Customer Reviews

13 Cent Killers: The 5th Marine Snipers in Vietnam

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

Several elements of this book require explanation. Why the author switches from the first person to the third after seventy or so pages is but one.

For reasons known best to Culbertson, several times throughout his book he calls to question the ability and veracity of Carlos Hathcock, the legendary Marine sniper. Without naming Hathcock, he dismisses out of hand many of Hathcock's accomplishments without providing a single document, official or otherwise, or even quoting the usual unnamed sources. He merely labels it nonfactual. For example, he describes Hathcock's elimination of an enemy company in Elephant Valley as "BS". It may well be, but before one hopes to undermine a Marine institution like Hathcock, it would serve you well to have some source for the assertion other than your opinion. Lacking even a modicum of evidence in support, other readers may well conclude as I did that Culbertson was engaging in building up his crew by tearing down another. That effort falls flat.

I did not finish this book. I abandoned the effort on page 101 when I read these words: "The 5th Marines constituted a very exclusive club and operated under a contract signed in hell by the Grim Reaper himself."

The story of the 5th Marines Snipers deserves better than this and so does the reader.

I have not read Culbertson's other two books on being a Marine sniper. However, this book does not encourage me to read those other two. Of the 30 pages that I have trudged through, there was a lot of repetition and plugging of Culbertson's other two books. The other reason I did not finish this book was because of the first 30 pages, at least 50% of the time is spent on denigrating other Marine snipers and other Marines who have written books and/or are subjects of other books.

Culbertson does not provide proof or reason for his belief that other Marine snipers made false claims of achievement. Culbertson claims that one of the most prominent Marine snipers, Carlos Hatchcock, exagerated about the number of kills he made without citing a source for this claim. Hatchcock is one of the most well known snipers in military history, and a Marine hero. Culbertson should cite his sources if he is going to make claims like this.

If you want to read about a personal account of a Marine sniper, I recommend "Dead Center: A Marine Sniper's Two Year Odyssey in the Vietnam War" by Ed Kugler. If you want to read about Hatchcock, then read "Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills" by Charles W. Henderson.

I would not recommend buying this book. If you really want to read it, find it at a library.

I am not an authority on Vietnam, but I am an avid hunter and competitive rifle shooter. Many of the details in this text are wildly inaccurate and more fitting for a hollywood b-movie than a book that claims to be historical. Just one example is the reference to Vietnamese soldiers being lifted off their feet and thrown backwards through the air by .308 or .30-06 rounds. This claim and many others like it are laughable to anyone who knows anything about firearms. Mr. Culbertson needs to stop watching re-runs of "The A-team" and research his facts, or else drop the pretense that he is writing history.

For a book about a deadly business, this one is boring. it switches from place to place, is repititious, and switches from first to 3rd person, for some reason.
For some reason, without naming names, he denigates Carlos Hathcock, another Marine sniper, claiming he either did not exist or did not do all that was claimed in the 2 books written about him by Charles Henderson. The Marines thought enough of Hathcock to name a building after him. A Marine Officer I met, who wrote 2 books of his own about his experiences said Hathcock was real and probably did a lot of stuff not in the books.
For a extremely interesting book about Marine sniping I recommend Silent Warrior by Charles Henderson

John Culbertson is a novice writer who is so desperate to fill pages that he intentionally tells the same story twice; at the beginning and the middle of the book, because the story "bears repeating." He blethers on about hippies, Army Generals, The President, the Military-Industrial complex, college professors, the Army and Navy, REMF's, until he reaches the conclusion that himself and his close associates were the only true patriots in the war. The saddest part is that he has logged on to the Amazon review pages and gave his own book a 5-star review (check it out).

As a Vietnam veteran and former Marine, I bought 13-cent Killers after reading Operation Tuscaloosa and expected a fairly good recounting of the operations of the 5th Marines in 1967. But 13-cent Killers is a book in search of an editor. Poorly written, repetitive, and filled with the author's unexplained bitterness, Maggie's Drawers should have been waved at this book before it was published. Very disappointed.

This book falls far short of it's target. While Culbertson was an in-country player and is writing as part of this elite group, his style is very melodramatic and jingolistic. I've had to roll my eyes at John's many attempts to paint the 5th Marine Snipers as yah yah heroistic types and the bad guys as the incarnate of evil.

He gives some good info on rifles and ammo but continues to repeat this info throughout the book and I guess he needs to fill white space with this unnecessary additional information.

The author comes across as a narrow-minded, stuck in the mud, stereo-typing jarhead. He describes the Vietnamese as sneaky blah blah blah dirty Communists who were more likely trying to rid their country of the Americans as they had with the French, Japanese and Chinese. I find it distasteful to describe the 5th Marine Snipers as killers/murders who fought for the exitement of the hunt. If a human life and the sacrifice these people gave for their country is worth only 13 Cents, then the value of this book is far less. There are better books about those who fought but this is not one of them.

John Culberson gets lost in grinding his own ax of complaints about everything from the lack of government support of the war, (for which he is DRT, dead right there), to the political pork barrel that resulted in the much inferior M-16 replacing the venerable M-14, (again a valid point). But he spends far too much time repeating military jargon, repetitiously identifying every spot on the Viet Nam map, and using the book as a forum to name countless comrades who fought with him in Nam. The recurring names do nothing for the story except serve to detract. And the cruelest cut of all may be indicative of his poor research when, on page 166, he disparagingly refers to a vist to the troops by Jane Mansfield and describes her as "an aging American icon..who had to be in her late forties or early fifties at the time." For your unfortunate information, Mr. Culbertson, Jane Mansfield died in 1967 at the ripe old age of 34 years, 2 months and 10 days, hardly what I would call an "aging" time. What the book lacks in readership it makes up for in confusion.

I had a hard time finishing this book. It was very repetitive. Just simply two peoples accounts of the same incidents. It was only so so. The only thing I found to be of interest, was the mention of the Lake City Army Ammo plant here in Missouri.

I have read this book (13 cent killers) and "Marine Sniper" many times over and the jealousy I see displayed by Culbertson is almost laughable. I'm surprised he didn't try to say that the story of some "unnamed" marine(again Hathcock) pulling 7 other Marines out of a burning amtrac and nearly dying from the burns recieved was also a bunch of bs too.

I think this book is a joke. Just the title alone "13 cent killers" is funny. I mean, I thought a sniper wasn't supposed to take pride in being a "killer"? Anyways, he tells some good stories of the men he served with but, because he himself wasn't famous he knocks down many of the stories told about Hathcock. What's so ironic about that is that even Hathcock himself didn't want these stories out. He just wanted to live the rest of his life in anonymity until he met Henderson. Who might i add, had to work very hard to earn his trust to get those stories out of him at all.

Basically, buy this one for the stories if you like to read about Marine snipers in Vietnam but, keep a sharp knife handy so you can cut through the cynicism in this book. It's pretty thick.