Never Get Lost

Introduction

      Give me a decent map and a functional compass and I’ll find my location anywhere in the world, no matter where I am. That’s powerful. That’s a life skill…never get lost. That’s the sort of skill that builds confidence and competence. That’s the sort of skill that you need to be a successful Green Beret. It’s also the sort of skill that is in short supply in recent times. The introduction of GPS and the ubiquitous nature of smart phones and smart watches means that you have mapping and navigating technology at your fingertips all the time. So why would you learn to read a map and use a compass when your tech will never let you get lost? The answer is obvious…technology fails. The future of warfare is tech-enabled but it is also tech-vulnerable. Batteries drain, networks get hacked, and hardware gets exposed. Murphy gets a vote and over-reliance on this technology is a recipe for disaster.

And this is all assuming that you will always have access to your tech. If a military selection, assessment, training, or evaluation endeavor is on your horizon, you can be assured of being denied access to tech. This is especially true for those aspiring to become a Green Beret. I’ve spent more time than any reasonable person should spend walking around in the woods learning to navigate and now teaching others. I grew up playing outside, like normal kids should. We never had military maps, but knowing where the cool stuff was and knowing how to get there was critical kid information. Navigating through the woods between neighbors, between neighborhoods, and around our little world was essential to battling boredom. Leave the house when the sun came up, toss a couple PB&Js in a sack, and come home when the sun was setting was the order of the day. When I finally joined the Army I was well positioned to absorb all of the formal training that I got as a junior enlisted and cadet, then as a Cavalry officer, and finally into my career in special operations. With Special Forces Assessment and Selection, the Qualification course, Ranger school, Advanced Land navigation school, and the endless field training exercises, adventure races, training center rotations, and combat deployments my skills were honed. Knowing how to read a map, use a compass, and navigate competently is simply a way of life.

But let’s be clear and set some expectations. This book will NOT teach you how to land navigate. I can sense your disappointment…you’re reading a book to learn how to land navigate and the author just told you that it won’t teach you how to land navigate. Keep reading, it’ll all come together. This book will teach you how to read a military map. It will also describe the process of planning good routes, reading terrain from a map, navigational considerations, and the associated ancillary stuff. It will set the foundation upon which you will learn to land navigate. But in order to learn to land navigate competently you need to get out on the ground and walk. In fact, I posit that land navigation is one of the few skills that you must fail in order to appropriately learn. You must learn to get unlost. So you need to go out and get lost. This may seem contradictory given that we titled this book Never Get Lost, but you must understand that if you train this skillset enough you will undoubtedly get lost at some point. It is not only inevitable, but also desirable. I get lost all the time. My mind wanders, I get caught up in conversation, or fatigue simply overwhelms my cognitive capacity -- and I get lost. But I get unlost quickly. I get unlost because I remain disciplined in applying the principles outlined in this book. That’s what we are doing, learning principles and setting foundations. You can’t build the house unless we build this foundation first.

What is different between this book and the long list of already published manuals like ATP 3-18.14 — Special Forces Ground Mobility Operations, TC 3-21.76 — Ranger Handbook, ATP 3-50.21 — Survival, or ATP 3-20.98 — Scout Platoon? And how could we leave out FM 3-25.26 — Map Reading and Land Navigation? Well, they’re manuals and they’re written like manuals. They’re almost punishing to read. It’s like you have a robotic mid-career, starched uniform, high-and-tight haircut, knife-handing, mid-wit standing at parade-rest and lecturing from PowerPoint slides that he doesn’t understand. In other words, it's suboptimal.

This book, on the other hand, is equal parts descriptive and prescriptive. It’s step-by-step and it’s also story-by-story. It’s information and entertainment. Infotainment. You will learn the skills and you won’t get punished in doing so. I will endeavor to write this the same way that I would teach it in person. A little bit informal, but very much focused and intentional. It is also comprehensive enough to get you competent without being so inclusive as to waste effort. I’ve navigated thousands of miles, in all conditions, across some of the most challenging terrain imaginable and I’ve never once needed celestial navigation. I’ve never had to put a stick in the ground and mark the track of the sun with a shadow to determine which direction is North. I don’t look on which side of a tree the moss grows. I have a compass. I almost always have a map. So I use them to navigate. Focused.

I hear the same criticism, now used against myself, that I levied earlier…technology fails. So relying on a compass is a recipe for disaster. You have to have a Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency…but if you don’t have some zero-tech, no gear, enviro-friendly method then you are doomed, right? But we have to apply some realistic logic to this exercise. You are not Special Agent Grey Man engaged in an escape and evasion event where you’ve been body cavity searched and stripped of your gear. Not everything has to be a worst-case scenario or a movie script. You have a compass. You just need to learn to use it. And because the central focus of this work is to prepare aspiring candidates to successfully navigate at SFAS, we know that a compass is part of the equation. So go ahead and learn how to magnetize a sewing needle on your wool sock, float it in a cup of water, and create a field expedient compass. That looks super cool and makes for a great social media post. But it doesn’t move the needle (pardon the pun) when it comes to high performance land navigation. Map, compass, and skills. This is what will help you never get lost.

Basics build champions and we are going to start at the very basic basics. We are going to start slow and stay slow. I will cover everything that you need to know. I’ll cover a whole bunch of stuff that you should know. And I’ll regale you with nonsense that no reasonable person should ever recall…but we’ll cover it anyway because it will help keep you attentive and it might make the need-to-know stuff stick a little bit better. My terminal learning objective is that you are able to take this baseline knowledge and be in a position to attend in-person live training. Maybe with me, but in-person with a competent and skilled expert who can put this stuff into practice. Someone who can safely watch you get lost and then get unlost. After some considerable time practicing these life-essential skills, you’ll be in that ultimate position of achievement. You will be able to…Never Get Lost.