Inside the Crosshairs (30 page)

A few senior military officials have recorded their stories, and thus enhanced their reputations, while other high-ranking military commanders of the time have died or can no longer physically or mentally offer recollections. For years no one
seemed interested in their comments; now many are no longer able to contribute.
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Making the task of investigating the war even more difficult is the fact that to date neither the U.S. Army nor the U.S. Marine Corps has produced any definitive history of its involvement in the war. In the early 1970s, the Department of the Army published a series of pamphlet-size works called Vietnam Studies that were written by a few veteran senior commanders and staff officers. The Marine Corps has offered a somewhat better effort with its series, “U.S. Marines in Vietnam,” that has been published over the last twenty years. Neither service’s publications, however, devote more than a few lines to the development of snipers or to their operations, and those limited entries contribute little to the understanding of sniper employment or effectiveness.

The most detailed official explanation of sniper operations in Vietnam by either service appears in
Sharpening the Combat Edge: The Use of Analysis to Reinforce Military Judgment
by Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell and Major General Ira A. Hunt Jr., published in 1974 as part of the Vietnam Studies series. In the four-page summary subtitled “Sniper Program,” the authors include a brief history of the development of army marksmen in the 9th Infantry Division and conclude that it “was one of the most successful programs we undertook.”

The three primary pioneers of sniper training and organization in Vietnam—Marine majors Robert Russell and Jim Land and army major Willis Powell—wrote official and unofficial reports for their superiors. While the content of these writings was, of course, limited by the priorities of combat, the authors still had an agenda.

Most of the original Marine and army snipers and sniper instructors came from the peacetime shooting teams and were very aware that they needed to demonstrate how precision marksmanship could complement infantry units in combat, thus guaranteeing the continuation, and perhaps expansion, of competition shooting teams and matches after the war concluded.

Unofficial accounts of snipers in Vietnam have done better than the official sources in telling the story, but they, too, have their deficiencies. The most detailed books to date on snipers in Vietnam are
The Long Range War: Sniping in Vietnam
, published in 1994, and
The One Round War: USMC Scout-Snipers in Vietnam
, released two years later. Both of these books, written by Peter R. Senich and published by Paladin Press, contain extensive illustrations and photographs in an oversize 9-by-11-inch format.

Written for gun enthusiasts and those already familiar with long-range shooting, those books do provide a great deal of information, and their illustrations are the best to be found in print. Unfortunately, the $39.95 cost of
The Long Range War
and $59.95 for
The One Round War
, combined with the lack of wide distribution by the publisher, has prevented those pioneer volumes from gaining any substantial readership or acceptance.

Two books about individual Marine snipers in Vietnam and a collection of sniper stories, which includes several marksmen in Vietnam, have also added to the general information about snipers in the war. The first,
Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills
by Charles Henderson, presents the story of Carlos Hathcock. This work, which first appeared in 1986, is one of the best-selling books on the Vietnam War. Although some senior Marine commanders and other snipers and infantry veterans question portions of the stories as Henderson presents them,
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there is no doubt that Hathcock attained a deserved
reputation in the competition shooting community as one of the all-time best marksmen in the Corps. His ninety-three kills in Vietnam also place him near the top of the list of that conflict’s successful snipers.

Henderson’s book does provide many insights on sniper training and operations. However, Hathcock’s experiences were not at all typical of the experiences of the ordinary Marine or army sniper in Vietnam. According to Henderson, Hathcock was one of the few Marine snipers—and possibly the only one—allowed to operate independently or semi-dependently rather than as a member of a two-man team secured by at least a squad of infantry. Henderson’s book provides a story about a brave, sure-shot Marine but does not offer a general history of snipers in Vietnam or an account representative of the ordinary snipers who filled the regimental and recon battalion scout-sniper platoons.

The second book about a Marine sniper in Southeast Asia,
Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam
by Joseph T. Ward, provides a better account of day-to-day activities of the precision marksmen as well as information on weapons and equipment. Ward’s personal narrative does include a bit of sniper history, but the source is his own recollections rather than official documents. The book’s greatest merit may very well be that it is the honest story of a low-ranking Marine sniper who did only one tour in Vietnam and in the corps and then quietly returned home to rejoin the ranks of civilians.

