The Marine Scout Sniper Program: Maj Edward James Land Jr.

Ken Harbaugh:

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Today, we’ll hear from Lieutenant Colonel Hank Buttelmann. Buttelmann served in the Korean war as a fighter pilot, flying the F-86 Sabre, and at 24 he became the youngest ace of the war.

Maj Edward J. Land Jr.:

My name is Edward J Land Jr., and I say Jr. because I got a third and a fourth. And as far as the title is concerned, I would think Major USMC retired.

Well, I joined the Marine Corps when I was 17 and went through recruit training at San Diego. Was stationed at Marine Barracks 8th & I Street, and then re-enlisted and became a drill instructor at San Diego. I was one of the friendly drill instructors, you understand. And I made Staff Sergeant and then got selected for Officer Candidate School, and that was where I got my commission in the Marine Corps as a regular non-restricted line officer.

In 1961, I shot the division matches, and after the matches was selected for the FMF-PAC shooting teams. And during that period when I was on the team, Arthur Terry, who was the team captain of the FMF-PAC team and myself were looking for some sort of program that we could provide a service as well as compete. And we decided that a Scout Sniper School would be well-received by the battalion commanders.

So with that, we set about putting together a two-week syllabus for a Scout Sniper School. The second class, one of the things that I find interesting is that the second class is where I met Carlos Hathcock. He went through the school.

When I started the school, the only written material we had was a book called A Rifleman Went to War by McBride, and it was a story about a sniper during the First World War. Since then, I've had an opportunity to talk with Colonel Walter Walsh, who started and ran the Scout Sniper School in New River, North Carolina. And he said that when he started the Scout Sniper School in 1941, 20 years before, the only written material he had was A Rifleman Went to War.

And this pointed up something that became very important to me as I went through my career, and that was that after every conflict, the sniper was done away with. His equipment was dispersed, there were no training programs, there were no manuals. And I decided that I didn't want to ever see that happen again. So we put together training syllabuses, lesson plans, different courses of fire, established a number of different types of tests. And it became quite valuable because in 1964, I was transferred to marksmanship training unit at Quantico.

And then a year later, the 3rd Marine Division went into Vietnam, and of course there was a call for snipers. And then Captain Russell sent me a letter and asked for the material that we had developed in Hawaii to use as the basis for the 3rd Marine Division Scout Sniper School. I sent him, of course, my training syllabuses, my lesson plans. I even sent him my copy of A Rifleman Went to War.

Actually, that's where the modern Marine Corps sniper program started was right there in Hawaii with that two week scout sniper course, run by the FMF-PAC shooting teams.

The term scout sniper came... In Hawaii, we wanted to run a sniper school, but we couldn't find support for just a sniper school. But if we called it a Scout Sniper School, the battalion commanders were always looking for training for their scouts. So we were able to get support from the battalion commanders. When a sniper is operating in enemy territory using optical instruments, he sees a lot of things that the average infantryman would never see. And consequently, he has a secondary role of reporting that information. Never forget his primary mission is to kill the enemy, search out and kill the enemy. And his role of accomplishing that, he does come across intelligence information. When we were working in Vietnam, we were able to notify the G2 that there were hardcore NVA North Vietnam Army troops in our sector. No one had ever known that before. They'd never seen it before. But because of where we were operating, the way we were operating, we were able to identify that. We were able to identify foreign officers, in one case, a Chinese foreign officer, that there was no information in the intelligence community that they were there. However, because of the job that we did and where it put us, we were able to develop intelligence.

As you know, the role of the sniper has been put into the battalion intelligence shop, the S2. And unfortunately, or at least I feel unfortunately, the sniper has become a reconnaissance, filling of reconnaissance role, and not executing his primary mission of locating, and identifying, and killing the enemy.

Sniper training is divided into two categories. You have marksmanship and you have fieldcraft. You have to be able to get into position where you can make the shot. And to do that, you need to be knowledgeable in fieldcraft. You need to know how to use a compass, you need to know how to move, how to stalk, how to camouflage, and that sort of thing. And then once you're in position, you need to be able to successfully make that shot, and that's marksmanship training. We started primarily with marksmanship training. And when you're shooting on a range, you have a lot of indication to know how the wind's blowing, what direction it's blowing, different things of that nature. When you're in the field sniping, you have to use whatever resources you can find, whether it's the branches, the leaves, the dust, anything to help you adjust your sight so that you can get a kill shot.

