umbrella of broad-leafed trees and palms. To the right of the rice field where the farmers busily chopped weeds along a dike, Hathcock watched a lone man wearing a khaki shirt and black shorts walk to and from a hut that hugged the edge of the forest. Slowly, Hathcock moved his rifle to his right and lay behind it, watching the hut through his telescopic sight. The way that the man kept walking back to the hut and nervously stepping in and out the door made him suspicious.
In the distance came the rumble of heavy explosions, the sounds of an arc-light raid—Air Force B-52s dropping their tons of bombs on targets high in the steep mountains that stood well beyond Charlie Ridge and Happy Valley. That was where the enemy leaders hid and controlled the guerrilla war. Hathcock had seen that country only on maps and in aerial recon photographs. Even from such a sanitary perspective, he did not like the looks of it. He knew that for an American to go into those mountains that faced the Laotian border took great courage. The terrain alone could kill a man.
The bombs fell on those distant Viet cong and NVA strongholds that morning, but did not strike the headquarters of the North Vietnamese Army division general, who commanded thousands of soldiers from there. Hathcock knew nothing of this man, yet the man already knew of Hathcock and his fellow snipers. The commander carefully read a report sent to his headquarters by the cruel woman who led the Viet Cong near Hill 55. She told of the new school at the hill and the sniper tactics that she had observed being taught. She felt certain that American sniper operations were potentially very harmful.
In little more than a month, this general would read much more about the snipers who operated from Hill 55. He would also know many of them by name including Sergeant Carlos N. Hathcock, the sniper they would call “Long Tra’ng,” White Feather. Even as he read the report on this morning that the bombs fell dangerously close to his office, hidden beneath a camouflaged umbrella of netting and foliage, he contemplated means of stopping this new threat of sniper warfare. He knew that if it were left unchecked, it would badly cripple his operations near Da Nang.
The old man scratched a message on a narrow pad with his black, mother-of-pearl-finished fountain pen. He pressed the ink dry with a small ivory rocking horse blotter, a gift from his daughter, folded the paper double and sealed it shut with a drop of red wax, on which he pressed the impression of a crimson, enamel-inlaid, five-point star, a gift presented to him in China.
A soldier wearing a tan uniform and pith helmet marched smartly from the headquarters, with the note secured inside a small feather pouch that hung from a strap across his shoulder. The neatly dressed soldier stopped at the end of the walkway and looked up at the sun, which stood at its noonday peak. He lifted the tan helmet from his head, wiped sweat from his brow, and turned his eyes toward the towering clouds that loomed in the east and promised rain that evening.
Sheets of rain fell on the three Marines as they hid silently observing all activity around the rice fields and huts. The men who had worked chopping weeds from the edge of the rice paddy now huddled inside the doorway of a hut that faced the three Marines. Hathcock was not concerned with them, but the man who squatted just inside the door of the hut at the edge of the forest continued to hold the sniper’s interest.
The monsoon rained through the afternoon, and Hathcock and his two students lay soaked at the edge of the jungle, watching intently for the man who squatted in the hut to confirm himself as Charlie.
“Let’s go,” the hurley PFC whispered to Hathcock. “It’s almost time for us to get back. There ain’t no VC to shoot out here anyway. And besides, I’m hungry.”
Hathcock looked at the young Marine’s round face with a glance that easily told the man that he should keep his thoughts to himself. Crooking his finger in a motion for the man to come closer, Hathcock whispered tersely, “Sit still and don’t make any more noise. You got enough explaining to do, with you trying to kill them farmers.”
The Marine lay flat on his stomach and rested his chin on his hands, which he clasped together. He said nothing more until he spoke to the captain that night.
The rain lightened to a drizzle and a soft breeze began to blow from the east, clearing the hazy pall that had gathered over the fields. In the doorway of the hut that hugged the edge of the forest, the man who wore the khaki shirt and black shorts stood. He stepped outside and looked to his right, and then to his left, before disappearing behind the hut. “He’s up to something,” Hathcock thought to himself, as he watched through his rifle’s scope.
