Bob Swagger is a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant who was born in 1946 and raised in Blue Eye (a fictionalized version of Mena, Arkansas) in Polk County, Arkansas.
While serving in Vietnam, Swagger was shot in the hip from a distance of 1400 meters by T. Solaratov, a Soviet sniper who also killed Fenn soon after with a shot to the chest from the same distance.