Quick land nav story

So, I am not the best at land navigation. If you know anything about reading a map with a protractor and compass, then you know its not the easiest thing in the world. You have to be good at terrain associating and understanding how to read a map. Anyways, if you are in the army then you have to land nav during the day and at night. For me, walking around in the woods, with no light, and a map, trying to find these tiny points sucks so much. (I mean I hated it) … Anyways, this story is about me getting lost in the woods at night doing land nav. So, I get my points and plan everything out. The time starts and I head out with everything I need plus some because knowing me I will lose something and I wanted to be prepared. I head out confident… at first.

Slowly I start to realize that my map shows no accordance to the land I was walking on. I start to try and terrain associate and go to a known point so I could re-plot my points. Well, I never get to the known point because I realize that the map that I have is the wrong map… it’s a map of a completely different base. So, I start to panic. Its dark. I have no light and no way to get back because I have the freaking wrong map. I start to back track to a road I thought I saw on the way in... Then guess what, it starts to RAIN. So now, I have the wrong map, lost, in the rain, with no light. Yay. I love the army.

At this point I think I should just stay where I am because someone must realize that I am gone. So, I decide to sit by a tree. While thinking about my life choices I hear a grunting sound. What in the world was that. Now remember, its dark outside. So I stand up to see if I could see what that horrific grunting sound was and I see nothing. So I sit back down.. then I hear it again… but closer. WHAT WAS THAT?!?! Ok, at this point I start to get scared. Then I remember what they said in the safety brief before we went out… “stay away from bears and wild boar.” Shit. It’s a bear I know it. I start to climb the tree I was sitting against and then I see them. I swear I saw about 50 sets of glowing eyes looking in my direction. I almost fainted. I slid down the tree and started running as fast as I could.

You probably are thinking “well that’s dumb you can’t out run a 4 legged animal.” Well, I made the right decision because of all the noise I made running through the woods in the dark I must have scared whatever crazy animals they were because I heard them running the opposite direction of where I was running. Praise God. I started praying while I was running. I wasn’t THAT dumb. To some miracle I ran into a road. PRAISE. I knew that I could be found on a road if I followed it.

Long story short I eventually found some cadre who were driving along looking for lost cadets (aka people like me). I showed them my map and they told me that I had a map to a completely different location and my points were for another base. How in the world does that even happen? They apologized and threatened to have me come back and do the course with the right map. Heck no. thankfully they heard my animal story and let me head back. What I didn’t realize was that while I was running in the woods in the dark, I tore holes in my uniform and literally looked like a homeless freak. Yay. Now not only did I not find any points, get lost, and almost die, but I look like a complete disaster. Come to find out later I ran into a heard of wild boar. I guess they are afraid of loud noises and that’s why they ran in the opposite direction when I was franticly frolicking in the woods like a mad man.

That is the end of my story… I can thankfully tell you I have successfully completed every land nav course after that awful experience and still see the multiple boar eyes in my dreams. As I said before, I love the army. (please hear my sarcasm)