I have this almost unexplainable ability to find my way around in the woods. During orienteering training at Fort Benning where I gave credit for my ability with maps to my dad. As a result of that training, a few of my friends joked that my dad was Daniel Boone. I even displayed my ability with land navigation at Fort Ord when I went on a field training exercise (FTX) with the 2nd / 17th Infantry Battalion (Buffalo). But by the time I got to Fort Ord my prowess in the woods went beyond my expertise with a map and a compass. My fellow soldiers started to learn about another skill that I had. I can’t tell you how I developed the skill or how I first acquired it. I just know I have it. But I can smell damn near as good as a tracking hound. I’ll smell odors long before other people notice them. To give you an example of how that works. Suppose my neighbors across the street decide to wash the windows of their car or their house with Windex. Windex has a pretty common odor. It basically smells like ammonia. Let’s make it a little bit more complicated. I live on the west side of the street. The wind is usually blowing from West to East, or a derivative of West to East. So, they’re downwind of me. If anything, the neighbors on either side of them should be able to smell the Windex, but not me. But I can usually smell it. It’s one of those freak things of nature. I noticed it quite by accident. When I was younger, I started to hunt wild pigs. The first year I hunted I just got lucky because I was sitting high on a ridge and saw a herd coming. But when I cleaned the pig I could smell its musk gland. It gave off one helluva strong scent. The following year, I was out hunting mountain lion and I was tracking one. And I ran across that same musk smell. I was following the mountain lion tracks, which were oddly enough following the scent of the herd of pigs. I found the herd about a mile later. The pig herd had scattered for protection. But I had learned that I could track pigs by their smell. From then on, I tracked pigs to hunt them using primitive weapons such as black powder. I also learned that I could track bear the same way. I soon learned that all animals had a slightly different odor. By the time I got to Officer Candidate School (OCS), I had already fully developed my tracking ability and my instinctive navigational skill in the woods. As a result, when the land navigation courses rolled around, I was able to ace those courses as well as any of the previous more general military courses. However, it wasn’t until one particularly cold night on a night land navigation course that my skills in land navigation shined. The Training, Advising, and Counseling (TAC) officers took the entire OCS class to a land navigation course on the other side of Lawson Army airfield and the airborne school drop zone. I had been on this course once before, many years prior, during my first tour at Fort Benning. I vaguely remembered it only because of its general location. There were several differences between that first trip out and this trip. During that first trip, we came out during the day in cold, rainy weather. Now, it was even colder, there was even more rain, and we came out at night. That almost reminds me of an old Edgar Winter Group album titled ‘They Only Come Out at Night.’ The interesting point about this land navigation trip was that our TAC officers had said we could complete a significant portion of the land navigation course from the bleachers. I don’t think that many candidates heard that. Or, for that matter, the next part where the TAC officers announced that there was also going to be hot soup and coffee and other assorted snacks in the bleachers. Two significant tidbits. But you had to pay attention. Food and most of the land navigation course could be finished in the bleachers. Put the two together and what do you have? Sit and eat. Yep. That’s what I heard. I don’t know what everybody else heard. I don’t care. I heard sit and eat. You didn’t have to say much more to convince me. So, I headed straight for the bleachers. Of course, they divided us into teams. So, when I headed for the bleachers, this caused some consternation among my team members. They asked me where I was going. I asked, “Weren’t you listening? The TAC officers said ‘sit and eat’ while you do most of the land navigation course in the bleachers.” One of the other candidates replied, “They didn’t say that.” Right about then one of the TAC officers walked by and heard us arguing. He asked, “Hey candidates, what are you arguing about?” I looked at the TAC and said, “Well sir, it’s sort of like this. I said that you said that we should sit in the bleachers and eat while we do most of the land navigation test. They are saying that you didn’t say that.” The TAC officer looked at me and asked, “What’s your name candidate?” “I’m Candidate Masters, Sir.” “Candidate Masters, that’s not exactly what we said. We said, you could finish most of the land navigation course in the bleachers. And we mentioned that there was hot soup and hot beverages at the bleachers. That’s what we said.” “Exactly sir. Like I said, you said to sit and eat and do most of the land navigation course. That’s what I heard. Sit and eat. I didn’t hear run into the woods and get lost. Did you say that?” “No. Why in the hell would we say some stupid shit like that?” “Well, judging by how many people are headed toward the bleachers and