Scoop’s Views

U.S. Army Sgt. Lawrence G. Sprader, 24, is shown in this undated photo provided by the Fort Hood, Texas, public information office. (Photo: Fort Hood PIO)

The Associated Press is reporting the autopsy on the body of body of U.S. Army Sgt. Lawrence G. Sprader, 25, found this past Tuesday night in a brushy area of Fort Hood, should he died of hyperthermia and dehydration.

At the time of his death, Sprader was in a a two-week non-commissioned officers (NCO) leadership course, called the Warrior Leader Course, which, back in my Army days, was known as the Professional Leadership Development Course (PLDC). The Warrior Leader Course (WLC), is conducted by the NCOA and trains junior enlisted Soldiers and NCOs in basic leadership, and is a 15-day course.

A practice land navigation test for the WLC, according to information from Fort Hood’s newspaper, the Fort Hood Sentinel, is held on day nine. According to the III Corps’ Noncommissioned Officer Academy (NCOA) commandant, Command Sgt. Maj. Annette Joseph, soldiers are not evaluated on their performance during the practice test. They are refamiliarized on land navigation, a mandatory knowledge item in the Army, beginning on the first day of the WLC course, Joseph said.

According to information from Fort Hood, soldiers are not evaluated on their performance during the practice test. During the actual land navigation course, soldiers are assigned one of eight possible starting locations, each with a large, brightly-colored numbered sign. Each soldier then goes to his assigned starting point and using the individual scorecards distributed by academy instructors, plots their grid, uses a compass to locate the points, and walks to the points to see if their grid matches the one on the silhouette at each location. Each silhouette is a three-foot tall, outline of a soldier holding an M-16. They are not hidden in the brush or trees, but can be located near them, according to Joseph.

“There is no trickery involved,” Joseph said. “We are trying to set soldiers up for success.”

When I was in PLDC and later, the Basic Non-Commissioned Officers Course (BNCOC), part of the training is leadership. To be an effective leader in the Army, you must be able to instruct, so, during my instruction phases, always on land navigation or some Infantry tactic, I would give the two-hour presentation, as required, but then set up my tests. For the land navigation stuff, I always used those white paper plates that people often use at least two or three at a time so liquids don’t seep through the plate. On the plate was written a series of numbers, and depending on which team you were on, you would be off in a different direction.

At the end of the land navigation course, every two-person team had an hour to complete a two-mile land navigation course. All teams came back to my spot, where I sat with a PRC-77 (a portable field radio) and a vehicle, usually a Jeep. One person on each team had to carry a PRC-77 — just in case they had any trouble and got really lost. I guess I’ve once again tipped my hat that I am old — so old that I was in before the HumVees came out. Actually, I was just getting out of service when HumVees were being introduced.

For Sprader, though, he enlisted in the Army in July 2000, and attended basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C. He returned to the U.S. last September from a deployment to Iraq, and then spent several months at Fort Lee, Va., according to military information.

The Fort Hood Sentinel article noted that the only injuries suffered by searchers, at the time Sprader’s body was found, were all heat-related. Temperatures have remained in the lower to mid-90s since the search began.

During the several treks to Fort Hood that I made, always seemingly in the Summer, the heat always seemed to hover around 92 degrees or higher. The barracks where I slept had no air conditioning, but they did have plenty of windows, and each bay of bunks had two large floor fans that sounded like a jet engine in the distance.

Sad footnotes

The really sad note about Sprader’s death is a report that water — the lack of which was one of the contributing factors to his death — was readily available.

“Water was readily available (in the area where he was found),” Robert Volk, Fort Hood game warden chief, said, noting that four ponds and clear-running springs were in the vicinity.

He was also found with all of his issued gear and course-required equipment.

“He had completed the buddy team (land navigation) practice test and exam during this course,” said Lt. Col. Carter Oates, commander of Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 11th MP. Det., CID.

Sprader had received training in land navigation prior to this latest practice test, he added, noting that risk assessments are performed and safety precautions are taken before any training exercise.

Joseph said each soldier in the WLC begins the land navigation course with

• two canteens of water
• a CamelBak of water
• two Meals, Ready-To-Eat (MREs)
• two compasses
• a protractor
• a laminated map of the course area, which is attached to a clipboard and a scorecard with the assigned points to locate.

Soldiers are also allowed to have an index card for notes. There are also water buffaloes (portable trailers the military uses for hauling water), as well as water coolers available on the course site to ensure no one would run out of potable water.

According to Joseph, compasses are all validated on-site, immediately prior to the start of the day’s course, adding that each soldier is required to carry two compasses just in case one malfunctions during the course.

During the land navigation course, soldiers were required to wear the full uniform of the day, consisting of the action combat uniforms and thin mesh, as well as numbered vests. The vests for Sprader’s group were green with large, bright yellow numbers on them. No rucksacks or helmets were worn, as all soldiers wore their soft caps — baseball-style hats — during the course, along with their standard load-bearing equipment vests, Joseph added. They were carrying unloaded M-16s strapped across their backs. All of this would be a fairly typical load for any soldier in a non-combat environment, but certainly, not really anything more than they would carry most of the time they were doing most military drills.

Sad loss for all

In the end, this is a sad loss for Sprader’s family, Fort Hood, his combat comrades-in-arms, and the military community at-large, as well as the country. We are losing enough soldiers to “insurgents” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here, a combat veteran, managed to get disoriented on a post he was seemingly familiar with, and died as a result of high temperatures and lack of water. That’s such a sad event.