The End Around

Dave had just completed Army officer training school and was assigned to advanced combat training before being sent to his permanent work station.

On this particular day, Dave and the other members of his unit were being trained to survive if separated from their unit in a combat zone. The object of the drill was to teach the raw soldiers to think on their feet when they were in a stressful, life and death situation.

The drill was simple: traverse a hostile area from point A to point B. There were mock enemy combatants strategically placed between the two points. The soldiers needed to devise a plan to traverse the area without being shot or captured.

Dave had graduated with honors from the University of Oklahoma with a master’s degree in mathematics so he had the analytical skills to successfully complete the task at hand. Of course, the other soldiers were also college graduates, so they had some rudimentary analytical skills as well.

The soldiers left the starting point in ten minute intervals to allow each one a fair opportunity to successfully avoid the enemy. Most of the soldiers took literally the axiom that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. However, they forgot that the objective was not to arrive at point B first, but to arrive unscathed by the enemy.

Dave was the fifth soldier to start so he had some time to contemplate the problem and develop a plan of attack. He decided to take a circuitous route while recording his direction and distance traveled at each turn so that he would always know where he was in relation to point B.

When it was his turn, he headed directly toward point B until he was out of sight of the official observers and then walked perpendicular to his original direction until he reached the perimeter of the battlefield. He then walked in the general direction of point B, but on the perimeter line. When he reached the perimeter boundary in that direction, he then walked that boundary until he knew that he was directly on the other side of point B. Then, with some rudimentary math calculations based on his compass readings and distance traveled, he was able to determine the exact location of point B and walked directly toward it.

When he arrived at his objective, the observers were surprised to see him come out of the woods from the opposite direction from which he began. He was the only soldier who had taken the circuitous route to his objective and the only one to arrive at the end point without encountering the enemy.

The other soldiers had decided to attempt to discern the location of the enemy as they walked directly toward point B and then attempt to avoid it in some manner. Dave’s plan was to avoid the enemy completely and he worked it to perfection.

Dave didn’t receive any kudos for his problem solving skills that day. But, he did reinforce his own belief that one needs to forge his own path through life systematically and with forethought, and not to take the path well worn.

He also attempted to instill that philosophy into the less erudite with a modicum of success along the way. For some, it took a lifetime before they realized the meaning of that lesson.