Sergeant Hale: Map Reading
1Lt Lynn Grace
Sergeant Hale surprised me once again during our time at the Army Training Center at Fort Lewis.
It was time for the basic trainees to head out for a three-day bivouac in the field, camping with tents.
As we were organizing and preparing the troops to march, I approached Sergeant Hale, handed him the map, and instructed him to take charge of the troops and lead them to the designated bivouac area.
To my surprise, Sergeant Hale looked at me with an odd expression and, lowering his voice, embarrassedly confessed that he couldn’t do it. He feared getting lost and not being able to find the bivouac area.
I could hardly believe my ears, hearing this from an M-60 tank commander with six or seven years of service, who had surely navigated many places using a map.
His explanation? He couldn’t read a map while walking. He was accustomed to reading maps and navigating in a tank or vehicle at 35 miles per hour, not on foot.
If he had to walk and interpret the map, he was sure to get lost, as had happened in the past. He was used to watching the map’s symbols whizzing by at high speed, not at a walking pace.
Realizing he wasn’t joking, I told him I’d handle it. It was about a five-mile march to the campsite, and I was reasonably good at reading topographic maps while moving at a walking pace.
The good thing was that he wasn’t following me in a Jeep, smiling as he went.
Up to this point, the story might seem ordinary, but what follows makes it memorable.
When I later found myself in Vietnam, assigned to a Duster Battalion on the DMZ, my first convoy security assignment brought Sergeant Hale’s words back to me.
With four Dusters under my command, I found myself utterly confused about our location as we traveled along.
I couldn’t keep myself oriented on the map while driving at 35 miles per hour.
The first thing that came to mind was Sergeant Hale—he would have had a good laugh seeing me just as lost at high speed as he was at a walking pace.
Thankfully, he wasn’t there to witness it.
Once again, chalk it up: Sergeant Hale 1, Lieutenant Grace 0.