The other training in fieldcraft is just good infantry training. It's what we'd like to see every infantryman do. Sometimes I think that snipers are... There's so much mystique about the sniper. People make more of it than it really is. Actually, a sniper is nothing more than a very well-trained infantryman who knows how to shoot very well.

We had the 4th Marine Regiment, which was the organization that we were supporting. And the FMF-PAC put out a criteria for the selection of students for the class. Several things. One, they couldn't wear glasses. Two, they had to be right-handed. Three, they had to be expert marksman to start with. They had to be in excellent physical condition. And then we took a look at them individually as we were running them through the course to see if psychologically, they were the right people for the job.

Well, I always said that if I had an individual that could entertain himself half a day whittling on a stick, he'd probably make a good sniper. One of the difficulties that we have is that there's so much external stimuli that people are very active, hyperactive. And a sniper needs to be extremely patient. He needs to go out and maybe be in position for two, three days to make that one shot that he needs to make. So we're looking at somebody that's very calm, slow moving, but not necessarily slow thinking, and is comfortable in the outdoors.

You stop and think in today's society, you get up in the morning, you turn on the television set, you get ready and you go to work, you turn on your radio on the way to work, you get into the office and you got the phone ringing and you got people in and out. The day's over, you get in the car, you go home, you listen to your radio all the way home. You get home, you turn on the television set, you have external stimuli coming at you all the time.

Now you take a person that's used to that and you put them in the field where there's nothing. Maybe a bird, maybe some crickets, but that's the only sound. And there's a terrible feeling of isolation if they're not used to that. And it's that feeling of isolation that is very dangerous to a sniper.

Well, the main thing that I was looking for in the instructors was Marines that were exceptional marksmen. And the primary reason for that was because they were people that I had worked with and people that I knew, and people that I was comfortable with.

When I was in Hawaii, we used the instructors that were on the team. All of the team members had been trained in instructional techniques, teaching principles, and things of that nature. So they could present the subject in such a way that the students would be able to understand it.

When I was in Vietnam, I had a completely different situation. I was given the job by General Nickerson to organize and train the scout snipers for the 1st Marine Division. I had no guns, I had no instructors, I never had an office. We wound up using a large CONEX box as the office for office and storage. So the one thing that I did have was I knew the location of just about every distinguished marksman in Vietnam, Marine Corps distinguished Marksman in Vietnam. So I immediately started trying to locate those people, because one, I knew they were good marksmen. Two, I knew that they were good instructors. And three, Carlos had already gone through my class in Hawaii, so I knew that he had at least a background in the program.

Soon after I was tasked to establish the training program for the 1st Marine Division, it became evident that we had to have more depth of knowledge than we had. We couldn't function on theoretical knowledge. So the first thing was that I took the troops that I had in the program, and we became the division scout snipers.

One of the places they were having a lot of difficulty was Hill 55, where they were receiving a lot of incoming sniper rounds. And some of the work that was being done by the enemy was obviously that of trained snipers. It takes a thief to catch a thief. So it was a perfect opportunity for us to see if we could alleviate that situation.

Hill 55 was a major hill. And there would be ridges running off of that hill, and we called each one of those ridges that ran off the hill as a finger. There had been several NCOs and officers killed out on finger three or near finger three. And while we were just coming out to the regimental headquarters, another Marine had been shot. So I took Master Sergeant Reineke, and we went out to the finger and we looked around, and I left him there. Then I went back and talked to the folks in the aid station, if you will, sick bay, and got the exact wounds of the individuals that had been shot out there. Then with some research, and talking, and checking, I found exactly where they were standing and what position they were standing in. And then we drew a back azimuth from the wound, and we found an area out in a field, an abandoned rice patty actually, that they all seemed to converge on.

