Gunnery Sgt. Carlos Hathcock was the kind of Marine that would inspire generations of warfighters. He engaged in sniper duels and came out on top every time. He hunted Viet Cong and North Vietnamese officers through the jungles and grasses of Vietnam.
An animation from The Infographics Show on YouTube tells Hathcock’s story as a cartoon.
Hathcock was an Arkansas native who grew up hunting in order to help feed his poor family. He aspired to military service, and specifically the Marine Corps, and enlisted soon after he turned 17. He was soon competing in marksmanship competitions with the Marines and won some prestigious competitions, including the Wimbledon Cup.
So, when he was deployed to Vietnam, he could've stuck to his military police job but volunteered as a sniper instead. His hard-earned ability to sneak up on game, combined with his talent for shooting, made him a natural in the brush and jungle, and he quickly proved himself one of the most lethal men in theater.
From a base in Vietnam, he achieved the longest sniper shot up to that point in history, and he did it with a .50-cal. machine gun in single-shot mode. He waged an extended sniper duel against "The Apache," a female Viet Cong platoon leader who tortured Marines, eventually dropping her from 700 yards when she got lazy and peed in the open.
He hit her with his first shot even though he had been switching rifles when he spotted her. After the first shot dropped her, he scored a second hit, just to be certain.
In another engagement, Hathcock and a spotter saw a green platoon of North Vietnamese Army troops. Hathcock hit the lead officer, and his spotter dropped the officer at the back. There was a third leader who tried to escape across a rice paddy, and so the Americans dropped him, too. In order to protect their position from discovery, the sniper team stopped firing.
Instead, Hathcock and his partner called artillery, moved positions and wiped out the enemy force.
He killed an enemy officer after four days of crawling to the target. (Hathcock believed it was an enemy general, though the NVA never acknowledged losing a general at the time and place that Hathcock scored his kill.)
He hunted down an enemy sniper sent to kill him, shooting his foe through the scope just moments before the Vietnamese sniper would've hit him.
So, yeah, there were lots of reasons that he was a legend. Check out the cartoon at top to learn more.
More posts from We Are the Mighty:
This Marine made history's 5th longest sniper kill with a machine gun
This Marine Was The 'American Sniper' Of The Vietnam War
5 rituals warriors used to prepare for battle
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