Reading time 7

Soldier Found Dead After Land Nav Exercise

I have so many questions on this one. I have not only participated in numerous land navigation exercises myself while on active duty, but I had also conducted them for years with Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, so how in the world can a 40-year-old man, well enough an E-6 in the U.S. Army and he was Airborne, get lost on a routine land navigation exercise?

It isn’t that difficult “hunting mailboxes“, well enough, these are usually conducted in an area that is somewhat populated, meaning that if you “wander” too far, you will hit a roadway, a waterway, or a railway, hell a population center.

There has to be some type of foul play or outside sources that were involved in this case. The training started at 10 am and some 13 hours later this Soldier was found unresponsive and pronounced dead at the scene. Now, at the time I drafted this post, we didn’t know all the details of this case yet, but here are the facts at this point.

Staff Sgt. Jaime Contreras was a 12-year veteran of the U.S. Army, he was Airborne (82nd Airborne) and a drill sergeant trainee (8th week at the US Army Drill Sergeant Academy). He was located off of his cell phone data and was approximately 50 meters, or 164 feet outside of the course itself.

I just can’t imagine, how someone who had already done the course once before, who has this much experience in the military can get lost like this while in a “controlled” environment. It just doesn’t add up. He should have known how to navigate and use terrain association and recognition. This is where you can look at the area around you and use the map to determine where you are located. And if he didn’t have a map (usually you don’t for a Land Nav course), the briefing for the mission should have included “boundaries”, like, if you hit this road, or river or fence then you are out of bounds. If you do this then you are that. Plus you are supposed to carry a whistle or similar device so you can be located if you are lost (which sadly happens more than you think).

I have never had a problem using a map or a compass and my son is a natural at it as well. I have trained a fair amount of clueless boys, but they all passed the course (granted, the courses were much smaller than what this Soldier went through).

For those that are not aware of what a Land Nav course is, you are placed at a starting point, usually the whole group starts from the same area. You are given a distance and a heading on where you should find your next point (often a camouflage mailbox). When you get to your next point (in the Boy Scouts, they were 100 feet apart, but in the Marine Corps, they were multiple thousands of feet apart, some will be over a mile), you locate the mailbox and open it up and inside are directions to your next point. The more complicated courses will have several mailboxes in the area, so you just can’t walk to the general area, and search for a mailbox. I recall one of the courses in NCO school, I could see three or four other mailboxes, within a few dozen feet of my mailbox.

So, if you got an incorrect mailbox, then you were all screwed up as the coordinates in that box will take you to another mailbox, but that box isn’t the one that you were supposed to find. In the end, you should end up at a mailbox with a letter or number on it. You record that number and then walk back to the muster point. So there isn’t a way that you can be that far off course unless you can’t read a map and a compass. I’m only basing this off my Marine Corps experience but I did it once in boot camp, once in NCO school, once at my first duty station, and twice at my second duty station. This means, that this soldier had to do it once in boot camp, once at A.

So, yes, you can get lost if you can’t use a map and/or compass, and I recall in the Corps, Marines rocking out of the course and having to take it again that weekend, while the rest of us were on liberty. I think I had to do a compass course four times in the Corps, The first time was in boot camp, once at my first duty station in Homestead Florida, once at MCRD Parris Island at NCO school, and once at Cherry Point while stationed with VMAQ-2. I never got lost, and I always finished on the correct box.

I’m not here to toot my own horn, just giving you a sense of the environment. It is sad that he lost his life on a compass course.