Milsurp After Hours

Back in the last century....before GPS...before the computer age....back in the time when navigation was by guess and by God and fear of not keeping track of where you were, the only tools were maps and a compass and there was a common US compass that eventually, in the last quarter of the 20th Century, became the standard Nato compass. Having by chance, and the draft, being required to use a compass in the Vietnam war, the compass along with a down grid and a map and a radio was an important implement to me. It was as important as the M16 I carried...and probably more important because of my job as the acting forward observer for an infantry outfit.

I got to wanting one just to have and went to ebay. There are some being offered all the time. Sometimes they get to be $100 and not even working. Crazy, actually, considering better modern compasses exist. And the Vietnam era ones had this odd radioactive disposal warning because of the tritium that was used to make various parts glow in the dark. Some , like mine, were later considered too radioactive for common use and there was consideration of withdrawing them from government inventories. However, from best I can find out , by the time they came to this conclusion the twelve year radioactive life had expired and the bureaucrats decided to forget the recall. But... only a few stock numbers were considered being recalled as being too potent and you would just about have to eat one to get the full radioactive dose, which might give you cancer twenty years down the road. Kind of like the cell phone thing we have all heard about.

In any case I bought one for cheap and put a bid in on one that was advertised as the compass the owners father had in Vietnam as an advisor. I won that bid too.. The one with the snap pouch in the photos is this one. The pouch is marked as made by Union instruments and probably was original to the compass which was also made by Union Instruments. This compass is dated 1964. The other is dated 1966, by the same company and is in a common bandage pouch as was also used to carry compasses back in the day...so I'm told.... and I had it from some other purchase in the past.

By the way...when I was in Vietnam, I got the compass from the last Lt. FO. It didn't come with a pouch. I had a boot string on it and looped it around my neck and stuck the compass in a top pocket.

Also by the way...if you see one with a stock number that begins FSN that is a compass made before about 1974 when the compasses that were continued in this design were re designated NSN, which is National or Nato Stock number and an additional two numbers were added with dashes after it to denote which country it was made for.. 00 and 01 were US numbers.

One thing good about having a compass and a map was I knew where I was. Just about all enlisted men, and many of the lieutenants, sad to say, and half of the NCO's never knew where they were all those years ago.

I have something similar to them, i picked it up new at a outdoors store and it's now obvious that its a cheap copy of of the US compass.

Now, if i could only remember how to use it!

Joe

Compass:-
Open it up;
Give it to an Officer;
He will put it on a map on the ground;
Follow the nice Officers orders;
Try and find out where you are;

There was an upgrade compass the military used. I think they were mostly used by engineers and arty batteries. Arty batteries had to lay the guns and there was some survey work in getting a battery all laid in with location and tube direction as closely known as possible. M2's are still made today and can do stuff that's useful, even with GPS. for various reasons I don't really know. (Maybe when the signal strength or number of satellite links are not adequate for a good GPS reading?)

In any case, I talked to an old FO of officer grade recently that said he had one of these in the field. That certainly could have been the case more than once in a while. Vern...Niner Delta has posted photo of one at my other site. Niner Delta might have actually had one for use when he was in the bush....but he'd have to say.

For me, exact didn't mean much in giving an OT line. The compass the infantry used was good enough for me. What I paid attention to was the dead metal.

I'm stealing Vern's photo of the M2 to attach here.

I don't know about others but one of the most difficult things to teach a squaddie seemed to be map reading and compass work.

I am lucky as I have n0 problem with either - possibly because I was in the Scouts and then at sea but your average grunt seemed to see it as Black Magic or something.

We mostly used Silva compasses and I still carry one in my camera bag.

The attached is one that my grandfather had. It is from the Naval Exhibition of 1905. Nice souvenir except that the North point now points South Must be the fact that we are in France and they have a secret weapon to jam English compasses...................................

I think the problem with maps and compasses was that the various levels of leaders often didn't realize that they had to pay attention all the time as to where they were. Guys would have a map and know, or be told by down grid, where they were. They would get some instruction as to direction they should move and it would all be clear as day. They would put their map and compass away and start out as directed. Then, when various radio messages diverted their element one way and another, along with other distractions that came up all the time, they would suddenly find that they didn't recognize any of the landmarks they could see on their map after they got around to pulling it back out...and they were only slightly aware of how many redirections they took and where they took them or how much ground they had covered. Then, on top of this, if they got into contact it got to be a case of "oh crap....where am I really"?

I spent a lot of time calling for marking rounds for ROTC lieutenants that didn't know where the hell they were. Probably Vern can remember such LT's as well.

In my case, before I became the FO, I realized the Company CO depended on the FO to confirm locations, although the infantry CO's I was under at various times were both excellent soldiers and always would know exactly where they were....well just about always. The FO had to always know where he was. It was his number one responsibility as arty direction might be needed with any sudden contact....and just about all contact was sudden. When it became my lot to be the FO, I was aware of the gravity of the responsibility and lived in dread of not being aware of my location at all times. I was mostly successful...as I remember anyway. Fear has a way of being a terrific instructor.

"Why do you carry one in your camera bag"? I hear nobody ask
Well, if I find a really great location for some photographic work, I check out the compass points so I can work out the best time of day to return and take pictures - no point in photographing buildings with the sun behind them
Simples

Had one LT FO that was so bad that I had to get the Inf CO to overrule him when he was about to blow us all up.
He never went out into the field with us again, and not too long after that he was gone.

Vern.

There was always plenty of incompetence at all levels back then and most of us joined the actual learning process somewhere near the bottom of the competence chain because, multi week military schooling or not, all the important things had to be learned by doing. I was, however, always surprised at how much aptitude for war there really was among such an assortment of amateurs as existed back forty or so years ago. I wonder if the US Army of today is more competent with all the modern electronic locating and aiming devices and "professional" soldiers that do multiple tours?