 |
|
Marine
sniper Sgt. Herbert B. Hancock
|
(Fallujah, Iraq) - November 11, 2004
Seen through a 20X spotting scope, terrorists
scrambled to deliver another mortar round into the tube.
Across the Euphrates River from a concealed rooftop, Marine
sniper Sgt. Herbert B. Hancock breathed gently and squeezed
the trigger of his 7.62mm M40A3 rifle. The spotter, Cpl.
Geoffrey L. Flowers, confirmed the terrorist went down
from the shot mere seconds before the next crack of the
rifle dropped another. It wasn't the sniper's first kill
in Iraq, but it was one for the history books.
"From the information we have, our
chief scout sniper has the longest confirmed kill in Iraq
so far," said Capt. Shayne McGinty, weapons platoon
commander for Company B, 1st Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment,
31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. "In Fallujah there
were some bad guys firing mortars at us and he took them
out from more than 1,000 yards."
"We moved south some more and linked
up with some rear elements of our first platoon,"
remembered Sgt. Hancock USMCR, chief scout sniper, 1/23,
and a 35-year-old police officer from Texas. "Then
we got up on a building and scanned across the river.
We looked out of the spotting scope and saw about three
to five insurgents manning a 120mm mortar. We got the
coordinated for their position and set up a fire mission.
We decided that when the rounds came in that I would engage
them with the sniper rifle. We got the splash and there
were two standing up looking right at us. One had a black
outfit on. I shot and he dropped. Right in front of him
another got up on his knees looking to try and find out
where we were so I dropped him too. After that our mortars
just hammered the position, so we moved around in on them."
"After we had called in indirect
fire and after all the adjustments from our mortars, I
got the final 8-digit grid coordinates for the enemy mortar
position, looked at our own GPS and figured out the distance
to the targets we dropped to be 1,050 yards," said
Cpl. Flowers, a May 2004 graduate of Scout Sniper School
and a college student from Texas.
"This time we were killing terrorism
from more than 1,000 yards."
--Cpl. Paul W. Leicht, USMC
The USMC M40A3 Rifle
(below)
|
