MARINE CORPS LOGISTICS BASE BARSTOW, Calif. -- Recently the Marines from the provost marshal's office here took the initiative to go where few Marines here have gone: into the field for some good old fashioned land navigation training.
Lance Cpl. Michael Ojeda, training noncommissioned officer for PMO, said it was an opportunity for Marines to get out of the office or off the gate for a day and get back to their roots.
"We gave a class in the morning covering things like how to shoot an azimuth, plotting coordinates on a map and how to read maps," said Ojeda.
Marines were then given a short lunch break and reported back to the classroom where they were "deployed" by Humvees into the Bureau of Land Management area north of MCLB Barstow.
The Hummers traveled over steep hills, through riverbeds and mud to reach points on the course where Marines would begin.
The course, which was desined by Ojeda and 1st Lt. Ricardo Benevidas, deputy provost marshal here, was based on 12 geographical locations where ammunition cans containing encrypted messages could be found. Four teams of two Marines each were tasked with the mission of locating the boxes, utilizing land navigation techniques taught to them during the morning class, and calling in the message to confirm the correct location.
The course was part of the monthly basic infantry skills training PMO has implemented.
"Myself and (Gunnery Sgt. David Paul, operations chief, criminal investigation division) came up with the idea," said Benevidas.
Ojeda was tasked with coming up with new ideas for the upcoming months, and said that a patrolling and tactical formations exercise will probably be next, and (PMO) is working at securing paintball guns for a possible field evolution in the near future.
Ojeda said that he hopes the concept of monthly field training takes to the rest of the Marines on base whom normally wouldn't have a chance to hone their infantry skills.
"This kind of training is awesome."