"My rules of engagement were simple: If they had a weapon, they were going down.”.— Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney.Have you ever killed a man?.I mean, have you ever killed a man? One man, in cold blood, or in defence?.Just one. Of course, I mean in time of war. Not your neighbour who won't cut his hedge back..How about 103 confirmed kills, and 216 probables.. Charles “Chuck” MawhinneyCharles “Chuck” Mawhinney .Sixteen of them in one night ... that's right, 16 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers within a 30-second span, from head shots..Stomach getting queasy yet? A bit uneasy with this news, maybe?.Too much to comprehend, amigo?.His name was Marine scout sniper Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney, and it was 1969..Mawhinney clutched the walnut stock of his rifle, scanning the far riverbank for movement through his Starlight night vision scope..For this mission he opted to trade in the trusty bolt-action M40 he usually carried for the semi-automatic M14 in anticipation of being immersed in a target-rich environment..With the rest of his unit — the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines — at his rear, only Mawhinney and his spotter stood between the advancing platoon of North Vietnamese soldiers..“When you fire, your senses start going into overtime: eyes, ears, smell, everything,” Mawhinney told the Los Angeles Times 31 years later..“Your vision widens out so you see everything, and you can smell things like you can’t at other times. My rules of engagement were simple: If they had a weapon, they were going down.”.That night, 16 NVA soldiers went down. Down, down, down.."I could see the bodies, floating down the river,” he said..“It was the ultimate hunting trip: a man hunting another man who was hunting me,” Mawhinney said of his 16 months as a scout sniper in Vietnam. “Don’t talk to me about hunting lions or elephants; they don’t fight back with rifles and scopes.”.More than 50 years since Mawhinney single-handedly stopped that NVA platoon, he still holds the record for most kills in Marine Corps history — 103 confirmed and 216 probables..Poor bastards, they never saw it coming..“You get to the point where you start living like an animal,” Mawhinney said. “You act like an animal, you work like an animal, you are an animal. All you think about is killing.”.And if you're damn good at it, why not? War is war. No room for bleeding hearts..But if you think it ends there, give your head a shake..When he left the Marines in 1970, he quietly began a career with the United States Forest Service, for which he worked as a road maintenance crew member for 28 years..But Mawhinney would suffer from nightmares, often dreaming he was trapped in a foxhole under heavy enemy fire. Some friends worried he would crack..Other snipers have written books or had books written about them, snagging the post-war glory..Mawhinney figured war stories were for wannabes and bores. At home in Oregon, he never even told his closest friends about his past..But a tell-all paperback by a friend and fellow Marine sniper — Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam, by Joseph Ward — flushed him out..“Once I had a Charlie [slang for Viet Cong] in my scope, it was my job to kill him before he killed me,” said Mawhinney, then 51 and retired. “I never looked in their eyes, I never stopped to think about whether the guy had a wife or kids.”.A routinely deadly shot from a distance of 300 to 800 yards, he had confirmed kills at more than 1,000 yards, the LA Times reported..He would be invited to talk to snipers in training at the Marines’ Camp Pendleton and the Army’s Ft. Carson in Colorado..“I give them Chuck Mawhinney’s three rules of becoming a good sniper: Practice, practice and more practice,” he said..On the wall of the Marine sniper school at Camp Pendleton is a Chinese proverb: Kill one man, terrorize a thousand..In Vietnam, the enemy put a bounty on the head of US snipers..Like soldiers in the 7th Cavalry Regiment, Mawhinney carried a sidearm with a round he could fire into his temple, rather than be captured..The alternative, would not be pleasant..One of the worst, was a female NVA interrogator, named "Apache," for her methods of torturing US Marines and ARVN troops and letting them bleed to death..She was known for cutting off the eyelids and saving them as souvenirs..“Sometimes, depending on where they’re hit, they’ll just drop and not move,” Mawhinney said of his targets..“Nobody dies the same, and I’ve seen it all. I did a lot of mercy-shooting. I wounded people and then cranked another round into them. I didn’t want them crawling around out there.”.Drenched by Vietnam's relentless heat and humidity, sometimes they would stalk the enemy for hours, sometimes days..Other times, they would set up in areas where they suspected the enemy would be traversing and then remain silent and motionless for hours..“That wasn’t a man you just killed; it was an enemy. This is our job. This is what war is all about. You screw up, you die,” he told the LA Times..As of 2022, life for the Mawhinney family is fairly normal..His wife, Robin, is a secretary in the special education program at a high school and heavily involved in the Special Olympics. They met and married after he left the Marines and returned to Oregon..Two boys are at home, a third just married — fishing on the Snake River in the summer, ice-fishing in mountain lakes in winter, and hunting all sorts of game in season, LA Times reported..His M40 rifle is on display in the National Museum of the Marine Corps..Yet, his sharpest memory, is the one who got away..From a concealed spot, Mawhinney’s job was to pick off stragglers, reinforcements or any Viet Cong or NVA regulars..And then he saw him..“I squeezed off a shot, and I missed,” Mawhinney said. “You talk about eyes — he turned around and looked directly at me in total disbelief. I’m thinking: Why is this SOB still alive? Then I realized the armorer had [messed] around with my scope ...”.“I shot to the left, I shot to the right, I shot high and I shot low, but finally he turned a corner and disappeared,” Mawhinney said. “I never touched him. I’ll never forget that look he gave me.”.“It’s one of the few things that bother me about Vietnam,” he told the LA Times. “I can’t help thinking about how many people he may have killed later, how many of my friends, how many Marines.”.Once a sniper, always a sniper.
