“Captain Land, you’re restricted. You may go to the chow hall, head, and chapel. You will sit down tonight and write your wife a letter. Tell her you will be home in a couple of weeks-alive. Is that clear, Captain?”
“Yes, Sir!” Land barked in the same manner as he had done to his sergeant instructor at Officer Candidates’ School.
The colonel held a folder filled with papers and opened it, pulled out several that he had stapled together, and waved them in the captain’s face. “Do you see this?” Poggemeyer said, speaking with increasing vehemence. “I came here to tell you that I had recommended you for a Bronze Star. But you can forget that now!”
As he lashed out those final words to the captain, he tucked the folder under his arm, took the award recommendation in his hands and, ripping it in half, threw it at Land’s feet.
Captain Land did not move. He stood rigidly fixed at attention while the colonel turned from him and stormed away.
When Colonel Poggemeyer returned to his quarters, he reconsidered what he had told the captain. A man of his word, he did not recommend Land for a Bronze Star, but at a ceremony at South Weymouth, Massachusetts, some time later, Land received the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V*
Land walked to his hooch, sat at his desk, and wrote his wife, Ellie, a letter. The remainder of the night he worked on a turnover file that he would give to Maj. D.E. Wight, his replacement. He told no one that he was on restriction.
“Sergeant Hathcock,” a voice shouted outside the quarters where Hathcock lay on his cot, looking at a map that detailed the terrain surrounding Hill 55. “Sergeant Hathcock. You in there?”
Hathcock yelled, “Come on in, Gunny. What ya got?” “That woman, she may be full of shit, and then again she may not be. But take it for what it’s worth.”
Hathcock sat on the edge of his cot and took a can filled with cigarette butts off an ammunition crate; he offered it as a seat for the huge gunnery sergeant, who had interrogated the woman that Hathcock had shot in the neck.
“Go on, Gunny. What’s this woman full of it about?”
“I don’t doubt that these NVA told her this, and it may be a lot of brag. You know, the way we sometimes build up things to get folks* attention. But I think there is a root of truth to what she says.”
“To what?” Hathcock asked impatiently.
“She said that there are a dozen snipers—a whole sniper platoon—down here now from North Vietnam. They trained at a place up there that supposedly looks just like Hill 55. She said they have a compound, complete with bunkers and sniper hides, exactly like this here. They probably know the land as well as you do.”
“That makes sense. The way they’ve been picking people off around here, I was thinking they had some inside information,” Hathcock said, wrinkling his lips and nodding his head philosophically.
“Well, the best part is this,” the gunny said, resting his forearms across his knees and leaning toward Hathcock. “They want you.”
“Figures,” Hathcock said, without showing the shock that the gunny thought the news would evoke. “Captain Land told me they’ve got a bounty out on me and him. He saw a leaflet that they dropped all over creation. It figures that these hamburgers would have me at the top of their list. What about the skipper?”
“She didn’t mention him. All she could talk about was Long Tra’ng—White Feather—and how they had all taken a blood oath to not return home without your little trademark and scalp.”
“They don’t scare me none, Gunny. I don’t care how hard those hot dogs think they are, there ain’t none of them hard enough to get me.”
“You’re not Superman, Hathcock. You’re not invincible.”
“Oh, no! I never said I was. Oh, they could kill me. I could let down my guard and they would kill me in a heartbeat. But the harder they hunt me, the harder I get. There ain’t none of them who know how to move and hide like I can. And there sure ain’t none of them who can outshoot me. That’s what I mean, Gunny. I’m just a whole lot better than they are, and that gives me the advantage.”
“You may be better. And again, they may have an ol’ boy who is better than you.”
“And…?”
“Well, that woman told me there is one sniper in particular who is doing the majority of damage to the Marines walking around on the hill. He’s the man who killed the gunny outside your door. All this guy does is live in the jungle. He eats rats and bugs, weeds, lizards, and worms-shit like that. She said this guy catches cobras and vipers with his bare hands and eats ’em raw so that he’ll have their spirit in him.”
“Eating garbage and living in the mud don’t make you smart. You have to be smart in the first place. I can see where living in the wild and learning the ways of nature can improve this guy’s chances, but I’ve spent a lot of time crawlin’ around the woods, too.”
The gunny stood and slapped Hathcock on the back of the head. “I know your reputation. But this fella has one, too. Take it for what it’s worth… keep your head down.”
Hathcock walked the gunny to the door, “I figure this fella has a fair aim, considering the long-range shots he’s notched. But, no matter what he does, if he keeps shooting at us from the same little knoll out yonder, we’ll get him. It’s just a matter of time.”
The last of the lingering monsoon showers fell as Captain Land packed his sea bag. Outside his hooch, the rain pattered on the orange mud and collected in hundreds of puddles throughout the hilltop compound. The blue day matched Land’s mood. He had not left the hill since the colonel restricted him. For a while he thought that his boss might ease off, but now with only three days remaining in-country, he knew that the colonel’s word was firm.
Hathcock now looked nearly like his old self. His face was lull and his eyes clear and twinkling. The rest had put him back on his feet. He had remained restricted to the hill until a few days earlier, when the captain cleared him to go back to the bush on a day-to-day basis. And each evening, Hathcock made a point of checking in with Land. He did not wish to spend another day on restriction.
“At the tone, the time will be 5 P.M.,” a voice announced over the radio that played softly in the captain’s hooch. He leaned down to turn the volume up, following the short blare of a 500-hertz tone. Every hour, on the hour, Armed Forces Radio Da Nang broadcast five minutes of news.
Land listened as the voice told of increasing numbers of American troops now committed to the escalating war in Vietnam, as President Johnson proclaimed that this conflict would not be lost at any cost. Richard Nixon had begun his campaign for the presidency and vowed that he would bring an honorable end to the war. Meanwhile, young men bumed their draft cards and others waved North Vietnamese flags in protests that sprang from Boston to Washington, D.C., and from the University of California at Berkeley to Aliens Landing near Houston’s Old Market Square, where fighting broke out on Love Street when a Vietnam veteran attacked a demonstrator, ripping the Communist flag from his hands. The veteran was jailed for assault. Dr. Timothy Leary’s followers were dropping LSD, and stories of “bad trips” that ended in space walks from hotel windows added a punchy finish.
“…for details, read the Pacific Stars and Stripes,” the voice concluded as the newscast ended for another hour. “Sounds worse at home,” the captain grumbled, as a voice began singing to a slow rock beat.
Land jerked as the sound of a rifle shot, followed by a scream, “Corpsman! Corpsman! The captain’s hit!” echoed throughout the encampment.
Leaning out his door, he looked at the crowd huddled thirty feet away from his hooch and saw two feet kicking, toes up, in the mud.