Inside the Crosshairs (19 page)

Snipers, like other warriors in Vietnam, came from all kinds of religious backgrounds. Battle has a way of driving some men to seek divine protection and others to give up on religion altogether. Still others, especially after surviving extended combat, begin to believe that they themselves are more powerful than any allegedly superior being. There is no evidence that, as a result of the unusual nature of their “business,”
snipers responded differently from their infantry contemporaries when it came to an increase or decrease of religious zeal.

Despite the fact that relatively few men passed through the narrow gates of selection and that those who did were dedicated and effective, recognition of the performance of Marine and army snipers in Vietnam remained extremely low-key during and after the war. The success of snipers depended upon their ability to be invisible to the enemy; advertising their existence in any manner threatened their survival.

The snipers themselves wanted no publicity that could endanger their lives or their missions. Simultaneously, the military deflected media attention away from sniper activity because of their controversial image. By 1969 many in the United States were actively opposed to American involvement in the war, labeling any unusual weapons or tactics, including the work of snipers, as an atrocity.

Snipers rarely talked to the press, and the unofficial policy of the army and Marine Corps was not to encourage news stories about the marksmen. Events proved the wisdom of that approach when in July 1968, the Associated Press acquired a draft copy of FMFM 1-3B, “Sniping.” The resulting story, which ran in newspapers across the country, including the
San Francisco Chronicle
(on July 18) and the
Milwaukee Journal
(on July 22), began, “The ability to go for a long period without food or water, to control emotions and to kill ‘calmly and deliberately’ and without remorse are the main qualifications of a good sniper.” In a later paragraph, the AP story repeated the lead, adding, “A sniper must kill calmly and deliberately, shooting carefully selected targets.”

While the AP story accurately credited Bob Russell for writing much of the manual and reported its contents in a fairly straightforward manner, the sensational lead paragraph upset many readers, who, far from the war zone, either could not or would not understand the fact that young Americans were being taught to kill “calmly and deliberately.”

Letters to the editors of the papers began arriving immediately, most specifically condemning the snipers and expressing
the writers’ general distaste for the war. The commandant of the Marine Corps received similar letters. It was a no-win situation for the military because even the few writers who concurred with the concept of snipers condemned the corps for allowing the content of the field manual to be made public.

Snipers in Vietnam were also criticized by a portion of the American public during and after the war for their “keeping score.” In a war of attrition like the Vietnam conflict, where successes were measured by body count rather than by territory gained, it should be no surprise that snipers—who had the best position and equipment to confirm kills—also kept count of their individual records.

Unfortunately, a double standard prevailed. Fighter pilots, who painted a flag or a silhouette on the fuselage of their aircraft for each “killed” enemy plane, continued to be viewed as heroes while few Americans wanted to acknowledge, much less praise, men who looked their quarry in the eyes before pulling the trigger.

After the brief blitz of publicity in 1968, little more appeared in print about Marine or army snipers for the remainder of the war. Other than a few articles in professional journals and in the various “gun” magazines, the snipers went about their business with little or no fanfare.

Even the official records mostly ignored the accomplishments of snipers. With the exception of the official manuals, the several studies conducted by the army to determine the need for the special marksmen, and a few Marine division orders on sniper training, few written materials survived the war. Sniper numbers were small and military commanders in combat were more interested in neutralizing the enemy than in recording details on paper. Various brigade, regimental, and division quarterly operational reports include a sentence or, at most, a paragraph on sniper training, occasionally mentioning the number of kills for a certain period.

Initially, recognition of snipers in each Marine and army division closely paralleled the particular commander’s interest and investment in the program. Both Marine divisions
supported sniper training, and the corps developed the best organized system of sniper unit organization and deployment. Yet the corps’s lengthy series of studies about the war,
U.S. Marines in Vietnam
, includes fewer than 200 words about sniper operations in the conflict.

Few outside the corps’s small sniper and marksmanship community had ever heard of Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock before the civilian publication of Charles Henderson’s
Marine Sniper
in 1986, which details Hathcock’s 93 kills in Vietnam. When Joseph T. Ward wrote in
Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam
about 5th Marine sniper Chuck Mawhinney and his 103 confirmed kills, even several “old hands” in the competitive shooting community expressed doubts about the story until eyewitnesses and the few existing official documents supported the account.

Although Hathcock, a career Marine with years of competitive shooting experience, has received far more acclaim than Mawhinney, the latter, a three-year-enlistment Marine, had the highest confirmed body count of any Marine sniper in the Vietnam War. His story is also more representative of the typical American who volunteered to become a long-range marksman during the conflict.

Charles B. Mawhinney hunted extensively as a boy for sport and to put meat on the table, but he never fired in a marksmanship competition. He entered the Marine Corps on October 10, 1967, and upon completion of infantry training, volunteered for the scout-sniper school at Camp Pendleton, California. Shortly after graduation he joined the 5th Marine Regiment in Vietnam, where he soon became a member of the regiment’s scout-sniper platoon. Mawhinney served as a sniper for the rest of his thirteen-month tour and then extended for six more months to perform the same duties. He extended once again for a final six months to become a helicopter door gunner before returning to the States for discharge as a sergeant in 1970.

Most of Mawhinney’s sniper missions occurred in the area of An Hoa, including Liberty Bridge, Arizona Territory, and
Go Noi Island. During his tour he teamed with more than half a dozen other marines. Joe Ward was among them. Mawhinney accomplished most of his kills with the M700 Remington and a Redfield scope, but he also used .50-caliber machine guns as sniper weapons from fixed base camp positions. For night shots, he sometimes used a Starlight scope mounted on an M14. Upon completion of his sniper tours, Mawhinney had 216 probables in addition to his 103 confirmed kills of enemy soldiers. That is, he personally accounted for the equivalent of about three NVA infantry companies.

