Marine Sniper (44 page)

Doctor Brannon examined him, watched him for days, and read the tests. The inevitable conclusion occurred: It was time to quit.

He called Major Willis. When the major answered, Brannon began the conversation by simply saying, "No."

Willis knew immediately what the call was about.

"Look," Willis said, "I'll come up there and sit down and talk to you about it."

"No!"

"I know him. I've known him a long time."

"No," the doctor said. "I know him too, and I've counselled him and the answer is no. He has to get out."

It was hard for Willis as a commanding officer, and doubly hard as a friend, to hear that final verdict. And if he couldn't accept that no, then how could Hathcock?

On April 20, 1979, in Maj. David Willis's office, Gunnery Sgt. Carlos N. Hathcock II ended his Marine Corps career, transferred to the Disabled Retired List with 100 percent disability.

Hathcock had taught classes up to the day before his retirement. He told the snipers that afternoon, "Remember, the most deadly thing on the battlefield is one well-aimed shot." He turned, fighting back tears, walked out of the room, put on his bush hat with the white feather in its band, and went outside to be alone with his thoughts.

On that April afternoon when he stood before Major Willis and listened to the order transferring him to that retired list, he cried. Hathcock stood at attention and accepted a rifle from McAbee-a rifle built by the Marines from the Marksmanship Training Unit's armory. Carlos Hathcock had been involved in determining the requirements for this rifle and in testing it once it was made. The rifle was an M-40 Al Sniper Rifle-a rifle made only for and by the Marines using a Remington Model 700, 7.62mm Rifle Receiver, fitting it with a "heavy" barrel made of stainless steel, free-floating it in a solid fiberglass stock, and then mounting a 10-power Unertl scope on it.

When Major Willis, fighting back tears, read the plaque- a bronzed Marine campaign cover mounted above a brass plate-the room stood silent. "There have been many Marines. There have been many Marksmen. But there has been only one Sniper-Gunnery Sergeant Carlos N. Hathcock. One Shot-One Kill."

Hathcock slumped low in the boat's front seat, holding his camouflage bush hat atop his head as the craft, with a stainless steel hull covered with metal-flake red and silver fiberglass, raced through the surf, sending salt spray across his face as the wind whipped over the green nylon jacket that he wore. His eyes focused on the yellow circle of letters on the jacket's left breast that spelled out U. S. Marine Corps Shooting Team. After six years of retirement, he still missed the Marine Corps.

The transition from active duty had been horrible for Hathcock, As he first saw it, the Marine Corps had cut him adrift, and he spent the rest of 1979 and much of 1980 sitting in a dark room in the rear of his Virginia Beach home-a room filled with Marine Corps relics and haunting memories- brooding. He called it the Bunker, and there he withered, saying nothing and asking for nothing. He anguished over the $610 a month pay that represented the sum of his nineteen years and ten months of active service and how that meager paycheck was all he could offer his family. He could not work for pay and collect a disability retirement too.

The feelings of rejection, inadequacy, and uselessness sent him spiraling into deepest depression. The flame that once blazed within his soul and kept him coming back again and again, faded and threatened to die.

Jo Hathcock saw her husband mourn the loss of his career and hoped that, as in death, die mourning would pass and Carlos would again discover life. But after more than a year, she packed ho bags and angrily told him that she was through living with a dead man.

Her decision to leave aroused Hathcock's shrunken emotions, and he no longer thought of his past as his future smacked him head-on. He could not imagine life without Jo and Sonny. Hathcock rarely asked for help and never asked for consolation. But this time he did, and the significance of his plea convinced Jo to unpack.

Hathcock first sought life in yard work, but the heat and stress often left him unconscious on the lawn. It frightened the neighbors and presented little excitement for him. Thus he and Jo searched for something else.

As the boat sped from whitecap to whitecap, racing away from the Virginia Beach shore, sending cascades of spray skyward, Hathcock glanced at his friend, who controlled the craft with relaxed ease, and smiled.

Steve McCarver turned toward Hathcock and yelled above the wind's roar, "Hear anything from Sonny?"

"He's down at Jacksonville, Florida, going to another school," Hathcock said. He was proud of his son-now a Marine lance corporal stationed at Cherry Point, and had made the shooting team there-the same team on which Carlos had gone distinguished and won a national shooting title. Sonny had joined the Corps on his own, and dial pleased Hathcock.

"He'll be home in a few weeks ... gonna take leave."

"Be good to see him," Steve said as he turned his face back toward the rising sun.

Hathcock had first met Steve McCarver at the Bait Barn, one of the dozens of tackle shops near the inlet. He had picked one at random and walked in, hoping to find something that might help fill the emptiness that his Marine Corps career had left. Perhaps talk of fishing might spark something hiding in that void.

Several men sat and stood near the counter. Men who wore baseball caps with names of fishing line companies and boat companies and tobacco companies sewn on their fronts. The calloused-handed men talked of fishing, all right. Carlos had fished for bass and trout and brim, but these men, who dressed in short-sleeve shirts and khaki trousers and had tan, freckled arms and hard fingers, these men who laughed as they talked, spoke not of bass or brim or crappie or trout. They spoke of sharks.

