14 Feb 2023 7:07 am
Here's my story from rifle qualifying day April 1969, Camp Pendleton, CA. Out of the 320 or so recruits in our series of four platoons, there were 9 of us who shot 100%, 10 out of 10 rounds into the head and shoulders silhouette bullseye. They gathered the nine of us together and took us down to a tent at the end of the firing line. They called it a "hooch." Where we were given a recruiting pitch to apply for what would later be called Marine Scout Sniper School, which Carlos Hathcock helped establish. That night in the squad bay, one of my DI's, the sadistic one, inquired if I planned to follow through with sniper training as requested. "No, sir. The private will not, sir." So...after qualifying "Expert" and shooting 100% from 500 yards prone position that day...I received the worst beating of my time in basic training, by the sadist. Ya never knew what the reward you get for a superior performance of duty in The Corps might be like.Taipan » 13 Feb 2023, 8:11 pm » wrote: ↑ Carlos Hathcock.
U.S. Marine Corps. Vietnam Sniper.
Arkansas Ozark redneck.
6th.-grade education.
Animal instinct........to the bone.
.30-06.
The best in the business.
Here is my point.
Hathcock would defend the U.S.
Who are you, Jarhead ?
Like everybody else who didnt know him personally, I only know what I have heard and read about Carlos Hathcock. That his 93 "confirmed" sniper kills were only part of his own estimate of 300 to 400 total kills of NVA and Viet Cong. This due to the Corps requirement to have an officer level observer present to confirm a kill. Officers in the Corps weren't all that interested in crawling through rice patties and jungle muck, putting their lives at risk in Vietnam just to confirm sniper kills.
What do I personally think of Hathcock, and the other famous Navy Department sniper Chris Kyle? I think there was more to their...uh...motivation than "Unit, Corps, God, Country." Here's what I think. There's some part of one's humanity that has to be switched off that allows them to not give a second thought to having killed several hundred other human beings...particularly by the personal action of one rifle shot at a time.
As far as Chris Kyle is concerned, he was a **** racist who saw any swarthy non-christians as less than human beings. It's a whole lot easier to have the experience of taking the lives of hundeds of human beings, one at a time, if they're just subhuman **** to you.