Carlos Hathcock - Vietnam's Most Wanted Sniper

📖 The Scoop

Carlos Hathcock, the man known to many in the US as the deadliest American sniper, indomitable and fearsome, an indispensable asset during the Vietnam War, is a soft-spoken and gentle family man to his folks. The man dressed in the green marine uniform flaunted a white feather on his hat, a sheer badassery, making open ribaldry of the enemy forces and daring them to spot him amidst the green patina of rice fields in Southern Vietnam. This habit of Carlos had earned him the moniker “White Feather”. As was common during war, the enemy had placed a few thousand dollars bounty on many US snipers. But Carlos’ notoriety and badassery was so famed and feared among the enemies that they placed a whopping 30,000 dollar bounty on his head. With 93 confirmed kills and over 300 unconfirmed, Carlos had sealed his place among the world’s deadliest snipers. Crawling his way to the den of his target, waiting in the prowl embracing the stillness of the dead, pulling his trigger with immaculate precision, and returning his way to his tent on the hilltop undetected, with such finesse and expertise that Carlos makes it all look effortless. But knowing the nuanced details of his painfully sluggish mode of transport that would take at least days before he “worms” his way through the swampy and muddy rice fields, during day and night, one cannot stop to think what a harrowing experience it would have been. Carlos, himself was homesick and lonely but that didn’t dent his resolve to butcher the men who had no qualms in firing away at his fellow marines. The lonely nights that Carlos spends ruminating on his bunker on the hilltop, listening to the wind howling through every chink on the makeshift roof, he was reminded of his grandma’s cottage in the countryside in Arkansas. How lovely and boisterous had those days been, Carlos was nostalgic, and his heart had doddered off to a place of remove. It happens often on nights like these. This is a riveting tale of an US marine who was enamored by his profession, lived, and died completely surrendering to the sport of sniping. His tale of scaling great heights and eventually losing it all is equally inspiring and heart breaking.

Genre: History / Military / Weapons (fancy, right?)