Profiles In Courage: Gunnery Sgt. Carlos Hathcock

There are few Marine Corps legends like that of Carlos Hathcock. If there's a pantheon of Marine Corps gods somewhere, Hathcock is definitely among them. He served the Corps and his country for 20 years, including two tours as a sniper in Vietnam, where he racked up what was then the world record for confirmed kills at 93 - although he believed the actual number was somewhere around 300.

"Carlos just really believed in what he was doing out there. He was saving Marines; that's how he really saw it. He was just doing his job, his duty. Now, Carlos is kind of a folk hero to a tremendous number of people," his boss in Vietnam, retired Maj. Jim Land told Leatherneck Magazine in a 2010 profile.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1942, Hathcock taught himself to shoot as a young boy, just like his boyhood idols Alvin York and Audie Murphy. It was the foundation of what would become his lifelong dream: to join the United States Marine Corps. Little did he know, as he took aim and fired that first shot, that he would one day become the standard of service and brotherhood to which many future Marines would aspire.

In 1959, at the age of 17, Hathcock finally got the opportunity to fulfill that dream. He enlisted in the Marine Corps. The shooting and hunting he'd done all his life up to that point would serve him well in the coming years. As a boy, he hunted to feed his family. As a Marine, he would hunt to keep his fellow Marines safe - and he would leave behind a legacy of incredible stories. 

Hathcock first deployed to South Vietnam in 1966 as a military policeman but saw his best chance of surviving would be to go out in the bush on his own, where raw recruits new to the wilds wouldn't get him killed. Already an expert marksman and a Wimbledon Cup winner in the 1965 long-range shooting competition, Hathcock volunteered for combat duty and trained to become a sniper. Between 1966 and 1967, Land's team trained 600 snipers, including Hathcock. 

Land's only problem with Hathcock was the sniper spent way too much time out in the bush, stalking his prey.

"The thing that made him different in Vietnam wasn't the marksmanship skill, but he just had this ability to totally integrate himself into the environment, and he noticed everything. He had a total awareness of his surroundings," Land said. "We all developed an edge, but Carlos took it one step further. He was like a mountain man. He noticed every breeze, every insect."

He was also deadly. So deadly, in fact, that the Viet Cong gave him a name, "Long Tr'ang," which means "white feather," so-called for the white feather Hathcock wore while out on patrol. The VC also put a significant bounty on his head, $1,000 - a lot of money for the average Vietnamese civilian. 

The stories of his deadly accuracy are both astounding and true. The movie trope of shooting an enemy sniper called through his own scope is something Hathcock actually did at a distance of several hundred yards. While facing off against a communist sniper nicknamed "The Cobra," the Cobra made a critical error: the sun glinted off his own scope, revealing his position. An accurate shooter like Hathcock simply shot the glint, driving the bullet right through his scope. 

Perhaps his most famous moment came against a female Viet Cong sniper nicknamed "Apache Woman" or "The Apache." This character had been skinning young, captured, or wounded Marines since long before Carlos Hathcock arrived in Vietnam. After hearing her torture a man within earshot of his base, Hathcock saw the boy make his way back to base, dying as he reached the wire. Hathcock took it personally and set out to kill her. He tracked her VC unit for as long as was necessary, and when she squatted down to pee, he knew he'd found her. 

"I put one extra in her for good measure," Hathcock said.

The enemy never put a bullet in him. The only time they came close to killing White Feather was when a personnel carrier in which he was riding hit a mine. Despite his own significant burns, which covered 40% of his body, he managed to pull several Marines out of the burning wreckage. It would be another 30 years before he received recognition for the action, accepting a Silver Star in 1996. After he recovered, he helped establish the Marine Corps Scout Sniper School in Quantico, Virginia. 

It wasn't the enemy that got Carlos Hathcock in the end. It was Multiple Sclerosis, which affects the brain and spinal cord and causes damage to nerve cells. It can be debilitating, causing difficulty with balance and coordination, as well as fatigue and muscular problems. It was MS that forced Hathcock to leave the Marine Corps in 1979, forced him into a wheelchair, and ultimately took his life in 1999.