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exotic ports, as well as at home port in Honolulu.
     
    When Hathcock reported to the air station in North Carolina, the first problem that die personnel chief had to solve was how does an air station employ an infantry Marine? The nearest infantry regiments were forty miles south at Camp Lejeune. The personnel chief asked Hathcock if he would like to work in special services, sweeping out die gym and passing out basketballs. Hathcock swallowed a lump in his throat and tried not to show die repulsion he felt at that idea.
     
    He looked straight in die eyes of die ruddy-faced Marine and innocently asked, "Does Cherry Point have a rifle range?"
     
    Hathcock knew that they did and that it was die home of an outstanding shooting team, too. He figured that if he asked to be assigned to die team right off, the personnel officer might not respond to the wishes of a private first class. But if be let diem come up with die idea, it would be a sure thing.
     
    "I have some experience shooting," Hathcock told die gunny. "I coached at Kaneohe Bay and shot on die Hawaii Marines team, too. You can call Gunner Terry or Lieutenant Land back in Hawaii. They put me through their scout/sniper school there. I might be of some use out at die range."
     
    The gunnery sergeant listened and then said, "I'll call Gunny Paul Yeager down at die rifle range and see if he has a slot for you."
     
    The phone call lasted but a moment. Yeager had heard that a hard-shooting PFC named Hathcock was headed his way and that this young Marine had won die Pacific division rifle championships die year before. He had already made plans to have Hathcock try out for die All-Marine Champion, Cherry Point Shooting Team.
     
    In his three years of shooting at Cherry Point, Hathcock rose from a talented novice to become a Distinguished Marksman, winning Marine Corps, Inter service, and National shooting championships. He set die Marine Corps record on die "A" course by shooting 248 points out of a possible 250-a record never matched again-and retired widi die course. That was during his first year there.
    Hathcock spent his first Carolina Christmas alone in the barracks, where he read books and practiced squeezing his slim body into tight, rock-solid shooting positions. The South Pacific's liberty ports had been an unforgettable adventure, but competitive shooting was more fulfilling. For Hathcock, marksmanship represented the essence of a Marine: It was the skill of his trade. Hathcock did not mind the lonely Christmas. The thought of the rifle range opening for the new season and the opportunity to possibly make the Cherry Point shooting team kept his spirits high.
     
    But some of the other Marines who lived with him during the holidays felt sorry for this quiet and unassuming shooter. He looked as though he could use a good time. One of the well-meaning Marines had a girl friend who worked in a bank in New Bern, North Carolina, a small community located a short drive west of the Cherry Point air station's main gate. She had a girl friend who might provide the perfect medicine for this lonely Marine.
     
    It was a very cold January day when Carlos Hathcock walked inside the New Bern bank where Josephine Bryan Winstead worked. She was a woman who had just entered her thirties, yet looked hardly a day older than twenty-one. She wore the latest hairstyles and fashions and had adjusted to living independently again after an unhappy and unsuccessful marriage. Now she took care of her mother, who lived with her in a small apartment in New Bern. On weekends, she and her mother drove to Virginia Beach where they visited Jo's sister. She had dated little since her divorce.
     
    On this brisk January morning, Hathcock wore a black, long-sleeved, polished-cotton shirt with white pearl buttons on his collar, cuffs, and shirtfront, and black sharkskin trousers. They were the only civilian clothes that he owned.
     
    Hathcock usually wore his uniform. He was proud to be a Marine