The American Sniper Other American Snipers Look Up To

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue with our American Stories. No single soldier on the battlefield is more revered or more reviled than the sniper. They are seen as either cowardly assassins or surgical soldiers. With a single bullet, snipers can change the outcome of a battle or even a war. Long before Chris Kyle penned American Sniper, which became Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-nominated movie masterpiece, Carlos Hathcock was already a legend. Hathcock was so efficient and fearless during the Vietnam War that he wore a white feather on his gear, taunting the Communists to come find him. Our next story comes to us from Colin D. Heaton and Mike Droberg, two military veterans and the founders of the YouTube channel Forgotten History. Their videos focus on military heroes, actions, and events spanning across the globe and are watched by hundreds of thousands of people. Here’s Colin Heaton with the story.

00:01:15
Speaker 2: Carlos Norman Hathcock was born on May twentieth, nineteen forty-two, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Hathcock supported his extremely poor family by shooting and hunting at an early age with a twenty-two caliber J. C. Higgins single-shot rifle. He later graduated to using a Kar98 German Mauser that his father had brought back from World War II. Hathcock joined the Marines on May twentieth, nineteen fifty-nine, at the age of seventeen, and rapidly became a known quantity. He had won the matches at Camp Perry in nineteen sixty-five and the Wimbledon Cup Shooting Championships in nineteen sixty-six. Hathcock deployed to South Vietnam as a military policeman, but later became a sniper after Captain, later Major, Edward James Land wanted a sniper in every infantry platoon. At that time, there was no formal sniper school in the Marine Corps, and snipers were designated according to a Marine’s marksmanship record and field expertise. Land knew right away that Hathcock was a natural. Hathcock then went to work protecting Marines, and one enemy was a woman. The story of the woman VC called “the Apache” has been questioned, but here is how Carlos explained it.

00:02:26
Speaker 3: Think true, she was a— I don’t like these bad words.

00:02:39
Speaker 4: She was a very, a very bad woman. Had her own sniper platoon down here. And I don’t think they were about to get all us snipers, myself, everybody. And she had been torturing a lot of people prior to us getting there, and that was a primary objective, kind of, for me. And, uh, I was in her own backyard. She was trampling out of my mind, and I didn’t like that. And she captured that one kid that she captured. This one was a very, very person.

00:03:22
Speaker 3: Very person.

00:03:25
Speaker 4: Saw her, kind of saw the group coming in, about five of them. And, uh, saw her squat down to tinkle, and I ascertained it was her. And, uh, the guy in front of her was trying to get her to stop ’cause they were running. I— ta towards us for where they’d sing her for. He was trying to get her to stop. She didn’t, but I stopped her. I pulled one extra for good measure, because I— I was the best shot I ever made.

00:04:10
Speaker 3: I think the best shot ever made.

00:04:14
Speaker 2: The NVA and VC called Hathcock “Long Trang,” which means “white feather,” because of the white feather he kept in the band on his bush hat.

00:04:24
Speaker 3: At that time of Vietnam.

00:04:25
Speaker 4: All the troops were wearing garbage on the dog tags, peace symbols. Right, we need to pee someone in all kinds of garbage, grenade pins, all kinds of mess and the hats and stuff. Well, I picked it up. Why I picked it up? Just because I was—

00:04:42
Speaker 3: Just going to the bed.

00:04:45
Speaker 4: Guys see, and the snipers don’t do this. I’m not supposed to do it. But I was kind of a very belligerent individual, I guess, as a sniper, and kind of like to flaunt my authority, I guess.

00:05:02
Speaker 2: After a platoon of Vietnamese snipers failed to kill him, many Marines in the same area donned white feathers to deceive the enemy and confuse them. Ho Chi Minh placed a bounty of thirty thousand dollars on Hathcock because he was so effective, and through a mishap they learned his name. It was believed that one of the local women working on the base accessed Hathcock’s service record book. In those days, sniper kills were recorded in the SRB. Generally, rewards put on U.S. snipers ranged from eight dollars to two thousand dollars. Hathcock held the record for the highest bounty ever placed on a Marine, and he killed every Vietnamese sniper who came after him. In one of the most remarkable sniper-versus-sniper duels in history, Hathcock and his spotter, John Roland Burke, were stalking the enemy sniper called “the Cobra” in the jungle near Hill fifty-five. This was a firebase southwest of Da Nang where the Cobra had already killed several Marines to lure Hathcock out to kill him. The stalking lasted for two days.

00:06:01
Speaker 4: Carlos said, “Listen, if that NVA sniper was sent down there to get me,” and, uh, which I really didn’t appreciate. And he was doing a bad job. On the hill, they killed a gunnery sergeant right outside my door by my hooch, uh, and, uh, I watched him die. And, uh, I took a vow then, “I was gonna get him somewhere or another.”

00:06:21
Speaker 3: I was gonna get him somewhere or another.

