So this week is land navigation. If that's one of your strengths, then this will be a pretty easy week for you. If you struggle it will be a living hell. Monday was actually spent in the classroom with a few classes and a couple of teams briefing their OPORD's that werent able to go last week. The classes were mostly on risk management and CRM's. Then at about 1700 you load the buses and drive out to the land nav site, which is huge.
Things to make sure you have for land nav:
-Map markers and erasers
-Protactors (they dont provide them for you)
-Compass
-Pace count beads (have them!)
-Map case or zip lock bag
-Red light flashlight or head lamp
Anyways, Monday night you go over a few things, have a quick land nav class in case you forgot the basics and then go to bed. Tuesday you start the day going out as a fire team with a cadre member to practice land nav. The points they give you make you feel really good about yourself until you go out on the real course. All of these points on the practice are right off the road less than 100 meters and very close to the start points. This practice is really only good for guys who are really struggling. If nothing else practice your pace count, because God knows youre going to need it the next couple of days.
Then after lunch you basically do the same thing, but this time you are all by yourself. You only do four points for both of these practices. They dont mean anything, some guys just went out and took naps, I went and found my points, figured I might as well practice while I'm out there. That evening youll have classes on crew served weapons and how to use them. Its basic, and the most important part is how to put them on the tripods.
Wednesday starts bright and early. Unlike LDAC or ROTC there is no "Day" and "Night" Landnav, they simply start you out at 0400 and you have until 1000 to get all 8 points. Sounds easy right? Maybe... Ok, Ive always been good at landnav, and ended up getting 8/8 on this course, but it was way harder than any course I'd ever done before. First of all the start point is at least 4 km away from your first point--guaranteed. So you need to go quick to get to all of your points. You dont have to run, but unless you can go directly to your points with ease, I would at least run every other point or something. Wednesday is technically a practice day, but if you get 8/8 then you dont have to go again the next day and youll get a major positive, so for the week youll get 45/40 points, which is pretty damn awesome. So I would try as hard as I could to get all 8 the first day and rest (more or less) on Thursday when everyone else goes out.
What makes this course so hard is the utter lack of attack points. They are few and far between to say the least. Mostly you need to be exact on your pace count, shoot a perpendicular azimuth and go. The point I had that was closest to the road was about 450 meters. So your dead reckoning needs to be pretty damn good. Most points are about 600 meters away from any roads or trails. Also, unlike LDAC there are no "Cadet Trails" or rather, there are tons, but most of them dont go anywhere and I wouldnt trust them at all. But like I said, the course is really long. One decision I had to make was to go and extra 2.5 km by road and then dead reckon 500 m, or go from the road I was on and dead reckon 1100 meters. I gambled and did the 1100 meter dead reckon, and by the grace of all that is holy I found my point.
Anyways, I think 12 out of the 150ish in the company got 8/8 so we were tasked with helping those that had done really bad (4/8 or less) and help them. By the way you need an 6/8 to pass. This afternoons practice was just like the day before. Four points in four hours. Then youll come back and have some sort of platoon training. We actually had the Brigade Commander come out and he spoke to us about ethics.
You will also to PT around dusk, its pretty chill, nothing intense. We did a lot of stretch, a light jog, and push ups. Then they actually let us have almost 6 hours of sleep (minus fire guard of course) so people would have a better chance to pass.
If you go out again the next day, its the exact same thing. Its long, its a damn swamp, youll get soaked, and then youll run back. Make sure to bring a change of boots and extra clothes, especially socks, youll want them. If you stick around, like I did. You pretty much do nothing, maybe a few small details. But youre not allowed to sleep, which sounds easy but kinda hard at 5 am when youre not doing anything. We had about 20-25 in the company fail. (I think the average is about a 1/3 of each company fails, so we did pretty good). Then those that failed will go out again with those that did well. Then more classes on machine guns, then youre back to PT then bed.
Friday morning is a retest day for those that failed (FML if youre one of those poor guys) and the rest of you will land nav using the daggers. Or whatever the acronym is for the army GPS. Basically its a good GPS that takes you from point A to point B. But the good thing about it is that it can connect to other military electronics and you can do all sorts of things like CFF or place TRP's. Anyways the sucky thing is that it dead reckons, so youll get soaked in the swamps. Then at each point you go to there is a cadre member with some sort of test. AT-4, Crew served weapons, CFF, etc. Not really graded, but good practice. Then youll head back, get on the buses, and head back home. If you failed again (and some do) then you will keep going back to pass land nav every Thursday or Friday until you do. So just get it done and knock it out.
On a side note watch out for the wildlife. I personally ran into a cotton mouth in a tree and about crapped my pants and slowly backed away. Luckily it was in the tree, because on the ground those bastards chase you. We also had a wild hog go into out patrol base, that was interesting... Not much you can really do, except dont be stupid, and avoid where possible.
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