Originally Posted By: NightHiker
Originally Posted By: bentirran
I've looked on google earth, the terrain is not difficult, being mostly flat and is criss crossed by dirt roads and other easily identifiable landmarks.


Google earth can be deceiving. Although not great, these pictures may give you a little better understanding of the terrain.



Originally Posted By: bentirran
Reminds me of another story about Marine Lance Corporal Jason Rother


The two stories are similar only in the fact that they both died alone in the desert. There are some significant differences between the two:

Rother was missing for about 24 hours before it was even noticed that he was missing. Sprader was considered missing when he failed to return when the recall sounded.

Rother was a fairly new and inexperienced Marine Lance Corporal (E-3) on a exercise 2,500 miles away from his home base and not fully acclimatized to the Mojave desert. Sprader was a Army Sergeant (E-5) attending a NCO course at his own base.

Rother didn't have a map, a compass, or communication equipment. Sprader was on a navigation course with a map & compass and at least had his personal cell phone.


An excellent fictionalized account of Rother's ordeal -

When the Poor Boys Dance

http://www.amazon.com/When-Poor-Boys-Dance-Borden/dp/0446604070

From Publishers Weekly
The horrifying ordeal of a nameless young Marine accidentally abandoned during a training exercise in the Mojave Desert forms the basis of this intense third novel (after Seven Six One) from Borden. As the Marine treks for days and miles in the brutal, arid heat, he sustains himself through imaginary conversations with his drill instructor, Sergeant Kline, and other superior officers. Increasingly, these talks fade into hallucinations in which the Marine relives the final moments of fellow leathernecks in great battles of the past-Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, Korea, Vietnam-and of today and tomorrow. Fraught with relentless depictions of the fiery desert, the horrors of war and the courage of fighting men, Borden's narrative, though sometimes transparently manipulative, is more often genuinely stirring. The title comes from an aphorism voiced by Sergeant Kline's: "War is when the poor boys dance."

_________________________
- - Univ of Saigon 68 - -