00:06:24
Speaker 4: And, uh, so I left Vietnam the first time with eighty-six confirmed and a whole gob of probables, and I figured I was a little bit better than what they were, so just a smidge, ’cause I was still with it. And, uh, I got John Burke, who was my partner, and we went out as a team. I trailed him, a very cagey, very smart individual, and I figured he was close to me, as good as I was. But it ain’t no way, ain’t nobody how did that so. And you got to think like that too. You got to think like that. And I made a mistake. I fell on an old rotted tree, and he made a shot and hit my partner’s canteen, and we both thought he was hit ’cause all the water was running down over his lads and stuff. And, uh, I noticed the hole in his canteen. “You ain’t hurt.” “Yeah, you ain’t hurt. Just killed the devil out of your canteen, that’s all.” And we moseyed around and mingled around, and he started running. The bad guy started running now, and we worked around to where I was in his old spot. He was in my old spot, which was a bad thing for him, ’cause he was facing the sun by that time.

00:07:54
Speaker 3: That was afternoon by then, and—

00:07:58
Speaker 4: Uh, the sun glinted off his lens of the scope, I guess, and which I didn’t know at that time. Well, I saw the glint. I shot at where the glint was and it just happened to be the right time. And by looks of things, I was just the quickest on the trigger. Otherwise, he’d kill me, because I shot right through his cup, right straight through his cup, didn’t touch a side, didn’t touch the sides, and it didn’t do his eyesight no good in that side either.

00:08:31
Speaker 2: Hathcock and Burke collected the dead sniper’s rifle, as Hathcock wanted to keep it as a trophy, but it was later stolen from the armory after he checked it in.

00:08:43
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to the story of Carlos Hathcock, and it’s being told by Colin Heaton and Mike Droberg of Forgotten History, and you’re also hearing from Carlos Hathcock himself. Born in Little Rock, he supported his family hunting, and obviously that marksmanship came in handy when, at seventeen, he signed up for the Marines. There was a thirty-thousand-dollar bounty on his head by Ho Chi Minh himself. That’s how feared Hathcock was. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, a true American sniper. And, believe me, you want a good sniper on your team in deployment, for sure. More of this remarkable story here on our American Stories. And we continue with our American Stories. Few Vietnam-era Marines are more storied than legendary sniper Carlos Hathcock. Yet his legend is not rooted in confirmed kills or the longest shots taken, but we held both records in his lifetime. It was his talents for tracking and hunting; they were his greatest weapons. He taught himself to shoot as a boy, just like Alvin York and Audie Murphy before him. He dreamed of being a U.S. Marine his whole life and enlisted, as I said before, at the age of seventeen. Hathcock was a world-class sharpshooter by then, winning the Wimbledon Cup Shooting Championship in nineteen sixty-five, the year before he would deploy to Vietnam and change the face of American warfare forever. “I like shooting and I love hunting, but I never did enjoy killing anybody. It’s my job,” he said famously. Let’s continue with the story. Here again is Colin Heaton.

00:10:43
Speaker 2: Hathcock was offered a top-secret mission, which he accepted, knowing nothing about it until he was briefed after acceptance. The mission was to kill a North Vietnamese general far behind the enemy lines, and he would be alone this time. Following his insertion several miles away, he entered the enemy-controlled area. It took him four days and three nights without sleep as he crawled inch by inch over one thousand five hundred yards of an open field, after already covering two miles just to get to that point. Hathcock was wearing a hastily assembled ghillie suit from the local vegetation to blend in with the surrounding terrain, and he was almost stepped on by patrols as he lay camouflaged with grass and vegetation in a meadow shortly after sunset. During this process, he came face to face with a deadly bamboo viper and managed to outlast the reptile until it crawled away. He then managed to complete the stalk and get into a concealed position, and not long afterward, the general came into view.

00:11:45
Speaker 4: I did not want none of my people did, so I took the mission on myself and, figuring I was maybe a little bit better than all, rushed up because I was one training, supposed—

00:11:58
Speaker 3: To be better.

00:12:00
Speaker 4: And, uh, I come out of the tree line back there and, uh, got onto the oak land, and I went to my side. I didn’t go flat on the belly, ’cause I made a bigger slug trail when I was on my belly. And I wormed on my side very minutely, very minutely. I knew I had a long ways to get. They want to tire myself up too much. And, uh, patrols were went in alarms for each on me. I could have tripped the majority of some of ’em.

00:12:35
Speaker 3: And they didn’t even know I was there. I was in their backyard.

00:12:38
Speaker 4: I was in their backyard, and they didn’t expect a one-man attack. They didn’t expect that, okay? And I knew from the first time when they’s come up wiley, gag. And by me, that I hadn’t made. Now just be good, this be real good.

00:12:47
Speaker 3: And by me, that I hadn’t made. Now just be good, this be real good.

00:12:53
Speaker 4: So I just continued squirming along, worming along, and, uh, come many patrol, many patrols come by. There was two, uh, twenty-fifty-one on my left, two twin fifty-ones on my right, and I saw them cooking their groceries and wishing I was there to have a little bit of it.

00:13:15
Speaker 3: But I was definitely hungry. I was thirsty. But you got a job to do, can’t let none of that enter. Just you’re in your bubble, and that’s all it is. Your job, your job.

