"Map and compass training"

Sgt. Farnsworth: "I got news for you. It's wet. Even if it stops raining now, it is going to be cold tonight."

They want us familiar with map and compass.
This is kind of a personal thing, because Lewis Nixon, the guy I play, that was his job.
He was the guy who kept the map and had to know where the enemy was.
You know, I'm Ok with maps. Give me a good Rand McNally and I'll have a hell of a vacation.
But this is something new to me. Our objective was a dismantled railway.



- Grant?
- Yeah.
- Where's our objective?
- Right down there, dismantled railway.

Well, I didn't really exactly know what a dismantled railway was.
Apparently, a dismantled railway is a hump in the middle of a big field. So we pretty much went right to it, found the thing, walked along it, going:
"Look at this hump in this field on the way to the dismantled railway."

- That blue line there is the... Watch out for Adders fence.
And we took a left turn on that road. We came to this intersection here.
We took a right turn there. Came to that big junction there. You see these terrain features? That's that big-ass hill we had to huff down. We're going roughly parallel to where we're supposed to be.

Must have gone back and forth over the whole damn camp before we found something that wasn't a dismantled railway, but looked like it was.

"This is Tipper. Approaching second team objective. Putting it on a camera. Abandoned railroad track right there. See the carriage in the background? Come around to the left-hand side. Here we are, abandoned railroad track, about fucking time too."

Night compass march

Night compass march was the same deal, at night. Our objective on that one was to find a little coffee pot.

I think the significance of the coffee pot was that it was a Vietnam souvenir of Captain Dye's. I'm not sure if that was true. I'm not sure if he'd trust us with his coffee pot.
So they stuck that out in the middle of a field with a lean-to over it.
This was Damian's exercise.
Damian Lewis: "Listen, are we suggesting that we went wrong around that first tree?"

The difference was, this was the officers.
We were a bunch of fresh second lieutenants. You know, gold bars. And everybody wants to get a spoon in the pot.

- This road leads to our right.
- Let me see.

We put a good half an hour on the thing arguing over how we should go about it.

Damian Lewis: "On the actual terrain ground, then we can see what angle it's running on. I'll tell you what we've been doing. We've been walking in scrub all along here."

But in the end, we found the thing.

- Got something here. Looks like a lean-to.
- That is the objective.
- Nixon found the coffee pot.
- That's your trophy, Nix.
- I don't...
- Congratulations.
- Wait, you navigated here.
- Yeah, I really just walked in front of you.
- Lipton went as the senior non-com.


He pretty much hung back and let the officers all work it out. But I can't think he had a good option of us when the night was over.

Lipton: "Blind luck is what that was."