how many people are headed toward the woods, I’m really beginning to wonder. Cuz tell me if I’m wrong, but some key information that we need while we’re in the woods depends on information we get while we’re here in the bleachers, true or false. I say it’s true.” “I would say that’s true, Candidate Masters.” “Aha. So, you did say, sit and eat. Thanks. What did I tell you guys? Are you coming to the bleachers or not?” One of the other guys replied, “We’re coming.” We sat in the bleachers for about 15 minutes and drank hot soup and worked through our land navigation course worksheet. Then, we headed out into the woods. Once we got into the woods, I found the trail I was looking for and started to follow it. The guys looked at me and said, “Why are we going along this trail?” I stopped and looked at the guys and said, “Look around in all directions and tell me what you see.” The outspoken one said, “Well, it looks like we have been climbing uphill. That’s for starters. It also looks like we’re following a trail. I also noticed that it looks like we’re in some sort of little clearing.” “You noticed almost everything I wanted you to notice. We’re following the trail for a reason. Candidate Hansen, I want you to walk over there into the woods for about 10 or 15 feet and then come back and tell me what happens as soon as you walk into the trees. For the rest of you, the reason you notice a clearing here is because the trees were cut along this trail all the way up the hill and down the other side for a reason. You didn’t notice the reason because you didn’t look up. Had you looked up; you would have noticed that we’ve been following a power line. This trail follows the power line. By looking up, you would have also noticed that the sky is overcast. An overcast sky means no starlight and no moonlight. More importantly, it means you cannot navigate by using the stars. Of course, that assumes someone taught you how to navigate using the stars. Do any of you know how to do that? No. Great. It doesn’t matter because we can’t see the North Star anyway. Here comes Hansen. Okay, Hansen, tell us what you learned.” Hansen replied, “Well, a few feet after I went into the woods, it started getting hard to walk. There were these vines that kept tangling me and tripping me.” “Now, imagine you guys are all of the other candidates in our class. You just blasted straight from formation into the woods. You went looking for stakes. You have nothing to go by. No landmarks, no stars in the sky, no familiar terrain, nothing. But you trip into the woods anyway. Pretty soon, those wait-a-minute vines that Hansen just described start grabbing you and slowing you down and tripping you. While those wait-a-minute vines are slowing you down, you are slowly disorienting yourself. Cuz that’s what you do in unfamiliar territory. Your natural instinct kicks in. And then you start walking around in circles. You walk around in circles to your dominant direction. How many of you even know what your dominant direction is? Probably none of you. Animals don’t have that problem because the little baby animals learn from the big Momma and Poppa animals how to navigate in the woods. That’s how I learned how to navigate. I don’t walk over there in the woods. I walk over here on the trail. That’s how animals do it. They got little trails they follow. When I hunt animals, I track them on their trails. Oh, that reminds me our first point is right over there. It should be about 40 paces into the woods. Walk into the woods about 40 paces and find a stake and read what’s on it. Remember, the stake number has to start with a C.” A few minutes later Hansen came back with the number C-143. Then we took off. We finished the course before anybody else in our OCS class. When we came back into the bleachers, the TAC officer who had talked to us before we went out came back over and asked, “Candidate Masters, how did it go?” As I was starting to speak, Hansen interrupted me and said, “Excuse me sir. You got his name wrong. That there is Daniel Boone.” About a half hour later, the special forces (SF) candidate and his team came in. The SF candidate walked up to me and asked, “How did you get here so quick?” I replied, “I followed the power line trail all the way up the hill and down the other side to find my stakes. I wasn’t about to walk among the wait-a-minute vines. I wasn’t about all that shit.” “Yeah. I hear you. My stupid ass group was nothing but college ops. They took off into the woods like chickens with their heads cut off. It took me a half hour to regroup their asses.” “Yeah. You might have beaten me if those dumb shits had not pulled some stupid shit like that.” An hour later when no other groups had come in, a couple of the TAC officers walked over and said, “Daniel Boone I want you and Mister SF to form a team.” The SF guy looked at me and asked, “who in the hell is Daniel Boone?” Everybody on my team pointed at me and yelled, “He is.” The TAC officers told me and the SF candidate to go out and find the rest of our class. Whenever we found a group we were to point them toward the highway east of the land navigation course. I solidified my reputation as a woodsman that night and earned the nickname Daniel Boone, a nickname which lasted throughout my military career. However, for most of the members of my OCS class, the night land navigation course of futility.
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