Day 25. Thursday
21st August (continued)
When
I was a 'good' Boy Scout, I was taught the fabulous skill of
orienteering. The maps Rhodesia had, at a scale of 50,000 – 1, were
suburb pieces of work. Once, maybe at the age of 13, I went into the
pavilion of the Rhodesian Air force during the Salisbury show.
There
they explained how they made the maps. A plane would fly a grid and
two cameras, spaced slightly apart took pictures. They had some weird
magnifying glasses and after 'relaxing' your brain, all of a sudden,
the left and right images joined in 3D! From this and other stuff,
they made the maps.
Dotted
around, depending what area of the country, the Rhodesians had built
height markers. This was just a column of concrete, about adult
shoulder height, topped with a metal four sided flag painted black.
And somewhere would be painted an exact navigational position and the
height above sea level.
The
most incredible thing were the contours. Spaced every 50 metres, I
had no problem creating the 2D image into an actual interpretation of
the landscape I would be in. However, a compass was a very handy
thing to have. Sure, we were taught emergency adaptations, but it was
rare we took a glass of water, a needle, a magnet and tissue paper
with us in case a bad man stole the compass. This method does work,
the magnetised needle, floating on the tissue paper, would point
North/South, until it sank into the murky deeps of the glass.
With
this method, you had to wait until after midday and clock the travels
of the sun to work out where was north? It also helped to recall that
the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, except on the weekend
because everyone is too drunk to see either.
During
the Bush War, and on patrol, I was always in charge of the maps and
directions we took, and convert every night our position into Shackle
code (which I later found out had been long ago cracked by the
Russians). I found it rather surprising that most of our stick, could
simply not compute. I was lucky, it was for me so easy! Once I had
north, I could 'see' each and every gomo (hill), in front and behind
us. I could orientate us to any possible river for water and get it
right to 200 meters.
Once
you have worked out your exact position, using the compass, you would
have to go, say North- East for 10 clicks. There are no roads, there
are no man made landmarks. Nothing but bush.
The
trick was to place the map on the ground and place the compass on the
magnetic north. Now, one had to decide where we are traipsing. Wander
in some direction looking for nasty gooks to kill them.
Once
that was decided, a direction was concluded and then you needed some
kind of 'something' in the line of sight as far away as possible. It
could be a gomo, or if in many a bad case scenario, just some large
tree. Whatever, it was imperative to hold what you chose in vision.
Upon reaching that point, you simply redid the whole thing again.
Easy.
Deep in the bush, not a problem. BUT, equipped with the finest
technology known to man, within 80-90 odd clicks south of Prague as
the crow flies, in the United Nations sanctioned developed country of
the Czech Republic.. – I got lost!
(To
be continued)
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