Interestingly, when Ward’s book was first released, several of the “old guard” of Marine competition marksmen expressed doubts about certain aspects of his kill ranges and his number of successful missions. Apparently these doubters had difficulty accepting that a one-tour Marine with no prior experience in competition shooting could be so successful. Support
from fellow snipers and officers in Ward’s 5th Marine Regiment quickly quieted the doubters.

A third book,
One Shot—One Kill
by Charles Sasser and Craig Roberts provides stories in an oral history format about individual snipers in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Beirut. Linking the narrative are various bits and pieces of American sniper history, including a brief overview of the development of the marksmen during the Vietnam War.

While all of the official and some of the unofficial publications note problems and shortcomings of sniper operations, all have declared the use of the special marksmen to have been a successful aspect of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Yet no single source analyzes the “big picture” impact of specific actions. Some references provide statistics on the numbers of sniper missions and their outcomes for brief periods for specific units, but no source combines these numbers into any kind of definitive study.

Along with influences of a “lost cause” and limited access to the enemy’s archives, other factors reduce our ability to provide a complete, statistical analysis of sniper activities and accomplishments in Vietnam. Some army separate brigades and divisions made few or no reports at all on the number of their snipers, sniper operations, or the number of their snipers’ enemy contacts and kills. Only the Army Concept Team in Vietnam, as a part of its test, and the 9th Infantry Division, as a result of the interest of General Ewell in what he considered a personal project, kept any detailed records on soldier snipers.

Although the Marine regiments and reconnaissance battalions did a better job than the army in requiring and maintaining sniper records, they rarely collated them into external official reports. Some information that did make its way into the official record was lost or destroyed during the major offensives, such as Tet of 1968, or simply disappeared in transit.

The official records that are available are brief and contain few details. Typical of the limited accounts is the single paragraph in the twenty-page Combat After-Action Report of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, describing its participation in Operation Tuscaloosa, January 24–28, 1967. On page 8 of the report,
under a paragraph labeled “Execution,” a short entry states that the battalion’s F Company, at 1740 hours on January 27, “observed 12 enemy” whom they engaged with organic weapons and an air strike. The paragraph concludes, “Scout-sniper team accounted for one enemy KIA confirmed.”

Entries in official army reports about snipers were also brief. One of the more detailed accounts appears in the “Operational Report—Lessons Learned for the 25th Infantry Division” for the three-month period ending on April 30, 1970. Page 40 of the report relates, “On April 21 at 2101 hours, snipers from B/2–27 Inf engaged five to six enemy at XS525993 with organic weapons and artillery resulting in two enemy killed. At 2050 hours on 23 April, snipers from C/2–27 Inf engaged three enemy soldiers at 260 meters southeast of the 21 April contact (XS542978) with organic weapons resulting in two enemy killed and the capture of 30 pounds of rice. Snipers from Recon Platoon/2–27 Inf engaged two enemy soldiers on 24 April at 0346 hours 80 meters southeast of the 21 April contact site (XS532996) with organic weapons resulting in two enemy killed.”

The “Operational Report” of the 3rd Brigade, 9th Infantry Division, for the three-month period ending October 31, 1969, provides a better cumulative total of sniper success but lacks details. According to page 20 of the brigade’s report, “From 26 July 1969 to 31 October 1969, snipers accounted for 47 enemy eliminated in Long An Province. A total of 39 kills were attained at night utilizing a Starlight scope.”

Personal narratives and unofficial writing about snipers in Vietnam often rely on memory alone and contain gaps in information as well as unintended inaccuracies. In some cases, the analysis does not take into account the fact that snipers in the same unit were at times so dispersed that they never knew each other, let alone each other’s accomplishments or failures. The very nature of snipers and sniping reinforced this lack of interaction and the “clouding” of whatever information was available. In addition to their discretion among themselves, snipers talked to few outside their immediate ranks about their operations and engagements.