00:13:33
Speaker 4: And crawl up on that little rise with an escape route to my right, and that’s made her to win. And the temporary humidity, the whole ball of wax, try to run through my mind real quick, and I dumped the bad guy.

00:13:56
Speaker 2: Hathcock fired a single shot that struck the general in the chest, killing him from a distance of seven hundred yards using his preferred Winchester .300 Magnum bolt-action rifle. Carlos was deep inside the enemy compound, but this was the easy part. Now he had to escape the area without being captured. His egress and evasion was on. He egressed out of the area as the soldiers went into the trees to hide, and he made his escape without being actively pursued. That is the toughest part of a deep penetration mission: surviving after making the shot. On September sixteenth, nineteen sixty-nine, Hathcock was riding on an LVTP5 armored personnel carrier full of Marines on Highway 1 north of Landing Zone Baldy, a U.S. Marine Corps and Army Army of Republic Vietnam base located northwest of Chu Lai in Quang Nam Province. When the APC rolled over an anti-tank mine, the explosion rocked the heavy vehicle and wounded all the Marines on board, and a fire broke out. Hathcock jumped off and ran to the rear and pulled seven Marines from the vehicle, which was an incinerator. Hathcock then collapsed, suffering first-, second-, and third-degree burns to his face, arms, and legs, and his uniform was aflame. Another Marine grabbed him and pulled him away and placed him in water alongside the road in a rice paddy, and he was still smoking. While recovering, Hathcock received the Purple Heart. Nearly thirty years later, he received the Silver Star for this action, saving those Marines. Although Hathcock had ninety-three confirmed kills, which had to be confirmed by the spotter and a third party who had to be an officer, he estimated that he had killed between three hundred and four hundred enemy personnel during the Vietnam War. However, not to be sidelined, Hathcock returned to active duty and, along with now Major Ed Land, established the Marine Corps Sniper School at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. The results of his efforts saw the establishment of Scout Sniper Schools at Stones Bay, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Camp Pendleton, California; and Marine Corps Base Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii. Despite returning to active duty, Hathcock was in daily, constant pain, but he continued teaching snipers. Hathcock’s health began to deteriorate, and in nineteen seventy-five he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and he was medically retired with full benefits and one hundred percent of his pay, just fifty-five days short of the full twenty-year retirement requirement. Hathcock was honored by having a rifle named after him, derived from the older semi-automatic M14 and named the Springfield Armory M25 “White Feather” due to his nickname. I met Carlos Hathcock twice. Having been a sniper myself, I was well-versed in his exploits. Carlos summed up his philosophy.

00:16:46
Speaker 4: The second move, in fact, was great. It’s very, very great and very harmful. To the bad guys, very harmful. One shot, one shot can put a whole company down, a whole company, because it denies them movement. It denies their movement, restricts their movement. And that’s which is good for Lanian, very good for Lanian. I did not like to kill them. I really didn’t like to kill them. But to pit myself against another living, breathing human being—

00:17:19
Speaker 3: Who could kill me as quick as I could him, that was a challenge of it. That was a challenge.

00:17:27
Speaker 4: See, only when you’re needed. Only when you’re needed, or you’re the good guy. Only when you’re needed, it seems like, because that’s training in those powers that are. They look down on snipers, and everybody else looks down on snipers, because we have a job. People down below do not understand that job, do not understand what can be done for by s night.

00:17:55
Speaker 2: Carlos Hathcock, the legendary White Feather, died on February twenty-second, nineteen ninety-nine, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia, and his legend still stands.

00:18:09
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the editing, storytelling, and production by our own Greg Hengler and a special thanks to Colin D. Heaton and Mike Droberg, two military veterans and the founders of the YouTube channel Forgotten History, and terrific partners of this show. Visit their YouTube channel, visit it often. And a special thanks, posthumously, to the legend, to the great Carlos Hathcock, this sniper par excellence who, in the end, started Marine sniper training. It had not existed before. And my own mother’s brother, well, he did something called paratrooping, which had not existed before in World War II, and so many of those innovators and those dreamers paid the price of being the first. And imagine being a sniper without training, because it is one of the deadliest jobs there is in the military, because the other guy’s sniper is looking for yours, and yours for theirs. It is a very special and very singular type of talent. And my goodness, that secret assignment that he described to kill a Vietnamese general, and how many lives it could save. Crawling those fifteen hundred yards, as he said, squirming, not just crawling like a snake. And then, “I dumped the bad guy” with his Winchester bolt-action rifle. The hard part, of course, to get away. And what a thing so many of our soldiers do for us, doing things like this, crawling in a swamp. And, of course, the record is surreal: ninety-three confirmed kills and estimated three hundred or more by his account, and then establishing the Marine Corps Sniper School, and ultimately his final statement, “I did not like the killing.”

00:20:07
Speaker 3: It was his job.

00:20:09
Speaker 1: The story of Carlos Hathcock, the legendary White Feather, an American sniper. Here on Our American Stories.