MARINE SNIPER in Vietnam Behind Enemy Lines: Ordered to Take Out High Value Targets | Sherman Hickam

You gotta take a break. So we would, as the day wore on, you know, we would keep adjusting our weapons for windage and, you know, sunlight and all those things affect the strike of the bullet. So we would do that all day long until this guy came out and whoever happened to be on the rifle at the time would take the shot. And, you know, he'd be on the ground before the sound ever got there. You are about to embark upon the great crusade to meet this mounting aggression. And make no mistake about it, good will prevail. I was born in San Diego, California. Spent about half my life between there and Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was a rough childhood. I spent time from 13 to 17 in an orphanage. Had an abusive family, you know, not good. I was living at the orphanage in New Mexico and a number of guys that were older than me had gone in the service, come back and visited and so forth. And they'd gone in the Marine Corps, a couple of them, and told me, of course, not to go in the Marine Corps, to go in the Air Force or something like that. And obviously, you know, me being, you know, hard-headed as I am, I said, no, I want to go in the toughest, meanest outfit they got, you know. I want to be a big bad Marine. So I got my, about two days before school started for my senior year, I got my mother's signature and joined the Marine Corps. Got out of boot camp, went into a unit that had just came back from the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, of course, they wouldn't, and I didn't know it at the time, couldn't talk about it, but I would ask them questions and all that stuff. Where'd you guys go? What'd you do? And all that. And they wouldn't be, they wouldn't tell. So anyway, that was my beginning in the Marine Corps and Division. And it wasn't too long after that, we went on a, it's called, it used to be a float phase where you, we were in the Far East and steaming around, you know, going to various ports. And did that until, it was about a, I was overseas for a 13-month tour, but three months of that was on the float phase. Came back to the States, was in the States in Pendleton for a year. And then we had just gone to cold weather training in Squaw Valley, you know, snowshoes and learning how to ski and combat in snow. And just got back from that with sorting out all our gear, parkas and all that stuff. And I came into barracks and said, anybody that has more than a year to do, more than a year to do, is going to Vietnam. And we, I didn't, nobody knew what Vietnam was back then. It was like, you know, so 65, I guess it was, early 65. Well, when we went over, we spent about a month in Okinawa, and I call it climatizing, you know, learning jungle warfare and all of the stuff that you're really going to need in Vietnam. And they asked, you know, who wanted to be a sniper? You know, you had to be qualified an expert rifleman to begin with. And stupid enough to, you know, it's like, it's a, you know, pretty, pretty dangerous job, all in all. But, you know, I was young and gung-ho, and I thought, man, I want to do that, you know. And so I went to the sniper school, and it was the first one that they had instituted since Korea, I believe. They did it, the Marine Corps had done away with it, and they thought, ah, we don't need snipers anymore. We got bombs and, you know, and all that stuff. But it turns out they did need snipers, and I turned out going through the first class, at least there in Okinawa. And I think the first one they've had since World War II, even here in the United States, they hadn't started up the sniper schools yet. So anyway, I went through it and became a sniper. And I was still attached to the outfit that I was with. But during that month there, we also went through raider training, which is, you know, learning how to rappel down cliffs or climbing cliffs, go and blow another radar installation, coming back, paddling out with a rubber boat, back out to the submarine, you know, and all that kind of stuff. You know, it was all knot-tying classes and just on and on and on, all kinds of training that just, you could basically do anything, survive anywhere. That was the idea. So it wasn't long after that, off to Nam and we stormed the beach at Chulai. And, you know, those PT boats, you know, where the front drops out and everybody just rushes out, you know, into the ale of gunfire. And, you know, you get through that, you know, you're pretty safe. And we took over some positions at Chulai and set up an enclave, which is a half of a circle from the beach out and back to the beach. And in that, you know, we had our headquarters and all of that. It was a battalion-sized operation. So I was attached to the battalion. In those days, it was scout-sniper, and what we would do is we'd go out on reconnaissance missions. And we'd find out where the enemy is and not to engage them because it's a reconnaissance mission. You're not armed for that. You're not into that. You're trying to snooping and pooping and hiding and, you know, camouflage and all that stuff, you know. You're just, you know, you don't want anybody to know you're out there. But you're observing, and you're watching to see where their positions are, and you're marking them down. You've got a little pencil and paper. In those days, we didn't have computers or any of that shit, so we put it all down on paper. And we'd do our little mission, and we'd come back to base and try to get back through the lines without getting wasted. You know, we had