As the antiwar movement at home gained momentum and support from the American press, the snipers became even less communicative with those outside their own units. Marine and army public information officers, even though desperately seeking a positive slant on the war to show the media, avoided mention of successful snipers. As a result, for the Vietnam era, few newspaper or other media stories exist about snipers or their effectiveness.

Despite the controversy about the U.S. military’s assessing its accomplishments in Vietnam by the daily enemy body count, the numbers policy did readily lend itself to measuring the success of units and operations. Snipers, who engaged individual targets with superior weapons and scopes and had each kill verified by an officer, fit perfectly into the body count policy of attrition warfare.

Of course, because of battle conditions, distances, and the valiant efforts of the VC/NVA not to leave bodies behind, the snipers could not always determine the results of each shot. Every sniper maintained an account of both confirmed and possible kills. Snipers also kept records of each nonlethal wound they inflicted. However, because a slightly wounded VC/NVA nearly always escaped, those numbers were estimates at best.

No figures, or even reasonable guesses, are available on the number of kills made by the unofficial American snipers who acquired rifles and scopes on their own prior to the formation of the in-country marksmanship schools. Most of those soldiers and Marines acted as regular infantrymen in addition to their sniping duties. Their body counts included enemy killed by firing with conventional iron sights as well as those eliminated by long-range, scoped-rifle fire.

Once the Marine Corps established its sniper schools and organized the scout-sniper platoons in the regiments and reconnaissance battalions, the two divisions began to require regular reports on the number of engagements and kills by their sharpshooters. Individual Marine snipers kept logs and/or submitted kill sheets detailing the results of each engagement.

Those reports were forwarded to the division headquarters
by the regiments and reconnaissance battalions to be consolidated into a single report—at least, that was the official policy. In the midst of combat and the frequent changes in leaders and personnel due to the thirteen-month tour policy, the sniper platoons and their senior headquarters were not always able to follow the prescribed procedure. At times they were late in submitting the records or sent no report at all. In other cases reports were misplaced or never forwarded to permanent archives.

The most accessible, and in many cases the only available, information on the kill totals of Marine snipers comes from the shooters themselves.
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Each Marine scout-sniper platoon maintained its own unofficial kill total and some posted daily updates to the figures. Joe Ward recalls that shortly before his departure from the 5th Marine Regiment on March 3 1970, the tally for his scout-sniper platoon totaled 1,174 kills since its formation about four years earlier.

The 5th Regiment withdrew from Vietnam along with the rest of the 1st Marine Division a year later. At the time of its departure, the 5th Marine Scout-Sniper Platoon had increased its kills to about 1,300. The 1st and 7th regimental sniper platoons in the 1st Division had similar successes with about the same body counts. Two other regiments, the 26th and the 27th, joined the 1st Marine Division in 1967 and 1968 and together added about 1,200 successful sniper engagements. The slightly smaller reconnaissance battalion platoon added another 1,100 dead VC/NVA bringing the 1st Marine Division sniper kill count to about 6,200—or the equivalent of twenty-one VC/NVA battalions!—during its time in Vietnam.

The 3rd Marine Division organized and trained its snipers several months before the 1st Division but began rotating out of country more than a year earlier. Only three regimental sniper platoons, the 3rd, 4th, and 9th, and one from the 3rd
Reconnaissance Battalion, were assigned to the division. Because of its smaller numbers and shorter time in the war zone, the 3rd Marine Division produced only an estimated 4,500 sniper kills.
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Unofficial army snipers who acquired Korean War—vintage rifles and scopes or who adapted civilian weapons to field use also undoubtedly built a body count prior to the official introduction of the program. The first official statistics, however, were not recorded until the Army Concept Team in Vietnam (ACTIV) sniper operations and equipment test of June through October 1967. According to the test report, 259 snipers produced a body count of only 46 enemy soldiers during a little more than three months of field operations. Of course, many of those shooters were poorly trained, and they were armed with a variety of rifles and scopes, many of which were inferior to later weapon systems. There was also great diversity in the support they received from field commanders.