Charles Henderson - Marine Sniper

“I think that might taste better.”

“I’ll try this do-do flavored stuff for now. Here, hold my glasses.”

Mack lay over the pool and brushed the slime away to expose the water. He took several sucking gulps and raised his face, dripping wet. After pulling a long string of moss off his tongue, Mack looked at Hathcock and whispered, “It’s probably full of liver flukes and we’ll be dead in a couple of years.”

“You didn’t want to live forever, did ya?”

“Yes.”

“I hear that a big helping of nuc-mom will get rid of any case of liver flukes you might pick up in the water.”

Mack frowned at Hathcock, “I don’t care how hungry we get. I’ll eat dog shit before you get me to touch a drop of that nasty crap!”

“Shhhhhh!” Hathcock whispered with a grin, putting his finger next to his lips. “You get loud and we won’t need to worry about liver flukes.”

Mack put his glasses back on his face, slipping the black elastic strap back around his head. “I gotta be careful with these, they’re my last pair. I break ’em and I’m no help at all.”

“Keep ’em on your face then.”

Hathcock recorded his ninety-third confirmed kill that morning—a lone Viet Cong who climbed a slope, rigging booby traps along a patrol route. Hathcock called in the position to the Marines on a mountaintop observation post, who verified the kill with their powerful binoculars and plotted the positions of the anti-personnel mines that the man had laid.

When Hathcock and McAbee reached the observation post on that peak a lance corporal met them and handed them a yellow slip of paper.

“Sergeant Major Puckett’s looking for us,” Hathcock said, grinning.

“I told you so!” said McAbee. “Sergeant major always gets mad when we take off together. You know… first and second hi command.”

“You’re the only other man in the platoon who can shoot my zero. Only one other sniper I worked with could do that. And, just like you, he could almost read my mind. To me, we’re the ideal team. I don’t want to trust my life to someone else, Mack.”

The lance corporal seated in front of a table covered with radios and a spaghetti-work of black wires running to power and antennae, passed the handset across the table to Hathcock. “Staff Sergeant, your sergeant major is coming.”

Hathcock put the black receiver against his ear, waiting for what he knew would come.

“Staff Sergeant Hathcock, is Staff Sergeant McAbee with you?” The sergeant major’s transmission was weak and Carlos strained to hear.

Hathcock pressed the large, rectangular black button on the handset and heard the powerful lineal amplifier whine as he keyed the radio. When the shrill sound of the radio “powering up” peaked, he answered, shouting, “Yes sir, he’s right here with me.”

“You two know better!” the sergeant major shouted, trying to be heard.

The crackling message came clear, and Hathcock shook his head. “Everybody else was out, and we had this job—” Hathcock could bear the whine of the sergeant major’s signal walking over his and knew that the senior Marine had lost his temper. He waited until the channel cleared.

“We’re headed home today!” Hathcock shouted.

“Where are you two standing right now?” the sergeant major shouted back.

McAbee looked at the map, and the lance corporal who operated the radios said, “This mountain is called My Dong,”

Carlos smiled and keyed the radio. “Right now, we are standing on My Dong.”

The next day Hathcock and McAbee were standing stiffly at attention in front of the sergeant major. “I get tired of the wild stories coming in here telling how Charlie finally got you. And how high the bounty is on your head! You’re both staff NCOs… I want a degree more responsibility out of both of you.”

“Sergeant Major,” Hathcock said, “Staff Sergeant McAbee is our armorer. We need him out where we operate. And I’ve got my snipers all paired and that leaves him and me. What do we do, go off separately by ourselves?”

“No. But you don’t disappear for a week either. I don’t expect you to just sit in camp. But I expect responsible leadership from both of you! The only way you two go to the field together is if your entire platoon is committed and both of you are required to maintain control over that tribe of yours.”

Hathcock smiled. At this moment, the sergeant major reminded him of another Marine. A Marine who became so frustrated with his disappearing that he confined him to his quarters to slow him down.

“You got a deal, Sergeant Major.”

Both Marines walked directly to the operations tent after shaking hands with the sergeant major and reassuring him that his worries were now over.

“What’s going on?” Hathcock asked the operations chief.

The month of September began with 7th Marines still pursuing two NVA regiments that they forced from the Hiep Due Valley. With the enemy fragmented and scattered to the east and north, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, went to Fire Support Base Ross where India Company conducted a night move to a blocking position northeast of the fire base. Because they made only light contact with the NVA, three companies of 3rd Battalion moved on and began a northwesterly sweep through Nghi Ha Valley. While 3rd Battalion moved northwest, 1st Battalion, along with Mike Company from 3rd Battalion, set up blocking positions along the draws leading into the Phu Loc Valley while 3rd Battalion pushed toward them.

When Carlos went to the operations tent, he found that in two days, September 16, 1969, the operation would end, and 1st Battalion would move back to their area of operation in the eastern Que Son hills.

“We can go there,” Hathcock told McAbee. “Our snipers will be concentrated right there. The 90th NVA may be blown away, but the 3rd and 36th NVA regiments, the GK-33, and the 1st Viet Cong Regiment are all prime for the pickin’ down yonder. We could organize a regular operation against them.”

“You gonna tell Sergeant Major Puckett?”

“Yeah. It’s just a short jump down there, and with all our people already working with the battalions, he’ll see the logic.”

That night McAbee worked late on the rifles while Carlos cleaned both their gear. He was excited about what the operation down south might reveal.

“Reckon Perry can handle things back here?”

“Sure. His team will run local security operations while we’re gone.”

The September heat kept the night nearly as hot as the day with the humidity lingering at above 90 percent. On these hot nights, most of the Marines slent outside.

Yankee followed at Ron McAbee’s heels as the Marine laid a poncho liner and air mattress on top of the sandbags that covered the roof of the bunker outside the staff NCO hooch on the night of September 15, the day before he and Carlos would leave for the eastern side of the Que Son hills. Yankee always slept next to Mack since the six-foot two-inch Marine had arrived. He liked Yankee sleeping at his side because of the dog’s uncanny ability to sense incoming fire before any shell impacted. Yankee’s low, throaty growl was the big, blond Marine’s early-warning system.

As McAbee stretched out on his poncho liner—both of his boots unlaced but still on his feet—he took off his glasses and set them on the row of sandbags that ringed the bunker just below the roof. A stir of air relieved the steaminess of the night and soon lulled both the Marine and the red dog to sleep. Yankee slept with his head resting on Mack’s chest.

In the distance the crackle of radio static, muffled inside the operations tent, and the low drone of the generators, scattered on the hill, gave the Marines who stood watch in the towers and along the wire a sense of hypnotic tranquility. A bright moon rose, sending a shimmering silver light over the camp.