FORT HOOD, Texas - Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division conducted land navigation training, May 26, to prepare themselves for the upcoming Iron Warrior Stakes competition to be held in June.
"You won't always have high tech equipment, sometimes you only have a compass and a map, and if you don't know how to properly use them, then it does you no good," said Dallas native, 1st Lt. Ashton Daily, a platoon leader assigned to Company A.
This training was designed to help Soldiers reacquaint themselves with how to conduct basic land navigation. The training began in the morning with a simple block of instruction reminding Soldiers about the fundamental techniques to conduct land navigation. In the afternoon, Soldiers completed the land navigation course; looking for several points during daylight, then after sunset, they searched for points in darkness.
"Doing this event today really helped refresh my mind," explained New York City native, Spc. Carrington Oliver, a tanker assigned to Co. D, after successfully completing the course. "It's been awhile since I have done any form of land navigation training so this was really helpful."
To pass the course Soldiers were required to successfully find three out of four points that were spread out across five square kilometers of dry, dead field of grass and shrubs.
Soldiers quickly traversed the land navigation course on Fort Hood, using a lensatic compasses, protractors and a military maps.
The training consisted of reading and plotting points on a map, determining an azimuth, or angle from the starting spot to the desired locations and using a pace count to track your travelled distance over various terrain.
"Land navigation is an important skill," Daily said. "Land navigation is a simple, yet sometimes forgotten, skill."
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