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.
“You look good,” Steve said as he and Carlos sat rocking and bobbing in the red and silver hunting boat they named “Shark Buster.”
“I feel good,” Carlos said, tilting his eyes upward.
“I told you. I would either kill you or make you well,” McCarver said.
“I am getting better,” Hathcock said as he sat in the rocking and bobbing craft, his bush hat tilted back, and a soft breeze rustling the white feather tucked in his hatband. As he gazed at the sea-filled horizon, listening for the line to spool off the reel and sing to him, a broad smite beamed across his suntanned face. He felt alive again. Again in the arena.
About the Author
Charles Henderson is a veteran of more than twenty-three years in the United States Marine Corps, with a distinguished career spanning from Vietnam to the Gulf War, after which he retired as a Chief Warrant Officer. In addition to writing his own books and for various publications, he runs his family’s cattle enterprise in Peyton, Colorado. His first book was critically acclaimed military classic Marine Sniper, which first chronicled the exploits of U.S.M.C. sniper Carlos Hathcock. He is also the author of Marshalling the Faithful.