Sergeant Major Puckett fumed because he could not reach anyone at the sniper hooch, Hathcock and several of his snipers spent the first ten days of July working the bush along Western Route 4, between the hamlets of Hoi An and Thuong Due, supporting Lieutenant Colonel Dowd and his 1st Battalion Marines.
During that brief period, they cleared the area of all enemy positions, and on July 10 escorted the first convoy to successfully pass along this route in more than four years.
July 10 found Hathcock and McAbee peering from behind tall shafts of dry elephant grass, searching a broad clearing. They had moved away from Route 4, looking for signs of enemy movement. McAbee carried the radio and held the handset next to his ear as Hathcock scoured the landscape with his twenty-power M-49 spotting scope.
“Mack, I don’t see a thing moving out there. But there is
this tittle hump six hundred yards out there that I want to stay and watch just a bit. It strikes me a little curious—somehow it just don’t fit.”
The grassy hump rose from the ground fifty yards from a cluster of trees and much taller grass. Hathcock thought it a likely spot for an enemy patrol to break out. It was the most narrow point in the clearing and seemed to be the most likely place for anyone to cross.
“Perry got a kill,” McAbee whispered to Hathcock as the two men lay cooking in the afternoon sun. Hathcock glanced at his watch and noted the time—3:30 P.M.
“How long ago?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
“I never heard a thing.”
“Yeah, he stayed with Charlie Company when they moved on down by that river. He set up mere on a bluff, overlooking that big bend in the river. Perry said he no more than settled in and this Viet Cong laid down his rifle, shucked off his clothes, and started taking a bath right there. One shot put an end to his bath.”
“Where’s Perry now?”
“He had just moved out when he came up on the net. He’s got a patrol covering him, so he’s moving out in the direction that the VC he killed came from.”
“Look!” Hathcock whispered urgently.
McAbee put his eye to the spotting scope and saw a head rising out of the hump.
“Told you that looked funny.”
Hathcock snuggled behind his rifle and laid his cheek against the old Winchester’s humped stock. He found his proper eye-relief behind the Lyman 8-power scope that he had selected for this particular mission. Mack had come across with the fine-tuned rifles and now Hathcock did select them like a golfer selects clubs. For this mission, he chose a Model 70 Winchester, shooting a 180 grain, .30-06 bullet, and the Lyman scope for what he called medium range shooting—three hundred to seven hundred yards.
McAbee could hear Hathcock’s slow and steady breathing stop, followed by the sudden explosion from the muzzle of the Winchester. The Viet Cong guerrilla, who had begun climbing out of the hole, suddenly fell on his face. Hathcock waited, staring through his scope. He waited for anyone else who might have been in the hole with the man.
“Look to the left,” McAbee whispered.
A man wearing black shorts and a khaki shirt trotted across the open field. He held an AK-47 in his right hand, and when he knelt next to the dead comrade, Hathcock dropped him too. He waited again.
“Here comes another one,” McAbee whispered.
“Got him,” Carlos said, waiting for the Viet Cong soldier to reach that point where the earth rose slightly and the two men lay dead. The rifle cracked and the third man joined the other two, and Carlos waited.
“Somebody’s peeking out of the grass where those two hamburgers came from.”
“Got him.”
Hathcock followed the soldier, who carried an AK-47, as he cautiously edged from the grass and walked toward the hole. He knelt to one knee, and before he could stand, Hathcock killed him too.
“Four. Any more?” Hathcock asked quietly.
“Yes, looks like three others. They’re just sitting on the edge of the clearing trying to see what’s happening. With the wind blowing in our faces, I don’t think they can figure out where the shots are coming from. That must be their hole, and they’re trying to get in to take cover.”
“I figured they had some sort of tunnel there. That patrol was headed home.” Hathcock waited quietly for ten more minutes, and then the three soldiers rose to their feet and walked cautiously toward the hump and the four dead men.
“Three-round rapid fire,” Hathcock said, chuckling as he sighted through his scope. His first shot surprised the group, and the two still-living men turned to flee. A second shot dropped one, leaving him kicking on the pile of bodies. The last man pirouetted in confusion. He was still spinning when the bullet shattered his breast bone, exploding his heart and killing him as he whirled in his death dance.
“Damn! Carlos,” Mack whispered in wonder. “I’ve never heard of a sniper killing more than seven at a time!”
“I took on a company a long time ago. I don’t know how many I killed then. But there was this one sniper I knew back in ’66 who killed eleven at one time—all confirmed. I guess that’s the official record, if anybody really cares about things like that.”
“I guess you’re right. You start shooting for record, like it’s the Marine Corps Matches or something, and you could go off the deep end. Anybody who enjoys this has got to be crazy.”
“Yeah,” Hathcock said quietly. “Crazy.”
McAbee buried his face in the crook of his arm, and Hathcock watched the big man’s body tremble.
“You okay?”
McAbee raised his face from his arm and looked at Hathcock. “I’m ashamed. I was laughing.”
“Why?”
“That was the stupidest bunch of gooks I ever watched. They were about as dumb as I’ve ever seen, walking up there like that.” He started chuckling again and Hathcock smiled, seeing the humor in the midst of the ugliness.
“It is kind of funny, come to think about it.”
The two Marines moved further up Route 4 and hid on a hill, in a twisted mangle of shattered trees, devastated from heavy shelling and now covered with low, new plants that found sunlight in the absence of the trees’ umbrella. There they spent the day waiting for any unlucky enemy who tried to cross the narrow stream that flowed five hundred yards away from them.