passwords and all that crap, you know, to get back through the lines. And you had to know where to go because we had a booby trap and landmines and bouncing beddies and all that stuff, you know. And ComWire, not ComWire, but Constantine Wire all around it. You know, so it was pretty well protected. And to get inside that line would have been extremely difficult because it was also covered with what they call interlapping and overlocking bands of grazing fire. In other words, everybody has an area that they are responsible for when they're in their position. And they fire that line. They cover that area if they're under attack. And the guy next to him does the same thing, so it creates this overlapping fire all the way down the line. And it's also interlocking. So anywhere from about 100 yards out, and nothing is going to get through that, probably not even a mosquito, you know. So that's what the outfit before us had done. They had fired their FPL for no apparent reason. You know, anyway, so that's what it was like. You know, we just stayed there, did our thing, run patrols in the daytime. A lot of times we would take combat patrols out where we were armed to the teeth and looking for somebody to get in a fight with. We were out on our first patrol operation, Starlight. And we're bopping along, you know, and he steps on a landmine. And it was one of those that don't go off right until you can hear them click. And it's actually anti, I guess it was anti-personnel. It could have been anti-tank mine. But bottom line is he knew that when he stepped on it what was going to happen next. And a lot of them were on timers so that they go off a few seconds after. Like a grenade, you could pull the pin and let the spoon fly. And he got about four seconds, supposedly, until it actually explodes. There's a delayed fuse in them. And that's kind of the way this mine was. And he told us all to get back and get down, which we did. And basically saved our lives, but just blew him all to hell. You know, Vietnam in a lot of ways was a series of my buddies dying. But when that one happened, I was a green, you know, young, didn't know shit from Shinola. And when that happened, something snapped at me and I became, I just had this thought inside of me I was going to kill as many of these little son-of-a-bitches as I possibly could. You know, and that was kind of what I did the rest of my tour there. And so sniping was, to me at that point, was more gratifying because I had more opportunities to kill the enemy. And I figured the more of them I killed, the less chance I got of killing my buddies, you know. Sorry. We had a couple of, I'd say, I don't know, typical, but they were missions that we were, that I was on. You go out in pairs, you know, you're never alone. I don't care if you go into the head, you know, you take your buddy with you, you know. He literally watches your ass. Sorry, but I don't know if those kids had it in or not. But, hey, you know, you never go anywhere without a buddy, you know, never. And there was a good reason for that, you know, especially if you're in a jungle environment like we were in. The enemy looks for any opportunity to kill you, you know. So we would go out like on a, they sent us out on this one mission where this guy comes out with his soapbox in the afternoon about 3 o'clock or whatever it was. And he gets up on his little soapbox preaching his communist BS to the people in the village. And our job was to take his ass out. And we went and set up on a hill, you know, early in the morning before the sun ever came up. And we took a fire team to guard our rear. And he and I would take turns on the binoculars because after a while those really powerful binoculars are great for seeing. But after a while your eyeballs are ready to fall out. You've got to take a break. And so we would, as the day wore on, you know, we would keep adjusting our weapons for windage and, you know, sunlight. And all those things affect the strike of the bullet. So we would keep our, we called it our dope on your rifle, you know. It's the windage and elevation that you put on it to make the shot land where you want it to. So we would do that all day long until this guy came out. And then whoever happened to be on the rifle at the time would take the shot. And, you know, he'd be on the ground before the sound ever got there, you know. So that was one kind of mission we had. Others were like, like Overwatch. Sorry. Dickey Chappelle was, you know who she is? Dickey Chappelle was a female reporter. She landed with the Marines when they landed in Iwo Jima. And a war correspondent. And just what an incredible, incredible woman. Tough as nails, man. We'd sit her on the fire at night. She'd tell these stories, man. It was like her language was worse than the Marines. And I didn't think that was possible. But it was like, she was a trip, man. Loved that gal. And she was with us for about a week. And we were out on this operation. And somebody in front of her tripped a trip wire and this pineapple grenade. They call them pineapples. They're World War II ones that have, you know, big chunks on the sides. So they call them pineapple because they look like one. Anyway, they tripped this wire and this thing went off. And a chunk of the shrapnel cut her throat. And she died right there in a nice bed in Vietnam. Sorry about the language. It just had a lot of shit like that happen. It was miserable. Bottom line, it was hell. We were at our base camp in Chuai early in the morning. 