Well, the next morning, two of us moved across the river and went up a canal. And as we were moving up the canal, we found where the enemy sniper had climbed out of the canal and had moved across the field to his position, and into the field, and we located his hide from that. We moved back across the river, notified the individual squad leader on the point where the position was. And then we went back to division headquarters to get a Starlight Scope, and we thought that we'd come back that evening and maybe we could catch him coming into the position before daylight.

The squad leader took a 106 recoilless rifle and boresighted it on the position, on his hide. And evidently, the VC sniper moved into his hide right at dark and took a shot at one of the Marines on the finger. Fortunately, he missed. The squad leader went over and fired the 106, and that was the end of the first enemy sniper that we took out on Hill 55.

When I first met Carlos, he was a student in the second class that we ran in Hawaii. He was a lance corporal, and there was very little about him that was impressive. I mean, he wasn't an outstanding shooter. He was an excellent shot, but he wasn't an outstanding shooter. He was just another member of the class.

When I pulled him into the unit in Hawaii, or in Vietnam, he was a MP and they didn't want to turn loose of him, but we finally got him transferred to the unit. And then is when I think he took on a… sort of a life of his own.

I shot with Carlos on the Marine Corps team for several years before we went to Vietnam. And he was a top shooter. He did win the national, actually the World Long Range Championship. He won the Wimbledon in 1965 just before he went to Vietnam. But Carlos was not considered to be one of the top Marine Corps shooters. The thing that made Carlos different was his ability to totally integrate himself within the environment. We all developed an edge, we all became very observant and were able to function in the environment. But Carlos actually became a part of the environment. He had the patience, the drive, the courage to do the job. And he was totally focused on doing that job. He felt very strongly that he was saving Marines' lives. That was his purpose, was to annihilate the enemy and save Marines' lives.

When Carlos stalked and killed the VC general, he was given a location of where the general's camp was. And of course, his staff was with him. And at the same time, if you got a general, you got security out. So he had patrols that were out checking the area to be sure that no one came into the area. He had listening posts, he had centuries. And Carlos had to take all of that into consideration, and work around it and through it, to get in close enough to where he could make that shot. He was moved into position some distance from the camp, and from there on he was on his own. He had to move considerable distance across a relatively open field. He was able to move only as far as the wind moved the grass. That was his guideline, which meant he might be able to move an inch or maybe even two inches at a time. And then he would have to stop, otherwise it would expose him. He was really not able to eat or drink during that period of time. A few times he was able to at night, get a drink of water. During that period of time, the enemy patrols were around him. And at times, he was very much in danger of actually being stepped on. They were that close.

He stayed with it and was finally able to get into a position, I think about 600 yards from the general, and was able to drop the hammer and take the general down, and was able to move from that area and escape. And I just am in awe that he was able to get in and get back out, even knowing and having worked in that vein myself.

Carlos was critical to the development of the school at Quantico in two ways. Once the school was established, he provided credibility to the school and allowed it to develop and gave it an opportunity to develop and grow. But even before that, he was extremely valuable to me when we were trying to get the program started, when we were trying to establish a military occupational specialty for the sniper, when we were trying to get the table of organization approved. Because I used him as a lobbying tool. Even though he wasn't there, I was able to use him as an example of what could be and what a sniper truly was. And his example was actually bigger than life. And in some cases, you couldn't have made up a fictitious sniper and done any better.

I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to serve as the marksmanship coordinator for the Marine Corps on my last tour of duty. And during that time, I was able to work with the headquarters Marine Corps staff and Weapons Training Battalion staff to get a table of organization, to get a table of equipment, and to have selected equipment for the snipers. We were able to get a training manual completed. The first one was completed in 1969, and it was improved on and added to after that. My primary purpose was to ensure that the snipers were never lost again as they had been after the First World War or the Second World War, after Korea and after other conflicts.

The only thing remaining was a formal school with the MOS and the table of equipment. The only thing remaining to ensure that it wouldn't be lost would be the formal school at Quantico. And I think the person that I credit most with the success in that area was Lieutenant Colonel Reynolds. He was the commanding officer of Weapons Training Battalion, and he was very supportive. He was a distinguished marksman himself, and he knew the capabilities of a sniper. He was responsible for ensuring that Carlos didn't get put out of the Marine Corps when they found out that he had MS, and we got him transferred to Quantico. He was using him as a coach. We had spent quite a bit of time on the staff, at the staff level, the headquarters Marine Corps, trying to get this school approved. And without Colonel Reynolds' assistance, it would've never happened. He was very supportive. He was very helpful in seeing that that school came into being.

