drops. “Spare any water?”
“Sure,” the Marine said, handing Hathcock a canteen and sloshing its contents out the open top. “We better book.* Charlie’s mad as hell now. They’d love to get you after today.”
Hathcock felt uneasy when the squad leader told him, “Charlie’s mad as hell.” During the flight back to Hill 55, he wondered if the assassination of the general would only arouse the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong to fight with greater fury.
He would always have mixed feelings about this day’s work. As American casualties rose sharply in the weeks that followed, he began to feel that this was one sniper killing that might have been a mistake.
When Hathcock stepped off the helicopter, home at Hill 55’s landing site, a group of smiling and whooping Marines met him. Burke stood among them and said, “White Feather made it.”
Hathcock smiled.
The giant of a captain who’d recruited Hathcock for the mission slapped him across the back so hard that Carlos wondered if he had dislocated any bones. The hulking Marine put a pot roast-size hand on Hathcock’s shoulder and said, “Son, I’m sure as hell glad to see you back in one piece. Lot of us kept you in our prayers. You did one hell of a job.”
Walking up the hill toward his hooch, Hathcock felt the great fatigue from the mission finally take hold. He longed to lie down and sleep for days. But his standards were demanding. And despite the fact that this was his last mission—that he would leave Hill 55 in a few days to return to the MP company and on to the World by way of Okinawa—he remained true to them. He cleaned his rifle and gear before he rested.
15. Saying Good-bye
THE PROPELLER-DRIVEN Convair aircraft taxied to a halt in New Bern, North Carolina, at a few minutes past midnight. Carlos Hathcock, a brand-new civilian, discharged the day before at Camp Pendleton, California, sat alone in die back of the plane and looked out the Plexiglas window, trying to see if Jo and Sonny were there to meet him. Floodlights shone from the eaves of the terminal and made it difficult to tell who was whom.
It had been a long flight, and no one on the plane had spoken to him. He waited until the pushing mass of passengers had almost made their way through the doorway on the side of the airplane before he reached under his seat and brought out his green vinyl satchel with yellow handles and USMC written on the side, and walked out of the plane.
As he walked through the gate, he saw Jo standing there, holding their son and smiling, thankful that her husband had survived and had come home so that they could build a new life. Hathcock took his son in his arms and kissed his wife. The greeting lasted a moment and no one took notice of them.
He took his sea bag and vinyl suitcase from the baggage claim and left the airport, bound for his little house on Bray Avenue, a promised job with an electrical contractor, and a new life as a civilian.
Nearly one month later Carlos Hathcock sat next to Jo on the front porch of his small frame house and held his son on his knee, bouncing him up and down, playing horsy. He thought of the past long weekend. He had taken Thursday and Friday off and had driven to nearby Camp Lejeune where he watched the Marine Corps’ Eastern Division Rifle and Pistol matches. There he met many of his old shooting partners from the Marine Corps team. He saw again that side of the Marine Corps that he loved and now missed.
The weekend with his friends had planted a seed of doubt in his mind. For eight years he had put down roots in the Marine Corps and now, as he bounced his giggling son up and down, his thoughts drifted away to the firing ranges, to the comradeship between friends, and to the competition and the possible chance of winning another national championship.
The night that he got home from Camp Lejeune’s Stone Bay ranges, Hathcock told Jo that he missed the Marine Corps already. And from the tone of his voice, she knew that the odds of him remaining a civilian and staying out of the war had grown slim. She was well aware that Carlos did not like being an electrician, it had become obvious that going to work each day was an increasing drudgery for him.
“I was safer in Vietnam,” Hathcock said sharply, after telling Jo how a screwdriver, hurled by an electrocuted co-worker, narrowly missed his head. “I don’t like that job.”
“What does that mean?” Jo responded. “You want to go back into the Marine Corps?’
He sat silent for a moment, looking at his son bounce. He felt a tightness in his stomach wrench into a hard knot with her response. “Would that be so bad?” he asked. “I’m a competitive marksman and marksmanship instructor. I’m sure not volunteering to go back to Vietnam.”
“Carlos, I knew what you were when I married you. I’ve never liked the Marine Corps, but I accepted it. Don’t feel like you’re doing me and Sonny a favor by staying out and being miserable. I want you to be happy. That’s what makes me happy.”
By summer he and his family had moved from New Bern to Quantico, where he was assigned to the Marksmanship Training Unit and the Marine Corps’ national champion rifle team.
Hathcock continued shooting the three hundred Winchester magnum rifle at a thousand yards as well as the M-14 on the National Match Course,* but he also began pursuing the international small-bore (.22 caliber) competition as well, hoping for a chance at the 1968 Olympics.
One day in July, 1967, Hathcock came home from Quantico’s Calvin A. Lloyd Rifle Rangers and saw Jo waiting at the door, holding a letter with a Massachusetts postmark.
“Honey, you got a letter from Captain Land,” she called.
He trotted across the lawn to the door, smiling. He had not heard from his friend since he left Vietnam. He tore the envelope open as he walked in the door, stopping for a moment to pick up his son and give him a bear hug.
As he settled into an easy chair, the 6:00 P.M. television news came on, and he put down the letter. A reporter spoke from atop a hotel in Saigon. He watched intently, hoping to hear of the 1st Marine Division and the war in I Corps.
During the commercial, Carlos looked at the letter that he had pressed flat on his lap.
Dear Carlos,
I’m glad to see that you made it out alive. At first I heard that you got out of the Marine Corps, but now I see that you have made it to the Big Team. You deserve it, my friend. You earned it.
I can understand you getting out for a while, you were pretty well burned out. I’m sure. I’m glad that you got back on your feet and reenlisted. The Marine Corps needs you.
I wish this letter could be all good, but I’m afraid that I have some bad news. I got a letter from Major Wight the other day. He said that the sniper program is really working well. Burke got promoted to corporal and went to 1st Bat* talion, 26th Marines, and took charge of a squad. He was really proud.
Burke and his men got assigned security duty up at Khe Sanh and ran into trouble. Carlos, Burke got killed.
I don’t know any more about it, but I feel sure that he died with valor and not from some dumb mistake. After all, you taught him well.
I know that you thought the world of him. I did too. Next to you, he was one of the best Marines I ever had. I feel a great deal of grief for him now, and I can imagine the sadness you must feel too. He was a good, good Marine. We will all miss him.
Carlos looked up, and his eyes flooded with tears. He stepped into his backyard, looked at the setting sun glimmering through the tall oak and maple trees and thought of his friend. The best partner he ever had. And as he stood looking toward heaven, tears streamed down his cheeks. “What happened, Burke? What happened?”
Khe Sanh was a series of hills located in the northwestern comer of I Corps along the Laotian border. Hundreds of paths and tunnels branched from the Ho Chi Minh Trail and wound past Hill 881 and Long Vei and through the steep mountains of the Khe Sanh area. One lone mountain among that cluster of peaks was Hill 950. There a small encampment of Marines defended a combat outpost—one of the toughest corners of the Khe Sanh neighborhood. It was the new home of Corporal John Burke and his snipers.
Sleep came hard on Hill 950. There were no comforts of home. If a Marine was lucky, his “rubber bitch” did
