10/22/2014 "Navigation Under the Stars"



After last night’s letter, we get a companywide wake up. One of the future soldiers snuck out in flip flops and went to another company’s barracks. So wrong uniform, sneaking out and trespassing. The first Sergeant that caught him turned him over to the night sergeant while the first sergeant tore us all up. His paperwork is being processed immediately and he will be kicked out in the next two days.

Today was Land Navigation Day. We were taken out into the woods and split into teams of five. We were given maps and marker points. With a compass and protractor we had three hours to locate 3 of the 5 markers. Each marker had 3 codes and our score sheet had which code we needed to get. A wrong one counted as a miss. The markers were anywhere from 100 meters to almost a mile (1300 meters) apart from each other. The terrain went from hills and scattered trees down to the slush muddy bottom with thick cover. Each team had a compass man, pace setter (for distance) and locators. I was kind of excited knowing I was getting 2 MRE’s for meals, which meant a chance at candy. For the day run our team found three markers but with an hour left we decided to head back since we had over a mile to track back. My team was old and out of shape. The compass point is 34, commercial pilot and not the best physical abilities. Another is an attempted Lawyer about 32 and extremely out of shape. The last is a young kid that could not understand the concept of staying with the team. The woods have been used for years as training so you have to be careful. There was barbed wire, random holes and wildlife (like hogs) you had to watch out for. So our night mission he needed to stay close. My lunch MRE didn’t have candy. It had an apple cinnamon energy bar, good but not for my fix.

We had about and hour and a half until the night navigation so of course the Drill Sergeant had to find a reason to smoke us. We kicked the night navigation off at dusk. Our group cleared the first three markers before dark. Once it got dark it was tough. I led since walking through the woods see the same as growing up back home. We got to the fourth marker with about an hour and a half to go. After finding the main road we stuck to it to try to locate the last one. From having to guess our location we attempted a couple of time to locate the 5^th marker, but due to the dark, thick brush and unsure location we decided to hit the road back. It was 2K back. We collected a handful of groups on the way. The sky was clear and full of stars. Amazing sight. Not any better than the Texas hill country but still good. We saw several shooting stars. This was by far one of the better days. Working as a team, hiking, nature and at the time no Drill Sergeant yelling at us.

FYI Dinner MRE- Strike out no candyL. Dang it.

We got back about midnight and grabbed 3 hours of sleep. Because lack of accountability, I got with the bay leader and we decided to wake everyone up two hours early to clean. Plan worked and we actually impressed the Sarge. Time to start the day.