The Marines who shot beside him, however, were in awe. They saw the blood-soaked sweat shirt when he took off his heavy shooting jacket. They saw the white gloves with blood-soaked palms when he took them off after pulling his share of targets in the butts-wrestling down the one hundred-pound steel and wood racks that hold the giant targets and shoving them back in the air after he marked the shot. The Marines who fired beside him admired the fact that he would not accept the assistance or substitutions usually offered a handicapped man.
It seemed as though he had just arrived at Quantico when Maj. David J. Willis confronted him in the parking lot outside the rifle range command post. Hathcock could not remember not knowing Willis. As long as he had been in the Marine Corps, Willis had always been there—a tobacco-chewing Marine who shaved his head and wore the two gold shooting badges of a marksman distinguished with both the rifle and the pistol, and who, like Hathcock, spoke reverently of John Wayne.
“I sent a letter to your medical board at Bethesda. You know they have to make a decision on your case soon. This copy is for your files.”
The major put his arm over Hathcock’s shoulder and gave him a friendly pat. Then he left Carlos alone, standing near his car, reading the short letter:
From: Operations Officer, Marksmanship Training Unit To: Commanding Officer, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland 20014
Subj: GySgt C. N. Hathcock, 429746238/0369, USMC
1. The physical capabilities and limitations of GySgt Hathcock have been of great interest to the members of this unit over a period of years. We have served with him through the good and the bad and always with great admiration.
2. He knows, we know, and his medical records indicate that he can no longer do certain tasks within his present capabilities and conditions. However, this does not mean he can not perform as a Marine and more specifically an assignment within this unit. He possesses an unusual, unique knowledge of Marksmanship that allows us to capitalize on his talents such as Ammunition Hand Loading, Weapons Repair, Training of Teams, Wind Reading, and Instructional abilities.
3. Probably there are very few Marines within the Corps capable of supporting the Marksmanship Program as well as GySgt Hathcock. Knowledge can only be acquired over a period of time and he has devoted many years to the establishment of his skills by actual participation vice reading material. The success of our teams largely depends on our coaches and he is one of the finest coaches we have. He has asked for no special favors and we have granted few. He is constantly called upon for advice and to perform in the interests of Basic Marksmanship and he has never failed us.
4. By his determination to overcome his physical disabilities, acquired while in combat, he is a constant inspiration not only to our younger Marines but to everyone he serves with.
5. Without any reservations we will continue to respectfully request that he not only stay on active duty but remain with the Marksmanship Training Unit. We are proud to serve with him.
The medical board did not vote on his case until June. Then they sent him the answer for which he had prayed. Yes, he could stay. The board placed him on Permanent Limited Duty—no physical training or physical fitness tests. He could not be transferred because the stipulations of his continued service required monthly visits to the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda. And finally, to assure the best possible care for him, the chairman of the Department of Neurology, a captain in the Navy’s Medical Corps named W. L. Brannon, Jr., assumed care of Hathcock as his doctor.
Hathcock would have been a happy man if the multiple sclerosis had not continued to advance.
July 1976 came hot at Quantico. On Range 4, the thousand-yard range that competitors from all services and NRA shooting clubs called Death Valley, Maj. David Willis lay strapped behind a 300 Winchester Magnum sighting down the powerful scope at the targets a thousand yards away. Carlos Hathcock lay on a shooting pad next to him, tightly wrapped in a shooting jacket and strapped hard to a rifle of similar design.
They practiced for the Interservice individual and team long-range rifle championship matches.
The temperature passed 95 degrees before noon and kept climbing. Willis had the shooters hang thermometers on their scope stands as a reminder to be on guard for heat stroke. The reflected heat sent the mirages boiling and waving so strongly that many of the shooters swore in frustration as they tried to see the targets.
Behind each pair of shooters, a coach sat with his eye fixed to the back of a gigantic, gray spotting scope made by the John Unertl Company.
Ron McAbee, now a gunnery sergeant, stood behind Hathcock, watching and listening to the coach call out the number of clicks to the two men in front of him. When he would call out a wind change, both men were to react by turning the windage adjustment knobs on their scopes and calling the numbers back to the coach.
“Come three right,” he said.
“Three right,” came a single voice from the right. Hathcock lay on the left.
“Hathcock!” the coach shouted. “Three right!”
Hathcock did not move.
Willis raised on his elbow and slipped the leather rifle sling off his arm.
Hathcock’s cheek lay against the raised stock, his eye closed in position behind the scope. His jaw hung open and his breathing was faint.
The frantic Marines unstrapped Carlos from the rifle and began popping the buckles loose from his jacket. Blood dripped from its sleeves, and when they opened it, they saw his sweat shirt was soaked in blood. As the Marines exposed Hathcock’s bum-scarred body, they saw his injuries. At every bend in his body, his elbows and shoulders and upper arms and chest, the skin had split open. They could see the old splits and the new splits, and knew that every time Hathcock shot, he bled, yet ignored the pain.
“Jesus Christ! Hathcock is gonna die on us! Get him to the reloading shed,” Willis commanded. The small reloading shed at the end of the road that bisected Death Valley, just behind the 600 yard line, was the only building which had air conditioning. They took him there and soon after an ambulance arrived.
Major David Willis left Quantico in October of 1976 for a tour in Okinawa as the executive officer of 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines. And when he returned to Quantico’s ranges a year later, Carlos was still trying to pull triggers. He still had not given up. But something else had begun in that year that took his mind off competition. Something attainable.
Major E. J. Land was now the Marine Corps’ Marksmanship Coordinator, and he was based nearby at Headquarters Marine Corps. He visited Hathcock often during these new Quantico days and discussed a project that Colonel Reynolds was also involved in. It was a Marine Corps-wide sniper program.
There were independent sniper schools such as Colonel Dickman’s 4th Recon Battalion school at San Antonio, but there was no organization that put the sniper schools and the sniper programs within the regular establishment of the Marine infantry battalions.
Land did the politicking within the Headquarters Marine Corps bureaucracy. He sold them with the Hathcock legend, with the idea of what the future could hold for battalions that each had squads of snipers. He sold them an exciting new idea that had been on the battlefields since Leonardo da Vinci defended the gates of Florence by sniping with a rifle of his own design, shooting the enemy from three hundred yards away.
But never before had anyone trained snipers during peacetime. It was against the conscience of most men, especially those from Western cultures, to “back shoot,” to assassinate from a hide, to bush-whack like an outlaw. It was somehow cowardly to not give an opponent a “sporting” chance.