In the 1960s, the U.S. Army was embroiled in a bitter battle in Vietnam, and the unpredictable North Vietnamese guerrillas often caused headaches for U.S. soldiers, including a legendary female sniper, the “Apache Woman,” who often ambushed U.S. Marines and was a nightmare for front-line U.S. troops.
After the U.S. Navy landed in Da Nang, the 9th Marine Division set up a fire support base at 55th Highland to clear the area of Viet Cong guerrilla activity.
To prevent the base from being sneaked up on by the Viet Cong, the Marines checked and sent patrols to the surrounding jungle for reconnaissance, but were often ambushed by a female sniper and suffered losses. Intelligence received by the U.S. military at the Time indicated that the female sniper carried a Mosin Nagan rifle with an optical scope, sometimes operating as a lone wolf, and sometimes leading sniper teams around to hunt U.S. troops.
In order to reduce troop losses, U.S. forces began to reduce the range of patrols, and the North Vietnamese sniper, unable to find opportunities to kill U.S. troops, changed tactics and began to kill POWs outside U.S. bases, creating fear among U.S. troops. The way she killed POWs was brutal.
According to Vietnam veteran Charles Henderson in his book “Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills,” the female sniper even took POWs near the U.S. base and then personally took a knife to the U.S. POWs to The female sniper even took the POWs near the U.S. base and then personally took the knife and “castrated” the U.S. POWs, ensuring that all U.S. troops on the base could hear the POWs screaming. She would then untie the ropes holding the POWs, laughing and shouting, “Run, soldier, maybe you can hold out until you find a good doctor to fix you up.”
In addition, the U.S. Army often found the remains of many POWs near Highland 55, some of which had been skinned, nails pulled out, or eyelids cut off, reminding soldiers of the ancient Apache tribes of the Americas, which is where the female snipers got their nickname, “female Apaches.
U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War.
In order to deal with the infamous “Apache woman,” the U.S. Army called in the famous sniper Carlos Hathcock, nicknamed “White Feather. “The White Feather, whose nickname came from his penchant for wearing a white feather on his jungle hat, had 93 kills during his entire service, with an unofficial tally of more than 300 kills, making him a thorn in the side of the North Vietnamese for his superior marksmanship. The North Vietnamese army even offered a $30,000 bounty on Hathcock, compared to the $8 bounty on an average U.S. sniper killed by a North Vietnamese soldier at the time, which shows that the North Vietnamese army hated him to the bone.
According to an article published in the Washington Post on January 18, 1987, Hathcock recalled that in the field, they all wanted to get rid of the “Apache women” so badly that they would “hunt” nearby every day, but they didn’t see them for weeks on end. The “female Apache” shadow for weeks.
It wasn’t until one afternoon that Heskak and his partner finally spotted a small Vietnamese woman with a gun in the distance, exactly as described by the Apache women, moving with a group of North Vietnamese soldiers. Heathcock recognized that the woman was carrying a rifle equipped with a sniper scope, so when she came into position, Heathcock didn’t hesitate to fire, and the other woman fell to the ground.
According to another article on the Tactical-Life website, Heskak once recalled that they were about 700 yards (640 meters) away from each other when “we saw a group of five people, one of whom was crouching and peeing, and that’s how I recognized her.”
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