percent of his total body area suffered “full-thickness” bums with several areas where that full thickness of the skin had burned completely away (third-degree burns).
With a partial thickness bum, a patient’s skin can regenerate from the epithelial cells lining the skin appendages—hair follicles, sweat glands, and sebaceous glands. Full-thickness burns destroy all these cells and prevent any regeneration. Small full-thickness burns can heal from the skin margins, but large areas require skin grafting.
They moved Hathcock to Ward 13B. There he made daily trips to the Hubbard tank where he could soak and soften the hard, crusty eschar that covered his bums, while the burn specialists examined diem. There they noticed a black spot on his hand, an infection that a biopsy later revealed was phycomycosis. But they felt that this fungal disease did not explain the fever that he could not shake—a fever that rose from 102 degrees on his first day there to 103 on the second and 104 degrees on September 24. They suspected malaria and treated him for it.
To complicate problems, on September 30, before doctors could begin burn therapy, Hathcock developed bronchopneumonia in his left lung. That deferred the therapy until October 6 when the pneumonia finally began to clear.
On October 13, the doctors began the burn therapy-thirteen different operations in which they stripped away the bum eschar and damaged flesh, and applied skin grafts. The operations continued until November 17. Hathcock received eight homografts (skin grafts taken from donors), three autografts (small grafts of healthy skin taken from his own body), and two heterografts (skin grafts taken from animals).
Hathcock’s right side suffered the worst and required the greater portion of skin grafting. His grafts included the use of dog skin and pig skin on his right arm and thigh on November 3 and 6.
During this period, Hathcock also developed staphylococcus infections and his red blood count dropped 28 percent. Doctors began waging a battle against die infections and gave him transfusions of 1500 cc’s of whole blood. To combat the effects of the pain and infection, they gave him daily doses of narcotics.
For the six weeks that Carles Hathcock balanced on a tightrope above the abyss, Jo sat at his bedside. She fought his lapses into hallucination and coaxed him back out of the misty black cloud that would have led him into the peacefulness of death. She coaxed him back again and again.
“Mack,” he said. He saw Mack back at Hill 55 and there were shells incoming. “Mack! Mack! Incoming!” And Mack kept walking down the finger to the sniper hooch with Yankee, who trotted at his heels.
There was Burke. “Burke!” Hathcock shouted from his dream. Burke had covered his face wifli camouflage paint and smiled. “Don’t let your mascara run,” Hathcock heard Burke say. Then he laughed.
“Don’t go in there. Stay down! Hathcock shouted from his bed. “My rifle, my hat. Where’s my hat?”
“Carlos! Wake up!” Jo shouted, shaking Hathcock’s bed. He opened his eyes, yet he still dreamed. He did not see Jo, he saw Mack.
“Mack! You gotta take care. You gotta be more careful!”
She kept shaking the bed. “Carlos! You listen to me!” But he was moaning about Que Son and Route 4.
“Carlos!”
Finally he blinked and said nothing more.
“Carlos,” Jo said in a loud voice. “Where are you?”
“Hill 55, Vietnam.”
“No! You’re at Brooke General Hospital in San Antonio, Texas!”
He blinked, not knowing what to believe. He had just seen the hooches and the shooting and the smoke. It didn’t make any sense. He was in Vietnam.
“Repeat after me, Carlos!”
“Whaaa…”
“You are not in Vietnam!”
Hathcock looked at Jo. It was Jo. He recognized her. He felt the pain. He was alive.
During the lucid moments, Jo would open a letter from one of a hundred friends who wrote to him while he fought for his life, and she would read it. It seemed mat everyone who had ever shot a rifle in Marine Corps or Interservice or National Rifle Association competition wrote to him, telling him to get well.
There were letters from Jim Land, filled with lines borrowed from great coaches. He called Hathcock a winner. There were letters from Vietnam—from Moose Gunderson and Boo Boo Barker. And several letters from Ron McAbee.
Mack’s first letter told Hathcock how he tried to get out to the ship but could not find a way. In other letters he told Hathcock that Yankee was well and David Sommers too. He told him about the platoon and how it had been a good thing that they had not traveled together that day. This way the platoon did not suffer a break in continuity of leadership. Mack told Hathcock how he pushed the platoon hard—he wanted vengeance. So did the men.
By November 10 Hathcock stopped hallucinating. His infection had retreated, and much of the grafted skin was now healed and showed great promise. His grafts had nearly all taken. The only bad spots were on his right shoulder and right leg. The doctor had removed the animal skin grafts and placed donor skin on the debrided areas.
But the pain continued. He cried out when he saw the doctors coming with the bundles and tools. The pain of debridement sent chills of horror through him. The pealing of flesh and scab from a burn renders a pain that is indescribable.
Hathcock had endured and had suffered not just to survive, but to recover. To become a whole and vital man again. To hunt and to shoot. To become an Olympic champion and fulfill a dream.
On November 10, 1969, Carlos woke out of a sound sleep. Jo was sitting beside the bed.
“What day is it, Carlos?” Jo said happily.
Hathcock thought for a moment and began to look anxious. He did not know. Was it Wednesday or Thursday or Saturday?
But before he could answer that he had no idea, a woman pushed open the door and held a large birthday cake in her hands. It was Mrs. Dickman—Colonel William Dickman’s wife. Colonel Dickman was a member of the Marine Corps Reserve’s 4th Reconnaissance Battalion and was the officer in charge of their scout/sniper school at Camp Bullis. He had met Hathcock several years earlier at the Texas State and Regional NRA rifle championships at the Camp Bullis rifle range. He had later heard and appreciated the legendary Carlos Hathcock sniper stories too. And because of this kinship, he and Mrs. Dickman took care of Jo and visited Hathcock often.
“Happy birthday!” Mrs. Dickman said.
“Birthday?” Carlos asked. “I may not know what day it is, but it sure ain’t May 20.”
She said, “Carlos… Marine. It’s Monday, November 10, and your Corps 194th birthday! Now you ought to remember that!”
Hathcock looked at Jo and laughed. He shared the cake with the other Marines in the ward—Marines like Captain Ed Hyland (promoted in the hospital) and Pfc Roberto Barrera, who had also been in the amtrac.
Hyland, now with only one arm, wished Hathcock happy birthday, and Hathcock returned the wish to him and all the other Marines in the ward.
Captain Hyland wanted to write a recommendation for Hathcock to receive a medal for his courageous action on that burning amtrac. But Hathcock responded with an emphatic no. He told Hyland, “I happened to wake up first. That’s all. I did what any of the rest of the Marines on top of that amtrac would have done.”
Since Hathcock refused any sort of official recognition, Captain Hyland offered him something personal: a simple pewter mug with names and dates engraved on it. And Hathcock accepted that.
Jo left San Antonio on Friday, November 14, in order to be home for Sonny’s birthday that Saturday. Hathcock wanted to go home too.
A few days after Carlos Ill’s fifth birthday, Jo’s mother died unexpectedly. Jo was shattered but she dared not call Carlos because she knew he would do what he did the day after Sonny was bom: he would get out of the hospital, whether he was well or not.
But she thought more about it and talked to her sister and to her sister’s husband, Winston Jones. And he asked, “What about Carlos? How will he feel if you don’t tell him?” She called Carlos that afternoon.
Because of the death, the doctors allowed him to make the trip home. His bums were completely covered now, and all the grafts were healing well. He would return to the hospital on December 30 for further treatment and evaluation. Then on January 5, 1970, he was released and placed on convalescent leave. On January 31, 1970, he reported back to Quantico,
