Fort Hood soldier gets lost and dies during training exercise

[Pflugerville Ag]

Sad and weird story. A sgt. in the Army got lost on Fort Hood and died during a solo exercise that testing his map reading and navigation skills.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/13/missing.soldier.ap/index.html

[Curly06]

heard bout this yesterday on the radio thought this was an interesting point
Reached on his cell phone two hours after the exercise was over, Sprader told commanders he wanted to finish the drill.
im sure his family is wishin he hadnt made that dumb decision
sad & unnecessary death

[Pflugerville Ag]

I'm sure not finishing the drill is a very bad thing, so he didn't want to get his ass kicked. Maybe some of the former military that post on this site can confirm or deny that???

Also curious to see how he died.

[Curly06]

9 other soldiers got lost but all except Sprader got back to the rally point safely by following the sound of a siren

after being contacted on radio and still didnt take the help it was a decision that cost him his life- unnecessary

[whitelightnin_23]

im sure his family is wishin he hadnt made that dumb decision sad & unnecessary death

I won't go as far as to say it was a "dumb" decision...but I will say that Curly's statement is a little myopic...(Curly that means shortsighted, narrowminded, etc)
I'm sure it was "one of those exercises" where if you fail, you're out of whatever program your training for (OCS, Special Forces, etc)...
I can understand his decision...although it proved to be a fatal one.
That's the kind of people our military is training...to survive on your own at all costs & don't take the "short way out"...in a way, I would think that even if he knew the consequences (injured or killed), he probably would have still made that decision.

[Curly06]

thanks for the definition
didnt say i didnt understand it- still think its dumb to risk your life in that situation he wasnt at war he was at home

[whitelightnin_23]

thanks for the definition
didnt say i didnt understand it- still think its dumb to risk your life in that situation he wasnt at war he was at home

so you think most of our soldiers are "dumb"???
soldiers risk their lives every day in TRAINING!!! That's what the military does...Could this have been prevented, probably...but accidents happen all the time!



(on the definition)...I'll do what I can...

[Mezentius]

He was probably snake bit or died of heat stroke or something.
Military training is dangerous. GI's are always getting injured/killed at Fort Hood and elsewhere...
It's a shame it happened to him but I agree he was so afraid to fail that he went beyond his means to handle the heat/environment.

Heck an apache crash landed in my grand dad's field about 10 years ago fully loaded with hellfire missles. Nobody was hurt luckily but the pilots had to sleep out by the chopper till the next day when a truck was brought out because of the missles.

[dogdoc]

The Waco news just said he died of hyperthermia and dehydration. This in spite of him being in an area that had numerus springs and creeks. ??? His body is in Dallas for Autopsy.

[The Massacre]

sad to hear.

i was going to respond to some of the comments on this thread, but the particular poster i was going to respond to already made enough moronic comments that the site doesn't need me to point out the stupidity oozing from those posts, it is quite obvious. :cool:

[Burnetaggie99]

:sad: some people are not cut out for this type of training. That being said I feel sorry for his family and friends. It is a big deal to not pass your training but you can always do it again. If all else fails he lives another day to be with his family, if he just does the right thing and not be stubborn. First rule is when your lost you stop and get your sense of direction by using the sun and your watch. Your watch will act as a compass. Just take a blade of grass, a straight twig, pencil, or a match. Then Hold your watch horizontally, with the hour hand pointing in the suns direction. Next lay your grass or other object across the middle of your watch, halfway between the hour hand and the 12. the grass blade or other object will be pointing south.