Week three of DCC: Land Navigation. Its been over since Friday, but I'm still having nightmares about being tangled up in thorny vines, unable to run from giant spiders and snakes. Seriously.
Monday started with classroom instruction on using the UTM grid map system (i.e., military maps), plotting points, and identifying terrain features on a map. Thanks to Doug's patient instruction over the past 10 months, this was all review for me. Tuesday, we headed out to the Land Nav training area at Fort Benning. First, the cadre broke us into teams of 3, provided each team 3 different 8-digit grid coordinates, a map & a compass and let us loose for 3 hours. Using those grid-coordinates, we had to plot our points on the map, calculate the azimuth (direction) and distance from point-to-point, and go find them. Each point was marked with a little metal orange & white box either nailed to a tree or on a post in the ground with a number on it. After finding what you thought was your point, you had to record the number of the box and move on to your next point. On the first round out, my team found all 3 points pretty quickly, and I was feeling good. On our second round out, my team struggled a bit with our 2nd point, as there were two orange/white boxes within 30 meters of each other. We argued a bit about which one was the right one. (Its critical to find the right one, not just to get credit for it, but also because if you measure your next azimuth off an incorrect point, you'll never find any of your subsequent points!). Even after some arguing and backtracking, we were able to locate all 3 correct points and return to base camp with plenty of time to spare.
Wednesday got a little tougher. We were on buses back out to the training area at 0300 and no longer working in teams. Each individual was given 3 points to find, one little chem light, and sent off into the woods. Earlier in the week, we had been briefed extensively on the Georgia wildlife, including poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, and angry wild boars. Now I was out, all by myself, in the pitch dark, wandering through the woods looking for a little orange & white box -- that I wasn't going to be able to see in the dark anyway -- praying that I wasn't going to step on any poisonous snakes. A few times, I heard the snort of a boar, but didn't see any. Spiders, now that's a different story. Breaking through the brush, spider webs were everywhere and I was constantly spitting out thick webs. A few times I turned my headlamp on for a second (technically against the rules, but hell, it was 0500 and I was in the middle of the freaking woods) and was staring straight at a spider the size of my palm. The only way to get through night land-nav is to just plow forward and focus on getting where you need to go. If I let my mind wander to the snakes underfoot or spiders overhead, I never would have gotten through it. Anyway, my first nighttime point was 1900 meters from my start point, and the cadre imposed a "no roads" rule, which means that all 1900 meters had to be trekked straight through the woods (no trails) at night. Its nearly impossible to stay on an azimuth (direction), or monitor pace count (distance) while breaking through brush, in the dark, for 1900 meters. I spent about 2 hours looking for my point, and then finally continued on to the boundary road and headed back to base camp. I felt like a failure until one-by-one my classmates started popping out of the woods along the same road, cursing and dejected. Later I found out I was less than 10 meters from the point right before I popped out on the road - I just didn't see it in the dark! At least I was close. After a short break to eat and rest, we all set out again to find more individual points. This time, I set a time-standard for myself - I wanted to see how quickly I could move through the course, because I knew that would be important for the test the next day. I booked through the course and found all my points in just over an hour, which made me feel pretty good about the test. I only had one close encounter with wildlife - a GIANT black & grey snake stretched out in my path. I jumped and let out a little scream, but was so focused on finding my point quickly that I just stepped around it and plowed forward (hard to believe, huh?). Anyway, after two successful days on the Land Nav course, I was feeling good about the test on Thursday.
Thursday morning, we were on buses again at 0300, but this time headed to a different Land Nav course for our test. Cadre told us this course is brand new, which means it hasn't had thousands of soldiers trekking through it every week, helping to break down some of the brush. Its also called "Little Vietnam" because of how thick the vegetation is. It crosses two swamps, and is littered with barbed wire and dummy ammo from its former life as a Ranger training area. We were given 8 coordinates at 0500 and had 5 hours to find 5 of our 8 points. This time, there was no prohibition on using roads, so I attacked my first point by walking the roads about 2.5 miles to get closer to the point. This also gave the sun a little time to rise!! I had no trouble finding my road intersections in the dark, and shot my first azimuth into the dark woods, plowed through, and found my first point exactly where it should have been. I was pumped! What I didn't know was that between me and my 2nd point was vegetation so thick that I literally would not be able to move forward. In the past when I'd come across thick obstacles like that, I'd just go around them and adjust my pace count & azimuth accordingly. But there was no "going around" this stuff. It was just thick thick vines and deadfall and thornbushes. I'm not talking about raspberry-bush sized thorns - I'm talking like thick thorns about an inch long. There was absolutely no other option but to just plow through with some hope of finding my next point so I could go the hell home. Unfortunately, I spent the next 3 hours tangled up in vines, walking around in circles, looking for that damned point I never did find. I used all the tactics Doug taught me, like going out to the road and shooting a new azimuth from a different point, but the vines/thorns/deadfall/brush was so damned thick, it was just impossible to move. I lost my eye protection, my ACU pants were shredded, I was wet and cold, and my hands and neck were covered in blood by the time I finally ran out of time and had to head back to base camp. Out of 111 people in the class, only 20 found the requisite 5 points. The rest of us looked like we had been to hell and back, and are probably still having nightmares about those damned vines.
Several people were injured pretty badly - some were really cut up by the barbed wire and a few had sprained ankles and knees from falling into ravines or holes. We were told that we would all have to re-test the next morning, but that they would let us start an hour later to give us an hour less of darkness. Unfortunately, the vines and swamps and the ravines and the holes are still there in the daylight!
Thankfully, I had my Secret Weapon -- Doug. As soon as I was released for the day, I headed over to the campground for some intense Land Nav instruction. After throwing a brief pity party for myself (which he very quickly put an end to, of course) we pulled out the map and got to work. It turns out the strategy for a course like that is never ever ever to plow through the swamp/woods/brush. I should have been running the roads, and then just traveling short distances through the brush to my points, like I did for the first point. A few hours of strategy later, I headed back to the barracks for a few hours of sleep before the retest.
Friday morning, I was ready to go. I got my points, figured out my strategy, and started running. And it worked. I found my first 5 points without getting wet, shredded, bloody, or frustrated. I still had 90 minutes left, so I went for my 6th point, just to prove I could. This time, 80 more people passed, so now there are less than 20 who need to retest again next week. I am still amazed at the difference in my experience between Thursday morning, plowing through the vines/thorns/brush and Friday morning, running the roads and attacking short distances in the woods. Obviously, that makes sense, I'm just not sure why they didn't teach us that in the first place. Thank goodness for my Secret Weapon ..... he really earned his Best Husband in the World title this week! :)
Next week: Range week. 111 lawyers with loaded M16A4s. Now that's some scary stuff.
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