7 o'clock or so. We were up grabbing chow or whatever and milling around. And we get this call that a helicopter's been downed. And not too far from our position. A few clicks. And we have to go out. We're going to go out and guard this chopper because there were some other Marines on board at squad size, I guess, or whatever. So they bring in a number of choppers and haul our company out there, which, you know, it's our company. And when we start to land, we can't land because we're taking incoming fire. And they just kind of flew over and we jumped out the door into rice paddies. There we were in the middle of this whole mess. And we didn't know this at the time, and I don't know story-wise how to tell it except that we stumbled into a VC headquarters. They were starting to amass. They had a couple of battalions, from what I understand, of battalions there that they were going to amass and assault us in July and try to overrun us. Well, when we went out to guard this downed chopper, we set up a perimeter around it. And the rice paddies in that area were uneven. They were, like, you know, tiered. I'm sure you've seen pictures of them. But you have a berm up on one of them that keeps the water from it running down into the next one. So that's how they're separated. And so we wound up in this one that was kind of in a low area where this chopper was and where the Marines and what was left of them. That's where we wound up. So we called in airstrikes all day long. We called in naval gunfire, artillery, everything we could think of to bring to bear on these guys. And they were still just, you know, we were in a shitstorm. There was no other way to put it. They used ACAC guns on us. They had .50 calibers. They had everything you could think of. And we were way, way outnumbered. We didn't know that at the time. We just knew we were in the middle of a terrible fight. And so we kept shooting. And my rifle, I had an M1 Garand. It was my sniper rifle. And I only had a limited amount of ammunition. Everybody else was carrying M14s at that time, which was 7.62-millimeter rounds. And we had, you know, they had plenty of that at the time, that early in the morning. But I ran out of ammo pretty quickly. And one of my buddies, he got hit pretty bad. He got hit up here in the shoulder, both shoulders actually, and another one through here. And I drug his ass off the line and put him back in there. We had a little CP, which is the command post. It's the center of the perimeter that we had. That's where the captain and everybody, you know, was hanging. Radio men and all that stuff was there. The combatants, all of us, were up on the line. And they pulled him off, and I gave him my rifle because I was out of ammo anyway. And I took his. And so I had something to fight with, at least. And we spent all day long doing that and taking incoming fire. They would mortar the shit out of us, and then they would physically assault us. And then they'd mortar the crap out, and they'd physically assault us. And this went on all day and into the night. And it must have been about 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning. I was laying kind of like this, kind of laying back, trying to grab some Zs. And my buddy's on watch, and he's like, maybe hear that planter. And you hear the fwoomp, which is like a mortar round. When they go off, they make the fwoomp sound, and it's like they ignite. They have a rocket propelled, and they go way the hell up in the air, and they come back down. Well, you've got about, I don't know how many, probably 8 seconds or less. From the time you hear that to the time it's back down on you, exploding. So I heard that, and I knew they were at it again. And so I grabbed my rifle and went over to get down flat. And as I did, the round hit on my buddy's position. And I got hit in the right elbow from shrapnel. And also, I didn't know it at the time, I didn't realize it at the time, that the concussion from it had picked me up and thrown me forward. And all I know is that I was buried. I didn't know if I was alive, I didn't know if I was dead. I couldn't hear anything, I couldn't see anything, I couldn't feel anything. From the concussion, that thing just numbed all my senses. And I thought, you know, I didn't know. I really thought I was dead for a second. You know, I thought, maybe I'm dead, you know. I don't know. So I laid there, but something in my brain or wherever kicked in and said, you know, the next thing that's going to happen here is they're going to assault us. And so I knew I needed to get up and get ready for that, you know. So I did. I kind of got myself up enough and shook my head, whatever I did, to get back to a defensive position, you know, because I knew they were going to be coming at us. And it was one of those nights where it really wasn't moonlit, but there was enough starlight. You know, there's no city lights or anything around there. But there's enough light, you know, from star or whatever, that you can see silhouettes and stuff out in front of you, especially if it's moving. And here they come, you know, crawling, snooping, you know, snooping along the ground. And I was down to probably my last magazine or less than a magazine of rounds left. I told my buddy, or I thought he was still – I didn't know whether he was there or not. I didn't know anything at that point. And I said, hey, you know, hold it until they get close, you know, because we only had a limited amount. I wanted to make sure they counted. So I waited until they got about from me to you, and I opened up on the ones that I could see. And I thought we were done. You know, I thought, okay, I'm going to see God next, you know, or the devil, whichever it may