With the exception of the brief mention in Ward’s book, little appeared in print about the Marine Corps’s top sniper in Vietnam until Peter R. Senich interviewed Mawhinney for the December 1996 issue of
Precision Shooting
. Senich quotes Mawhinney as attributing his success to his previous hunting experience, to the excellent training he received in sniper school, and to “learning Oriental habits and adapting to Charlie’s domain.”

After his discharge, Mawhinney returned home to the Pacific Northwest. In the 1996 interview with Senich, the Marine sniper reflected, “It was over.… I just wanted to forget about it and get on with my life. I don’t spend much time thinking about Vietnam, but the memories that come to mind are mostly positive. I remember my friends and the camaraderie in our unit.”

For nearly three decades since the war Mawhinney has worked for the Forest Service. According to Senich, the former sniper reports, “I trap and hunt in the winter, fish in the summer, and I try to keep up with my family.”

Overall, the army recorded even less information on its snipers than did the Marines. Only General Ewell’s 9th Infantry Division maintained any significant amount of information on its snipers, and even its documentation is woefully lacking in providing sufficient information to completely describe and document the program.

In
Sharpening the Combat Edge
, Ewell does mention the war’s most successful sniper, Sergeant Adelbert F. Waldron III, who had 109 confirmed kills. Ewell notes, “Sergeant Waldron
earned two Distinguished Service Crosses for his outstanding skill and bravery.”
^b

Waldron proved to be the exception in receiving medals in recognition of his shooting prowess. Marine and army snipers were awarded the usual “I was there” campaign ribbons and most were awarded an end-of-tour meritorious medal. Generally, however, snipers did not receive the number of valor medals awarded to those in the regular line units. Few snipers seemed to care. Bits of metal and colored ribbon did not compare with the satisfaction of the hunt.

Snipers in Vietnam shared many of the same talents and characteristics of the army LRRP/Rangers and the Marine Force and Battalion Recon units. Within the army and Marine Corps in Vietnam there were many units and groups that considered themselves a bit above the rest. In addition to the reconnaissance units, various air mobile, airborne, demolitions, and medical evacuation units took extreme pride in their special accomplishments. Yet, all, including the snipers, recognized that the bulk of the war and the brunt of the casualties were sustained by the infantry. The vast majority of the snipers came from the infantry’s ranks and performed most of their missions accompanying the line units, with which they felt a special bond and loyalty.

Army and Marine infantrymen consider themselves to be at the center of everything that occurs in the armed forces, the more so in a combat zone. Without their muddy boots to occupy territory, no battle or war can be won. They do the bulk of the work, shed the most blood, and determine the success or failure of every conflict. Snipers not only shared those distinctions of the infantry but also felt that their special training and talents made them an elite within the infantry.

One characteristic of any elite group or organization is its small numbers. The army and Marine snipers in Vietnam certainly met that criterion. They were so few that neither the army nor the Marines maintained records of who had qualified
as snipers. No complete list of sniper school graduates for any service exists in any official or unofficial archive. The only way to estimate the number of the war’s snipers is to study the few surviving documents, the official personnel authorizations, the recollections of the school cadres, and the marksmen themselves.

Personnel authorizations offer at least a reasonable range of numbers. Marine FMFM 1-3B called for the assignment of one officer and thirty-five enlisted men in each infantry regiment’s sniper platoon and one officer and thirty enlisted men in each reconnaissance battalion’s sniper platoon. With eight infantry regiments and two recon battalions serving in the war zone at the height of the conflict, the formulas reflect that there were never more than 350 authorized Marine sniper positions in Vietnam at any one time. Considering the normal thirteen-month tour of duty for Marines, the arrival and departure dates of the regiments, and the date each division established its sniper school, calculations indicate that no more than 875 Marine snipers saw action during the war.

Obviously any estimate of numbers must include replacements for casualties or illness. Sniper school instructors must also be included in the number, as well as the handful of Marines who acted as unofficial marksmen in their units before the establishment of the schools. More important, however, few if any units in Vietnam ever operated at full strength, and it was rare that any infantry regiment or recon battalion had its complete complement of snipers. Those factors imply that it is extremely unlikely that more than 875 Marines served as snipers in Vietnam, and that number may well be high by at least 100.

Unlike the Marine Corps, the army had no official authorization for snipers in its combat units except for the antiquated and ignored guideline that one soldier in each infantry squad was to have a sniper rifle. General Ewell established a policy in the 9th Infantry Division for the assignment of two snipers to each brigade headquarters and six to each infantry battalion. If that had been carried over to the rest of the army’s
twenty-five infantry brigades and eighty-one infantry battalions, it would mean a total of a few more than 500 sniper positions at the height of the war.

Taking into account that the army did not train snipers until well after the Marine Corps established its schools, that soldiers served only twelve-month tours, that units withdrew at staggered times—and using a liberal method of computation—it would appear that no more than 1,000 army snipers ever served in the war. Even adding the 259 poorly trained and armed snipers who participated in 1967’s test Army Concept Team in Vietnam keeps the total below 1,300.

But further investigation reveals the 1,300 figure to be extremely unrealistic. Major Willis Powell recalls that the 9th Division’s sniper school trained about 120 men before the majority of the units began withdrawing from the war zone. The other USAMTU training teams arrived in Vietnam only in the last year or two of the U.S. involvement in the war. In addition, many army units worked in terrain unsuitable for sniper activities. Also, some commanders did not need or want special marksmen. In some cases, commanders as high as division level disdained even the concept of the sniper and so did not train or use them.

All in all, it is doubtful that the army trained and employed more than half the quasi-authorized numbers of snipers for a total of about 500. Adding the snipers who participated in the 1967 tests, a realistic number of army snipers who served in Vietnam is about 750.