Inside the Crosshairs (26 page)

The spotter or observer learned from the team leader in the never-ending training process. Often when a team leader completed his tour, the observer moved up to assume his duties and to take over the sniper rifle.

While the various manuals and manning documents spell out appropriate ranks for each of these positions, as with everything else that occurred in the Vietnam War, there were
often variations and adaptations. A first or second lieutenant usually filled the authorized platoon commander position with a staff or gunnery sergeant as the senior NCO. Staff or “buck” sergeants led the squads with corporals as team leaders and lance corporals as their observers. Because of the importance of maintaining the sniper rifle systems, units made great efforts to keep the team equipment repairman position filled with a lance corporal or above to ensure a skill level that could master the care of the weapons.

In the absence of officers, senior sergeants often occupied the officer’s billet with Marines one or even two ranks below the authorized grade assuming the duties of squad and team leaders. Experience and expertise of individual snipers received more attention than rank in the teams, and it was not unusual for the senior ranking member to act as the observer while the junior person did the actual shooting. Again, on occasion some senior NCOs filled positions authorized for lower ranks in order to maximize the field time of the more proficient and experienced snipers.

The regimental and reconnaissance battalion organization allowed the sniper platoons’ employment as a unit, as squads, or as separate teams. For example, the entire regimental platoon might be attached to a subordinate battalion with squads or teams further detached to companies. In the recon battalion, the platoon might be attached to a recon company for a short time, but the general organization called for the attachment of one sniper squad per company. The organizational structure of the regimental and recon battalion sniper platoons also provided for attaching a squad or team to any size subordinate unit.

These attachments were usually for the duration of a mission or patrol that might last from a few days to a week. Most of the sniper platoons attempted to send the same squad and teams to the same subordinate units to increase an awareness of capabilities and to promote teamwork.

The organization of the Marine sniper platoons centered on the ability to assign a squad per battalion in the regiments and a squad per company in the reconnaissance battalion. This
concept worked fine on paper but had its shortcomings in the reality of the combat zone. Rarely were the sniper platoons at full strength. Even when adequate personnel were assigned, some snipers would be unavailable for duty because of wounds, illness, rest and recreation leaves, and administrative matters. Also, because of the nature of sniping itself and the mental and physical diligence it required, snipers could not remain effective for extended periods of time and required time to rest and refit.

While their actual operational functions rarely matched the theoretical model, the Marines did have the advantage of having all their combat units assigned in the far northern quarter of South Vietnam, where they encountered fairly similar terrain.

Unlike the Marine Corps, which had a formal, approved organization for its sniper platoons, the army never authorized or adopted official units for its long-range marksmen in Vietnam. Army separate brigades and divisions served throughout South Vietnam from the Mekong Delta in the south to the DMZ in the north, and the terrain varied from flat, wet, rice paddies to thick jungle and mountains, which required differing tactics and methods of field operations. The differences in areas of responsibility did not readily lend themselves to consistent organization or employment of army snipers. As a result, each army division, separate brigade, and long-range reconnaissance company established its own sniper organization appropriate to location, situation, and overall command support of the concept.

Senior army commanders recognized the lack of consistency in sniper organization and in the spring of 1969 directed Lieutenant Colonel Richard S. Fleming of the U.S. Army Combat Developments Command to visit field units “to discuss sniper programs, policies, and utilization.” From April 6 to 10, Fleming talked with commanders, operations officers, and snipers in the XXIV Corps Headquarters, the 1st Brigade of the 5th Mechanized Infantry Division, and the 101st Airborne Division. Fleming also visited the 3rd Marine Division. Its Division Order 1510.5 on refresher training as well as other
information on the Marine sniper organization and reporting procedures so impressed Fleming that he included copies as enclosures to his final report.

In his written findings, dated April 28, 1969, “Trip Report (33–69), Sniper Programs” (referred to below as Trip Report). Fleming detailed the current status of the army’s sniper efforts but noted that they “are still too new in the units visited to provide any definitive figures on results.” Fleming did find a “surprising consensus of opinion of all those personnel contacted” on sniper organization.

Fleming shared the consensus view that it was a mistake to allow “fragmentation into too many small specialized units within the division.” He recommended that sniper teams be assigned directly to the Ranger companies
^‡
and to each battalion reconnaissance platoon, and he advised assigning an additional team to each infantry platoon. According to Fleming, the direct assignment of snipers to units would provide the teamwork and support necessary to ensure their success. To provide flexibility, Fleming further recommended a sniper unit be formed at each brigade headquarters to be detached to subordinate battalions when needed.

Fleming’s ideas on sniper organization had merit, and had they been adopted they would certainly have contributed to the combat capabilities of field commands. Unfortunately, the combat units had neither the manpower nor the training capabilities—nor, in some cases, the desire—to train and maintain the number of snipers that Fleming proposed.

Much of their reluctance resulted from the fact that infantry units in Vietnam were never manned at full strength. Replacements arriving in-country often did not match rotations of tour completions. Casualties, illnesses, and R&Rs further reduced the numbers available for day-to-day duty. Men wounded or killed in firefights that took only a few minutes might not be replaced for days or weeks, and the replacements would likely be new in-country and inexperienced in combat. Many platoon
leaders and company commanders resisted the loss of a single man from the field for a week or more of sniper training. They were even more concerned that the individual might not return to the unit upon completion of his schooling. Other commanders did not believe that snipers could be properly utilized in their area of operations because of the terrain and vegetation. Some leaders simply did not have any faith in the overall concept.

