No kidding there I was…Pineland University – Land Navigation Program of Instruction.
Set the way back machine Sherman…I grew up in Northern California where the only maps I ever looked at were in National Geographic. I don’t count the endless globes littering schools back then.
I’d never been lost and thought I had an instinctual feel for navigating without a compass. Hiking, camping, and hunting. Maps…we don’t need no stinking maps…
At basic training you could almost see the next point on the star based compass course - the ruts from thousands of basic trainees who had come before at beautiful Fort Ord, Monterey California provided direction.
Skip past my time at WHCA, which was mostly in the urban jungle and here I am learning map reading and cool techniques like resection where you locate two points then draw lines through them to identify where you are.
Fast forward to the Special Forces Phase 1 course and navigating the relative flat and sameness of pine after pine in that area of North Carolina.
The map was essentially one flat terrain feature with the grid lines spread so far apart I thought I might have to head hundreds of miles west to hit the Smokies to find elevation.
When it became my time to start, I figured I run the course to give myself the best chance of finishing within the allotted time.
Back then, I was a very fit 30-year-old that could run miles with 55lbs on my back. a weapon in one hand and a compass in the other.
The first point was relatively easy, and I jotted down the code to prove I’d been there. A nice long drink of warm canteen water and I was on the way to point two. Thirty some minutes later I saw the point out of the corner of my eye and sprinted to where it sat between a trio of pines.
I got to within twenty-five feet and something came into sight at face level. Without thinking I raised my rifle, an old A2 M16, just as the right side of my face and the rifle snapped the multi-strand wire that some jacknut forgot to take down after their field exercise.
It broke just below my right eye. There might have been some cursing. Okay, a lot. I leaned against the point and slid to the ground as my sight disappeared. When I tasted blood, I poured a canteen’s worth of water in my eye to ensure I could still see.
I did for a second, but the swelling took over and I lost the use of my right eye. I took my drive on rag – also known as a cravat (triangular bandage) and tied it around my head to cover my eye.
Now down to one eye and little to no depth perception, I decided to get my sorry ass up and continue the course but at a walking pace.
When I got to the end the primary instructor called his team over to assess my damage and told me I was fifteen minutes late. While the team medic stitched me up the Master Sergeant bequeathed me a team name that I keep for the rest of Phase 1: Cyclops.
There are no freebies given at Pineland University, so I’d have to redo the course the next morning. Later that evening a Sergeant First Class came over and asked if I’d been to Ranger school.
“I watched you go straight from point to point through some of the nastiest crap on the course. If you had used the map, you could have made it easier on yourself and walked the course with time to spare.”
I told him my story, and he challenged me to look at the flat map in 3-D using the index lines to indicate elevation and the steepness of the terrain feature.
It took a minute then BAM as Emeril likes to say. My whole world changed. There was plenty of terrain on what minutes before, was a flat representation of the grid squares where we operated.
The next morning, I wasn’t the fastest, but I had the second-best time. And I didn’t damage myself any further, LOL.
Most of the best, impactful, and long-lasting lessons of my life happened at Pineland University, not to mention the lifelong friends I made.
#DOL
Free the Oppressed