Hathcock sat in a lawn chair and looked at the rods and giant hooks and nets and trays of lead sinkers and huge spools of line and shelves filled with boxes of giant lures. He looked at the ceiling and the walls clustered with long-handled dip nets and gaff hooks. And among the busy work of hardware and tackle-gear to catch every kind of fish that swam past the shallow Virginia Beach waters-he saw the shark tackle. He saw the hooks as big as his hand. He saw steel line and leader and huge reels and stiff rods. Hardware more than fishing gear, but weapons made to wage an individual battle of one man against one fish, each trying to end the other's life. These tools spoke adventure to him, and his heart soared.

A salty looking man stood next to the counter and leaned against it, resting one hand on his hip as he crossed one foot over the other. It was Steve, and he talked of an ordeal in the shallow water, just off the shores. He told of the shark that refused to quit fighting. And when he got his fifteen-foot mo-torboat near die dangerous fish, the shark threshed from the water, his jaws spread wide, and lunged up and over the boat's stern, engulfing the motor.

It was awesome, and Hathcock returned to this place of tales nearly every day, where he watched and listened as the men hauled in their catches: giant lemons and tigers and makos and sand sharks. Sharks from the distant deep and from the shallow shoals where unknowing weekend anglers searched for other sport fish, unaware that gigantic lemon sharks, known to eat man, lurked there too.

It seemed like a game, this sport of teasing disaster-of dancing on the wings of doom, tempting death and tasting that special part of life that only the adventurer can know. And for Hathcock, it was only a matter of time before he too would be out in the shallows, tempting the sharks. It frightened Jo, but she knew her husband was again alive-again "The Man in the Arena," a paragraph that he had kept among his personal possessions for many years, and now turned yellow on his Bunker wall.

It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat [emphasis added].

Virginia Beach now appeared small on the horizon as the silver and red boat slid to a gliding stop, Steve stood and dropped the Anchor in the shallow water. "Let's get at it, Carlos. They'll swim right by us if we don't get at em."

As Hathcock worked his way up on his unsteady legs, he looked across the brown water and wondered what long and sleek body with his deadly jaws agape might be resting just below, awaiting his bait. The water seemed so calm, yet when die hook would set, it would boil and churn. It was like life, he thought, it's not always like it appears. His impression of the Marine Corps forsaking him had been like that.

It was only when life became more meaningful that Hathcock noticed that his beloved Marine Corps had been there all along. Marines wrote to him and called him and came to his home to visit all during the time that he hid in the Bunker. And they never stopped. These friends drove him to Quantico to the Distinguished Shooter's Association's annual banquet, and home again. The Marine Corps League named its marksmanship award in honor of Hathcock-a trophy that the Commandant of the Marine Corps presents to the enlisted Marine who had made the most outstanding contribution to marksmanship each year.

But the most significant event came in the spring of 1985. A capacity crowd jammed themselves elbow to elbow, standing along the walls and filling every seat on a steamy Virginia afternoon to watch the Marine Corps Scout/Sniper Instructor class graduate and to hear a legendary Marine speak.

On that sunny third day of May 1985, Carlos Hathcock stood just outside the door, unsteady in his spit-shined cowboy boots. With crooked and stiffened, burn-scarred hands, he pulled and readjusted the dark brown tie around the crisp, beige collar of the new shirt that he wore with his brown suit. Jo had gone to Pembroke Mall and bought both the shirt and tie for this special occasion. Moments earlier, he had joked with Lt. Col. David Willis about wearing a suit and tie. "You should have left the price tag on the tie," Willis told Hathcock, "that way, when you're through wearing it, you can go get your money back."

Finally, at one o'clock that afternoon, across from the firing ranges that surrounded him through most of his career, Carlos Hathcock stood before the graduating snipers and their families, trembling-unsure of what to do or say. But despite his nervousness, fatigue, and muscular pain he was extremely happy. He paused and looked at each man's face, and with an emotionally choked voice, he opened his mouth and spoke not from cards or a memorized speech, but from his heart.

After a short, but emotionally charged speech, Hathcock swallowed an enormous lump in his throat and through cloudy eyes he looked across the room filled with Marines and Army Rangers and Navy Seals who sat in awe of this great sniper, a sniper who until today had not seemed human but a legend used by their instructors as the example of what one man can do. And as Hathcock cleared his voice and fought back the knotted feelings that now welled forth, these men and their families and Marines who were friends of his and came to see the event all sat hushed and in awe.

"I love you all." Hathcock said as his voice cracked with emotion.

The men and organization that he loved had not forgotten him. Today they honored him at the school that he helped create and where much of his soul still remained.

The small boat rocked with the waves that broke across the shallows offshore from Virginia Beach. Hathcock had helped scatter the "shark chum"-mackerel and tuna heads and chicken blood. Now he sat with a thick fishing rod staked in a steel fixture and waited for its gigantic reel to sing. He had become an old hand at this now, after making several trips out to hunt these great and dangerous fish.

His face no longer looked ashen and pale; it was dark and beading a light coat of sweat. He was after another big and deadly shark that he would tail-rope alongside the boat, like The Old Man and the Sea. Nearly like being a sniper again.

Hathcock had learned the sport quickly and demonstrated his rapidly improving skills by landing a 277-pound lemon shark on one of his first outings-a shark tournament. He won second place with that fish he caught in four feet of water.