Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 3, 1991                   TAG: 9102030296
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHRIS HEDGES THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: IN SAUDI ARABIA                                LENGTH: Long

THEIRS IS THE ART OF KILLING, AND FEW KNOW IT AS WELL

"When a sniper pulls the trigger, he can see the expression on a man's face when the bullet hits," said Sgt. Mark E. Anderson, chief scout of the platoon of Marine snipers and scouts breaking camp and getting ready to move at dawn the next day to the front lines along the Kuwaiti border.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of allied troops, have been moved north in similar fashion in the last few days, in what a ranking officer called a "shadow-boxing match" with Iraqi forces.

"Saddam Hussein knows where we are and we know where he is," said a battalion commander, who asked not to be further identified. "We will move a lot now to keep him off guard."

The grand strategy of battle meant little to Staff Sgt. Douglas A. Luebke, the non-commissioned chief of the platoon, and his men - other than that for the first time, they will be called on to go into combat, to do the job many have trained years to carry out.

They will crawl unseen within yards of enemy lines and, firing three shots from a fixed position, take out enemy soldiers one by one.

"It is the art of killing," Luebke said. "We have to be perfect."

The snipers said they were trying to avoid thinking of their Iraqi opponents as men with families and children. Several said the reputed mistreatment of American prisoners of war had steeled them for their task.

"I try not to think about the other man's personal life," Anderson said. "I concentrate on him being the enemy. If I were to give him sympathy, I don't think I would be effective."

"The more Iraqis I kill, the less of my buddies get killed," said Lance Cpl. Marlan L. Reaves from Odessa, Texas.

In a testament to the black humor that comes with soldiering, platoon members wrote a song about their work to the tune of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland."

When Sgt. Richard Barrett began one verse, several men joined in, their voices drifting across the desert encampment.

As my M-40 fires, His life will expire. I shot to the head, My target is dead. Walking in a sniper wonderland.

Firearms are hardly new to most snipers. Nearly all the Marines in the platoon come from the country, where they grew up with weapons. They talk about stalking an animal and a man in the same breath. Most are passionate trap and skeet shooters.

Their sentences are punctuated by the squirt of chewing tobacco and the insertion of profanity as adjectives.

Several in the platoon chuckled as they watched a Marine from the city try to sever a plywood beam with an ax rather than a saw.

Most are poor or lower-middle-class and, while they are members of a volunteer military, they roundly detest the "college kids" protesting the war in the United States.

"They are pansies, these rich college kids," said Reaves as he let loose a jet of brown saliva. "They are just scared of being drafted and doing what we do."

"Just because they were brought up in a higher-class family doesn't mean they don't have to fight," said Cpl. Christopher F. Teel, from Ocean Spring, Miss.

The only book snipers all seem familiar with - other than the Bible - is "Ninety-Three Confirmed Kills," an account of life as a Marine sniper in the Vietnam War by Carlos Hathcock.

"You can't get into this sniper unit if you haven't read it," said Barrett, who has been a Marine sniper for six years.

The bonding of the unit, which will act as the eyes and ears of the battalion from forward positions, is tight. Platoon members are disdainful even of fellow Marines, who in turn chafe at the snipers' arrogance.

"We are cocky as hell," Luebke said. "It is the image we portray, because we know we are the best in the battalion."

"You put me anywhere and I can put it in the head from 800 yards," Barrett said.

Anderson, when he heard he was to be transferred as a drill instructor rather than be sent to the gulf, pleaded with his superiors to get an extension to go to war, even though he leaves behind a pregnant wife.

"I didn't want them to go to war without me," he said. "I had a responsibility to be here. The easy way out would have been to go to the drill field."

"This is my second family," he said, sitting in his foxhole.

The snipers had to pass a rigorous three-month Marine Corps course where they were temporarily stripped of rank and referred to by their instructors as "pigs."

Anyone who wears glasses, smokes or is left-handed is excluded. The attrition rate in each course is more than 50 percent, according to the snipers.

As the unit got ready to leave camp, flames leapt up from rectangular holes across the desert floor. Competing with the fading sunlight, the Marines - their eyes squinting against the acrid black smoke - stood below ground and slowly fed boxes of supplies, plastic maps and large white intelligence sheets on Iraqi units page by page into the fires.