Silent Warrior: The Biography of Carlos Hathcock

685 Words2 Pages

The book I read is called Silent Warrior. It's a biography about the famous marine sniper, Carlos Hathcock. The book takes you from his death bed to the death field in Vietnam, where he earner his title as the best of the best. His 93 confirmed kills and hundreds more unaccounted made him the number one sniper in our history. The book brought out the best of the man that everyone knew as Gunny Hathcock.

Carlos Hathcock was born in 1942 in Arkansas. His father once said that Carlos was only eight when he decided he wanted to be a Marine Sniper. When his parents were still together, his father had gotten a Daisy pump BB gun for his birthday. His parents thought he would only shoot around the house, at the trees or cans. However, Carlos has a more adventurous nature. One day he was running around the neighborhood where he saw a bunch of pigeons next to a church. He took his aim and shot. Missing the pigeon he was aiming for, he tried again. At that point he heard a voice that instructed him to stop. As the nun reached for the BB gun to take it away from Carlos, he accidentally pulled the trigger and shot barely and inch from the nuns foot. That was just one incident that got Carlos in trouble.

After his parents' divorce, Carlos moved in with his grandmother and joined the Marine Corps. On his seventeenth birthday his mother signed the waiver allowing him to join the Marines. May 20th, 1959, he took a plane ride to boot camp in San Diego and began the first day of service in an organization that to him became more a family than a career. Later, Carlos flew to Hawaii to be educated b y Lt. E.J. Land. Carlos described the schooling there as a "one-week school, with no field tactics or anything." However in Vietnam, Carlos ...

... middle of paper ...

...ilver Star, the third-highest military honor, for an incident that happened nearly 30 years earlier, when he pulled seven comrades off a burning armored personnel carrier that had struck a mine. That act bravery left Hathcock badly burned and effectively ended his career as a rifleman.

Carlos had always regarded himself last, and placed his family, his brother and sister Marines, and his country first. Carlos always reminded himself of what Captain Jim Land taught him. "A sniper's best defenses are cover and concealment and long-range accuracy. Most important, one shot, one kill." With that strategy, Carlos Hathcock became the most famous sniper in United States History. While the standard reward on a US sniper was eight dollars, the head of the White Feather, as the enemies knew him was about 30,000 dollars. Maybe that was because his mission always came first.

Open Document