be. But I thought I'm not – I'm dead. And I had already fixed bayonets because I knew we were going to hand-to-hand combat because we didn't have enough rounds left to hold off another attack like we had been enduring during the day. It just stopped. There was no more sound. There was no more fire. There was no more nothing. It was just stopped. And I was like, well, maybe I am dead. You know, it's like you're so – you know, my head was so fucked up at that point, I didn't know. And so I waited and waited and waited and nothing, you know. And finally I could hear guys behind me stirring, you know, and guys calling for medics and all of this stuff. But he was on my other side. I said, man, I couldn't figure out why my sleeve on my utility shirt was wet. And, man, you know, I haven't had any water, you know. And it turns out it was my blood. But they called a corpsman over and he wrapped the thing up. They yanked me off the line and put me back in the CP. That was the end of it. They called in helicopters the next morning to evacuate us out. And before they got there, you know, you stick your head up to see, you know, if you're going to get shot or whatever, and no incoming. So, you know, you get braver. You stand up a little bit. Finally I got up, and we all did. And I walked out there to where my position was, and I had lost my helmet. And I found my helmet, and I knew it was mine because it had our name. You know, we put our name on there. All your gear has got your name on it. And I found it in the back. We had these old steel pots. They called them like from World War II. And the back of that thing was caved in from the concussion from that round. You know, and looking for my buddy, and we found part of one of his boots. It was all left to him. And so for many years I carried that around that actually was part of him in me. And I thought, you know, it was just really a screwed up way to live your life, you know. It just sucks. I endured it. I have no idea how except for a lot of people who loved me, cared about me, and helped me through it, you know. And here I am today crying about it. You know, I'd kind of given up hope at that point that I'd ever see my homeland again. It just didn't seem possible. You know, the enemy was still out there. And just because I got wounded, I got evaced out to the hospital, shipped to repose. And I was on board that for actually a few weeks. They steamed down to the Philippines to refuel, and the damn thing broke down. And so we were there for about two weeks. We weren't supposed to be there that day. Anyway, I just didn't think after that. I thought, well, I still got to go back to combat zone. We could get mortared, you know. Who knows, you know, what can happen. I just didn't think I was going to make it back. Kind of just giving it up. Figured we're done. Well, we took a chopper from Chulai to Da Nang. That was about 50 miles north of us. And from Da Nang we got on the C-130, and that flew us to Okinawa. And from Okinawa we flew on Japan Airlines, I think it was, or one of the Asian airlines. And they took us to Tokyo. And then we swapped stewardesses, got American stewardesses. You know, they called them stewardesses in those days. And we flew back to El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. We were like, Americans? Women? You know, we were, like, freaked out, man. It was like, yeah. We were in heaven, so we kind of forgot all of our troubles, you know, for the moment. But we landed in El Toro. They checked our sea bags, gave us a bunch of shots. Before the sun rose that morning, I was up in LAX. About 10 of us had gotten in this great big old Cadillac or whatever it was, a taxi. And split the fare and got up to LAX. And we were all still in our green, our dress uniform. And a car backfired. And every one of us, man, we hit the deck. Laying there in a damn gutter in LAX. And then you get up and you look around. Shit, you know. And that's kind of the way that it was, you know. Got some crap from some people on my way to my flight. You know, and did the smart thing, which was not engage them. They would just pop them in the mouth and say, shut up. The difference between the Vietnam Air event and one of the big ones. And the World War II guys. They all did the same thing combat wise. And they all had the same, I think, mentality. But the difference is that when they came back, they came back on ships. They had about a month or three weeks or whatever it was coming back from Germany or whatever theater they were in. They were with their buddies and the guys they went over and fought with. And they had the chance to debrief and talk about their experiences and move through some of that stuff with people that actually understood what the hell they had been through. Vietnam wasn't like that. I came back by myself along with a bunch of other guys that I didn't know. They just happened to be rotating back at that time from various parts. Some of them were in Saigon. They were all over Vietnam. We had hundreds of thousands of troops there at that time. And I came back with nobody really to talk to about it or share about it. Nobody in the States understood it. They just didn't understand what it was like to kill people. It's not a good thing. I think that being a sniper was probably the proudest thing I did. Saved a lot of lives. Kept a lot of my buddies alive. I couldn't save them all. And I wrestled with that for many, many years. I had to at some point acknowledge the fact that you can't save them all. It's not possible for one guy to do that. I hated to admit it and still hate to, but it's a fact.