British team takes Engineer School’s inaugural Regimental Best Mapper Competition title

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. — A pair of British Soldiers are the first winners of the U.S. Army Engineer School’s Regimental Best Mapper Competition, which took place from April 12 to 15 at locations across the installation.

Lance Cpl. Jonathan Ward and Sapper George Gibbons, from Royal Air Force Station Wyton, won the inaugural competition, which included 14 two-person teams that were judged on their ability to perform time-constrained physical and mental challenges that tested geospatial and communication skills, along with soldiering tasks, such as land navigation, and general fitness.

The second-place finishers were Spcs. Herve Louis and Ty Yang, from the 95th Civil Affairs Brigade at Fort Liberty, North Carolina; and the third-place team included Staff Sgts. Benjamin Klontz and John Ortega, from the 512th Geospatial Planning Cell at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas.

During the awards ceremony in the Engineer Regimental Room at the John B. Mahaffey Museum Complex, USAES Command Sgt. Maj. Zachary Plummer thanked the partners from Great Britain who participated and spoke on the relevancy and value of geospatial engineers today.

“Their skills are especially critical in large scale combat operations,” Plummer said. “As the Army is striving to be data centric, geo engineers have been data masters for decades. And though a small community — only 5% of the Engineer Regiment — your value and contributions are amazing.”

Plummer, who was on hand for many of the events, called the competition “nothing less than impressive.”

“I am truly amazed at the professionalism and dedication to your craft,” Plummer said. “You are masters in the ability to take data, analyze that data across all warfighting functions and provide the commander with relevant information to shape the battlefield. I am truly humbled and honored to have spent this time with you. The geospatial community and the Engineer Regiment is in good hands with Soldiers like you coming up in the ranks to take over.”

Ward, one of four British military engineers from the 42 Engineer Regiment (Geographic) to participate, said competitions like this put “a little bit of pressure on to do as best you can.”

“It makes you want to out-compete all the other competitors,” Ward said. “It’s good to see how everyone else works as well. It’s not every day you get to come out to a different country and operate with different equipment and people.”

Additionally, the time-constraining element added realism, Ward said.

“When we’re working in real-life situations — when I’ve been away before, we’ve had minutes to make maps occasionally, and this simulates the real deal, essentially,” he said.

Louis and Yang, the runners up, said they hope to return next year to finish one place higher — Louis summed up what it takes to compete well at the event.

“We just had to think critically and make sure that we did everything the way they wanted it done,” Louis said. “Next year, we’ll try to do better.”

Yang said he enjoyed the 12-mile ruck march — the final event.

“I’d say the most fun thing was the ruck,” Yang said. “It was one of the last events, and we were looking forward to the end. The technical aspects were more challenging, but it’s nice to have a team. We were able to work together and push through those issues.”

More photos from the competition are available to view and download on the Fort Leonard Wood Flickr page.