TIL: Carlos Hathcock is from Little Rock

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Carlos Norman Hathcock II (May 20, 1942 – February 22, 1999) was a United States Marine Corps (USMC) sniper with a service record of 93 confirmed kills. Hathcock's record and the extraordinary details of the missions he undertook made him a legend in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was honored by having a rifle named after him: a variant of the M21 dubbed the Springfield Armory M25 White Feather, for the nickname "White Feather" given to Hathcock by the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN).

Hathcock was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on May 20, 1942. He grew up in Wynne, Arkansas, living with his grandmother for the first 12 years of his life after his parents separated. While visiting relatives in Mississippi, he took to shooting and hunting at an early age, partly out of necessity to help feed his poor family. He would go into the woods with his dog and pretend to be a soldier and hunt imaginary Japanese soldiers with the old Mauser his father, Carlos Norman Hathcock (1919–1985), brought back from World War II. He hunted at that early age with a .22-caliber J. C. Higgins single-shot rifle. Hathcock dreamed of being a Marine throughout his childhood, and so on May 20, 1959, at the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.[2] Hathcock married Josephine "Jo" Bryan (née Broughton; 1930–2016) on the date of the Marine Corps birthday, November 10, 1962.[2] Jo gave birth to a son, whom they named Carlos Norman Hathcock III.

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Long before Chris Kyle penned "American Sniper," Carlos Hathcock was already a legend. He taught himself to shoot as a boy, just like Alvin York and Audie Murphy before him. He had dreamed of being a U.S. Marine his whole life and enlisted in 1959 at just 17 years old. Hathcock was an excellent sharpshooter by then, winning the Wimbledon Cup shooting championship in 1965, the year before he would deploy to Vietnam and change the face of American warfare forever. He deployed in 1966 as a military policeman, but immediately volunteered for combat and was soon transferred to the 1st Marine Division Sniper Platoon, stationed at Hill 55, South of Da Nang. This is where Hathcock would earn the nickname "White Feather" -- because he always wore a white feather on his bush hat, daring the North Vietnamese to spot him -- and where he would achieve his status as the Vietnam War's deadliest sniper in missions that sound like they were pulled from the pages of Marvel comics.

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