Ten minutes later the man returned with a white canvas bag strapped over his shoulder. He looked again to his right, and then to his left. And when he felt certain that no one watched him, he reached inside the hut’s doorway and took an SKS rifle from its hiding place there.
“Got you, Charlie,” Hathcock thought, as he gently squeezed his rifle’s trigger and dropped the man dead in his tracks.
“Let’s go home,” Hathcock told the burly PFC.
The three Marines silently slipped into the tree line and, following the edge of the forest, came abreast of the hut where Hathcock had killed the Viet Cong soldier. They stopped and looked at the man lying dead only a few feet from the forest’s edge. Next to him lay the SKS rifle.
“I’m gonna capture that weapon,” Hathcock told the two students.
As they cautiously walked to the forest’s edge and peered from behind its dense cover, Hathcock scrambled to where the body lay and snatched the rifle. He turned to retreat quickly when he noticed a broad, white feather, three inches long, lying at his feet. The sight of it reminded him of the white sea birds that he watched fly over this valley at sunrise.
He knelt and took the delicate plume in his left hand, and without another pause, stepped rapidly behind the jungle’s green curtain.
As the trio of men made their way to the rally point, Hathcock twirled the feather between his fingers and thought again of the peaceful dawn and the white birds. It might well have been a feather dropped by a chicken that had strayed to that far end of the community, but for Hathcock, the white birds of the morning seemed a more meaningful source. And in the same respect mat hundreds of Marines and soldiers would occasionally wear a small flower on their helmets, representing a simple beauty that still survived in the midst of war’s thorns and fires, he took his bush hat from his head and inserted the feather into its band.
Shoving the hat back on his head, Hathcock turned his interest to the rifle he had captured. He would tag it and turn it in at the command post. Hopefully, he would be able to take it home as a souvenir, just as his father had done with the old Mauser.
The march home took much longer than the trek out that morning. The squad took a return route that brought them to the opposite side of Hill 55 from where they had departed. They knew that often the Viet Cong would rig explosives in trails left by outbound patrols, in hopes of blowing away the soldiers as they backtracked home.
By the time Hathcock reached his hooch, he felt extraordinarily tired—physically drained from the long day, the rain, and the extra miles home. Oeaning his rifle and combat gear seemed a dismal chore, one he had to force himself to complete.
That night, Hathcock sat snaking on the edge of his cot. His legs trembled and his vision blurred. His head buzzed as though he had taken a marathon roller coaster ride. He thought mat it may have resulted from the soaking he took during the day. But deep in his consciousness he knew that it had to be something else. Something that he did not like. A thing that had been subtly attacking him—coming and going—for three years.
It began when Jo gave birth to Carlos Norman Hathcock III. She herself had had to call the Naval Hospital ambulance at Cherry Point to get to the delivery room. Hathcock had suffered fainting and dizzy spells two weeks before that, and the doctors had hospitalized him, as a precaution.
He had been in the hospital when his son was born. It had upset him at the time—he would have liked to have been with his wife—but he sometimes felt it had hardened his resolution to get out of the hospital and take up his responsibilities, even though his physical unsteadiness hadn’t entirely disappeared.
This evening in the sniper hooch on Hill 55, he felt much worse than in many months. He sat there visibly shaking when a meaty hand took him by the shoulder.
“You okay, Carlos?”
Hathcock turned to see his captain standing at the foot of his cot. “Get over to the sick bay,” Land said in his gruff voice. “You look pretty well wrung out.”
“Skipper,” Hathcock said in a high-pitched, singsong voice, “I’m really all right. I just got a little chill from the rain today. I’m gonna get me something hot to drink, and I’ll crawl in the rack. I’ll be okay.”
Land looked at him quizzically, but decided to accept his sergeant’s opinion of when he was sick enough to