Only a few weeks after Fleming wrote his report, President Richard Nixon announced the first withdrawals of U.S. forces from Vietnam. With the focus more and more on reducing the number of soldiers in Vietnam, the army paid little additional attention to sniper organization and left it to individual commands to determine how and where to assign their long-range marksmen.

As a result, a great disparity occurred in the organization of snipers in army units serving in Vietnam. Some division and separate brigade commanders simply ignored the potential capability and made no effort to acquire snipers for their units. Within those same commands, however, some battalion and company commanders who did believe in the advantage of long-range shooting procured a few sniper weapons and fielded teams or individuals within rifle squads.

Most army divisions and separate brigades did not establish their own sniper schools and received allocations to those conducted by the Army Marksmanship Training Units teams, such as the one operated by the 9th Infantry Division and, later, the 25th Infantry Division. Upon completion of the training, individuals returned to their units and became the snipers for their squads or platoons in a manner similar to what was done during World War II with the special marksmen.

Changes in command of battalions and brigades usually occurred every six months and at times even more frequently. Emphasis on snipers changed as each new commander brought his own ideas and experience to the command. In many army units, the sniper became no more than an ordinary infantryman armed with a more sophisticated weapon than his fellow grunts.

As with all aspects of army sniper operations in Vietnam, the 9th Infantry Division led the way in establishing an organization for the special marksmen. A formerly classified report, “Sniper Training and Employment in the 9th Infantry Division,” written by Major Robert G. Hilchey, division assistant operations officer, provided the most official, specific, and detailed sniper organization for any army unit in Vietnam. According to Paragraph V of the July 15, 1969, report, “Six snipers are assigned to each battalion headquarters and headquarters company and four to each brigade headquarters. It is essential that sniper employment be planned at battalion level to insure command interest and optimum utilization. Sniper teams are normally composed of two snipers.”

Within weeks of the publication of Hilchey’s report, two of the three 9th Division brigades began to withdraw from the war zone. The remaining brigade, the 3rd, did use the sniper organization outlined in the report and continued to send volunteers to the sniper school after it moved to the 25th Infantry Division.

The organization of Marine snipers in Vietnam was more rigid and consistent than that of the army. Sniper platoons at regimental and reconnaissance battalion level worked well and provided excellent support to field operations. With their late start in sniper operations and the greater variety of terrain in their areas of operations, the army never reached anything near the level of the Marine Corps’s organizational expertise. Nevertheless, the army’s experience in sniper organization learned in Vietnam would leave a lasting impression and influence the service’s future marksmen.

CHAPTER 12
 

S
NIPER
operations in the Vietnam War varied greatly from unit to unit, season to season, and year to year. The diversity of enemy activity, ranging from guerrilla operations to conventional offensives, required differing tactics, and the seasonal weather, changing from extremely hot and dry to monsoons, also affected sniper activities. The war zone’s great variety of terrain contributed to the mix.

Another significant influence on sniper operations resulted from the frequent changes in command at all levels: battalion, regiment, brigade, division, and higher. Despite organizational charts or previous operational techniques, snipers worked not for themselves or by their own rules but rather at the desire of their senior commanders. Some commanders believed in the sniper concept and supported all aspects of the program. Others ignored the marksmen to focus on other combat factors that they thought would better accomplish the mission of closing with and destroying the enemy. Between these two opposite poles of interest and support fell a large number of commanders who were neither particularly positive nor negative about snipers or their operations.

The officers and sergeants who trained, organized, and developed operational procedures for snipers in Vietnam had little personal experience and almost no documentation from previous wars on which to base their decisions. Although the techniques of marksmanship remained the same on the rifle range and in the combat zone and the merits of the two-man team organization quickly became apparent, just how to use the trained teams remained a difficult question.

The sniper experience and documentation that did exist referred to the conventional, fixed-frontline warfare of the two world wars and Korea. But Vietnam was a very different kind of war, one in which guerrilla warfare dominated and the difficulty became not hitting targets but finding and identifying them.

Marine and army sniper leaders developed combat operational procedures to meet the unusual needs of the unconventional battlefield. These methods, however, were evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Developers of sniper tactics and operational procedures began with current doctrine, then kept what worked and discarded what did not. Some things were changed, some deleted, some added. Operations did not remain static but rather adapted to the ebb and flow of the level of enemy activity.

All sniper operations in Vietnam had, first, to deliver accurate long-range fire to kill individual enemy soldiers and, second, to plan operations to optimize the first objective while ensuring the security of the sniper team. In recent years articles, books, and even motion pictures have portrayed the sniper as a “lone wolf” hunting far “behind enemy lines” to strike high-ranking enemy officers or other targets. Evidence of such missions in Vietnam is rare to nonexistent. All U.S. forces in Southeast Asia went to great lengths to prevent the live capture of their troops and to retrieve the bodies of their dead. Commanders simply did not place lone soldiers or Marines in positions where supporting units and fires were not readily available. No one went anywhere in Vietnam without radio communication links to those resources.