Then Captain Cuddy was the first officer in charge of the Scout Sniper School at Quantico. And Carlos Hathcock was his NCOIC, non-commissioned officer in charge. Those two added considerable credibility to the school, Carlos' experience, and Jack Cuddy also being a distinguished marksman gave the school considerable credibility to where it has been able to develop into the school that it is now.

Periodically, I go down and speak to the graduating classes at Quantico, and it is very heartening to me to see the young men that they're turning out now in that school. They're better trained, they have better equipment. I'm just very enthused that we haven't lost that skill.

Sniper training in the Marine Corps has expanded considerably, recognized that when we started, we were running a two-week course. Now they run eight-week courses. They go into a lot more of the theory, ballistics. They spend a lot more time stalking, and they're a lot more enthusiastic in their approach, if you will, towards stalking. I think the thing that pleases me is to see that they have built on the basics that we started. And when I look at us in Vietnam and I look at the young men now that are snipers, we did just provide a basis. But they have grown and they have developed.

One of the concerns that I have is that there appears to be too much reliance on technology. One should never use technology to replace the basics. To supplement the basics, fine, but not to replace the basics. Because my experience would tell me that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong at exactly the worst possible time. And you need to be able to fall back on the basics. They have GPS positioning devices and laser range finders. And they spend more time on how to operate those things than they do maybe on the basics of utilizing a compass, and estimating by eye, and things of that nature. That's the one difference that I see is that there appears to be too much reliance on technology.

It's kind of an interesting story. I recently attended a sniper seminar or symposium that the Marine Corps ran. And I took my collection of sniper rifles down from the First World War, all the way through to the current rifle, so that they could see the development of the Marine Corps sniper rifle from 1918 through to current. And I had one Marines staff sergeant walk up and look at the 03 that we had and some of the earlier sniper rifles. And his comment was, "I don't know how people ever killed anybody with this crap."

Unfortunately, all you need is a good rifle and a good hunting scope. And the rest of it is sooner or later going to get you into trouble. That's the one thing. And then the other thing is, is that I do have some concern on utilizing the Marine sniper as a reconnaissance force. That is truly going to wind up being the demise of the Marine sniper as we know it. And I would certainly hate to see that at this late stage of the game. But if you put that sniper in the S2 shop where the intelligence officer makes his reputation on providing great intelligence to the commander, then he's going to do just like a captain shared with me, it's an intelligence officer. He said, "I tell my snipers not to shoot any targets unless it's an extremely high value target, because I don't want them to expose their position and to lose the opportunity for intelligence."

The issue seems to be the mystique that surrounds the sniper. And I say this because even when we were in Vietnam and we were out there working to protect those Marines, they very derogatorily called us Murder Incorporated. We would show up and they'd say, "Well, here's Murder Incorporated." Like one said that we developed a reputation, they'd kill anybody. They could even kill their mother if they're told to. And it's that attitude that seemed to prevail, especially through the officer corps, because there are so few of the military officers that really had an understanding of the capability of the sniper. The sniper is a supporting arm, just like the artillery, just like your mortars. They're a very surgical supporting arm. And it's because of that lack of understanding and that mystique, that it seemed like as soon as the conflict was over, they wanted to get rid of it and act like it never happened.

We were very fortunate to have an opportunity to establish what we have, because it is still an extremely important supporting arm. And I would think even more so, especially in the environment that they're functioning in Afghanistan, that area over there. It's a perfect place for the employment of snipers. Because you're not looking at massed troops. It'll be seldom that you'll get large masses of troops together. There'll be small groups, and you have to essentially go hunting them. You set up your hunter killer teams. They have hunter killer teams now, but they're calling in B-52 strikes. But they can't continue to do that financially. And the sniper can do pretty much the same thing with a 33 cent round.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Maj Edward James Land Jr..

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