“Intramurals ought to be in full swing right now,” Burke followed. “When did you first shoot in intramurals, Sergeant Hathcock.”
“Back in Hawaii. I won the individuals. That’s where I met Captain Land—he and Gunner Arthur Terry ran the shooting team and the sniper school. I won the individuals and went to the All-Marine shooting matches. You get outa here, look into the shooting team wherever you end up. That’s one thing in the Marine Corps that I really love. I got my greatest sense of accomplishment from shooting and teaching other Marines how to shoot. 1 guess that the biggest moment in my life came when I won the 1,000-yard championship at Camp Perry.
“Did I ever tell you about winning the Wimbledon Cup?”
“No,” Burke replied, still staring down the sniper scope. “I’ve heard other guys tell about it, but I never heard you. I’d sure like to hear your side of it. W; got lots of time. Those guys out mere aren’t going anywhere.”
“Yeah, I know. I won the Wimbledon at Camp Perry, Ohio, on August 26, 1965—the day after I went distinguished.”
Burke asked with a tone of hesitancy in his voice, “Don’t mink I’m stupid or anything, but I’ve heard you and Captain Land and Gunny Wilson all talk about distinguished for six months, and to be honest with you, I never really understood exactly what it is. I figure that it is a high honor for a shooter, but nobody ever told me how you become distinguished.”
“Well, you become distinguished by placing in so many shooting matches. Every time you win a gold, silver, or bronze medal in matches, you get points toward becoming distinguished. A Distinguished Marksman in the Marine Corps is the top dog among shooters. He wears a gold shooting badge and is a member of an elite few marksmen. There are some great Marines among them, for example, Major General Merit A. Edson is distinguished. He died a while back, but he won the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal leading the 1st Marine Raider Battalion. He went on to become the executive director of the National Rifle Association.
“I went distinguished in 1965. When we got to Camp Perry mat year, I was hard as woodpecker lips. I just missed the National Match Championship by a couple of marks, but the silver medal I won gave me the last few points that I needed to make thirty and go distinguished. The day that I won the Wimbledon Cup was special. It was the biggest day of my life, as far as shooting goes.”
Burke turned from the scope and smiled. “Captain Land talked about Camp Perry and you winning the Wimbledon Cup. I think he was as proud about it as you were. He said that when the smoke cleared, there was one Marine Corps meatball down on the line, and that was you. “He said that everybody who was anybody, including the Commandant of the Marine Corps was there. The whole National Rifle Association was there, and you beat them all.
Burke turned back to the scope and again began scanning the dike Hathcock stretched out and rested his shoulders and bead against the base of the tree. He watched the jungle behind their position, and in a soft-spoken voice he began his story, pausing with caution after every few words to listen for any sounds that might signal an unwelcome visitor.
4. The Best Shot in America
COMPETITIVE SHOOTING IN the United States comes to a climax at one place every year—Camp Perry, Ohio. It is a small red square on many road maps, along Ohio’s Route 2. There State Highway 358 begins and then dead-ends less than a mile north at a gigantic complex of rifle and pistol ranges located on Lake Erie’s southern shore. There, military and civilian marksmen fire side-by-side in the single elimination tournaments that end with one shooter alone on the firing line, declared a national champion.
There are various team and individual championships, such as the National Match Championship, but the single title that marksmen from all walks of life desire most is the 1,000-Yard National High-Power Rifle Championship—the Wimbledon Cup.
On August 25, 1965, Carles Hathcock was one of 130 marksmen lying prone on the firing tine at Camp Perry, focusing through their rifles’ scopes at a target that at 1,000 yards resembled a pin’s head. The bull’s-eye at which they aimed measured 36 inches across, and inside that black field was a 20-inch circle painted in white with 5-V marked in its center. That small circle within a circle, the V-ring, was the very center of the target, and championships usually rested on the number of times the marksman’s bullets struck that circle—that number was the V-count.
It was opening day for the first elimination round for the Wimbledon Cup. The high shooter from this 130-man relay would join the single nigh shooters from 19 other relays, also competing for the 1,000-yard championship, and shoot the sudden-death relay for the title-firing a single round at a time in three minutes.
These 2,600 marksmen began the elimination with 10 rounds and 10 minutes in which to fire them. One shot out of the black, 5-point center and they could forget that dream of capturing the Wimbledon for another year. In order to advance from this first day of shooting, the marksman had to outpoint the other 129 shooters in his relay. Since most of the competitors shot a possible 50 out of 50 points, the selection of high shooter usually ended with a count of V-ring shots.
Captain Jim Land, now shooting as a teammate of Corporal Hathcock on the Marine Corps Rifle Team, watched the skinny kid from Arkansas survive the cuts and make the semifinals, where he had competed against nearly 3,000 other crack shots for one of the 20 targets set aside for the final’s sudden-death showdown.
And when the first day ended, Hathcock and a sergeant named Danny Sanchez remained the only Marines firing bolt-action rifles—still in contention for the coveted Wimbledon Cup.
August 26, 1965, blew in with such a wind that a bullet fired at the 1,000-yard target carried more than 190 inches to the right before it struck home.
Twenty men lay on the line, ten behind bolt-action rifles and ten behind semiautomatic weapons, classified as “service rifles.” Beside going for the Wimbledon Cup, those shooting die service rifle also contended for a special award for their class alone, the Fair Trophy.
Land looked at the backs of the men lying prone on the line, many wearing heavy, leather, shooting jackets, which were belted and strapped on them so tightly that each man had to force his breathing. He searched the line until he saw the round, yellow patch, with a red Marine Corps emblem in its center, sewn on the back of Hathcock’s green canvas shooting jacket.
“There’s Hathcock,” Land told two of the team members who sat with him, high in grandstands filled with hundreds of people, including NRA officials, other marksmen who had been eliminated earlier, and family and friends of shooters who were on the line. And among those seated on the front row, center, with the NRA’s top brass, was Gen. Wallace M. Greene, Jr., Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Before the marksmen had taken their positions on the line, Greene had met with die Marine Corps team and shook Hathcock’s and Sanchez’s hands. “Go out there and win,” he told the young corporal and sergeant. “You have 196,000 Marines counting on you.”
Land sat on the high wooden bleachers and watched Hathcock making notes in his data book, sighting down his rifle, and then writing again. Brass bands filled the air with patriotic march music. Booths and exhibits capped off the atmosphere, which resembled a county fair. Press photographers, reporters, and television crews swarmed along the front line as each shooter prepared to crawl down into his shooting position. Land spoke aloud to the Marines seated around him, “1 wonder if he’s feeling the lump?”
The lump, as competitive marksmen call it, is the tightness that builds in a shooter’s throat when the pressure of the competition becomes too much for him.
As Hathcock began putting his shooting gear together on the firing line, he felt the lump building. His tension caused that cramped feeling in the pit of his stomach—a feeling that he dealt with the day prior when he lost the National Match by three points. He had won a silver medal in that competition, facing thousands of other marksmen, shooting his service rifle—an M-1 Garand—in slow and rapid fire matches at 200 and 300 yards, firing at 12-inch bulls’-eyes, and in slow fire matches at 600 yards, firing at 12-inch bulls’-eyes. And in it, one point could separate 20 shooters in the final standings. He looked at his data book and began concentrating on today’s marksmanship tasks, busying himself to the point that thoughts of General Greene and 196,000 other Marines left him.
Hathcock looked down the firing lane. Twenty red, pennant-shaped flags, each one twenty feet long, lined the
