A lot of people have read the book and even more have heard some version of the story of Carlos Hathcock’s 2,500 yard shot on a Viet Cong bicycle porter. I find that few people have seen a picture taken from this famous ( in the gun world) spot with the same gun manning the field of fire he was over watching that day.

Above is a picture taken from his position. The M2 has his 8X Unertl mounted. The guy spotting is NOT Carlos and it is NOT his usual spotter, Burke. The man pictured is SSGT Roberts who was his temporary spotter for this operation. He is looking for targets using the M49 spotting scope.

The Area was in Duc Pho ( then) Republic Of Vietnam in 1969 during Operation DeSoto.

It’s interesting to look at the photo and look out across those rice paddies and at those roads and wonder which on of those we can see may have been the road the bike porter was walking his cargo down when Carlos hit him with a .50BMG round from 2,500 yards.