SNIPER ON A SUICIDE MISSION
Carlos Hathcock was the most successful sniper of the Vietnam War. His kill count is put at between 300 and 400 NVA* soldiers, including the counter-snipers sent after him.
As a boy, Hathcock practiced with an old Kar98k his father had brought back from the war, and as a young man he won a string of shooting competitions. Deployed to Vietnam as a Marine military policeman, he caught the eye of his superiors, who made him a platoon sniper. 
The American made a name for himself fast, and the NVA put a record bounty of $30,000 on his head (roughly $200,000 today). Bounties normally ran between $8 and $2,000. Hathcock killed even the best-known Vietnamese snipers who went after the reward. Among his best-known kills are an enemy sniper shot through his own scope and “Apache,” a female sniper who tortured and mutilated American prisoners. He was so well known and so well regarded that other Marines wore a white feather, his trademark, to confuse the enemy snipers, even though it turned them into targets as well.
Shortly before the end of his tour in Vietnam, Hathcock volunteered for a secret mission to take out a high-ranking NVA general. To reach a firing position, he crawled for four days and three nights, without sleep or food, across 1,500 meters of open field. Enemy guards passed within centimeters of him several times, and a bamboo viper came close to biting him, but he had the discipline not to move and give up his position. When the general stepped out of his camp and was visible for a few seconds, Hathcock fired a single shot that hit him in the chest and killed him. To the astonishment of his superiors, the sniper made it back to the landing zone undetected and became a legend.
Hathcock left the Marines, but he missed military life almost at once and was soon back in Vietnam, this time as a sniper platoon leader. His second tour ended early when his vehicle hit an NVA booby trap and went up in flames. Hathcock pulled seven Marines out of the burning vehicle and suffered severe burns, some of them third degree, to his face, arms and legs, before a comrade dragged him clear and laid him in water to cool the burns. He would later receive the Silver Star for this.
His severe injuries left him in constant pain and ended his time as a sniper on front-line operations. Instead he passed on what he knew, helped build the Marine Corps sniper school and trained SEAL Team Six, among others. Discharged with full benefits just short of 20 years of service, Hathcock fell into a depression he found hard to climb out of. On February 22, 1999, the sniper legend died of complications from multiple sclerosis at the age of 56.
*NVA = North Vietnamese Army
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