Range Poles

D Vautier
11/2006

Congress allocates a list of equipment that each military unit is assigned to have, use, maintain, and replace as part of its mission.  This list is the famous T.O.N.E. (pronounced TEE-OH-EN-EE).  Anything that you have over and above this list (other than personal things like civies and toothpaste) is considered contraband and is to be surrendered.  Otherwise serious consequences can arise.  The service often conducts inspections looking for contraband.  We soon came up with all kinds of interesting places to stash our stuff.

The idea of having contraband is that it makes life much easier.  Take range poles for instance.  A range pole is used in survey as a target.  It is an aluminum tube with joints that fit into each other and is painted alternate red and white.  It’s a very good idea to have lots of spare range poles.  They are hard to maintain.  They get all beat up real easy because they are used so much and they get to bounce around in the back of a truck all day.  You have to strip the paint off, sand and repaint them to bring them back up to inspection level.  So if you just happen to have an extra set of range poles, then these are the ones that are used for inspection, while the actual working range poles are in the trunk of somebody’s car or stuffed down a chimney somewhere.

Range poles get lost.  One of the most common survey methods that we used was the traverse.  This is the way a traverse works.  The T2-theodolite operator sites on the range pole at his rear station, which is leveled and held in place on the station by an aluminum tripod called a sleeper.  He then turns an angle to his forward station, which is another range pole, sometimes several kilometers away.  After the angle is completed and within tolerance, a chainman drives up, grabs the rear range pole and chucks it in the back of his truck with the rest of the gear.  Meanwhile the T2 crew move on to the forward station and turns another angle.  Meanwhile the party chief is out selecting forward stations and setting range poles, and making sure all is going well.

A survey crew can move pretty fast, especially if you have a long survey to run with a lot of legs (stations).  You don’t want to work into the night, because it’s easy to make mistakes, get yourself lost, and loose equipment--especially range poles.  Besides nighttime in the field is time to imbibe good beer at the nearest German guesthouse.

That’s why it was common practice to pick up any range poles you might find that were just sitting there not doing anything.  It didn’t particularly matter if they were being used by another outfit operating in the same area.  After all, a range pole is a range pole.  Better my range pole than his range pole.  Right?

I remember on a couple of occasions when I was running my T2 theodolite, I would begin turning my second angle and while I was actually sighting on the rear station a truck would come up, a hand would reach out and grab the range pole, and it would be gone—just like that.  The truck would conveniently have mud splashed on its bumper number so there was no way to tell which unit it was from.  We of course know because when we worked with a gun battery, they had a survey team working in the same area.  And of course, our teams would do the same thing.

So I got on the radio:

Me: “Five-three-alpha, this is five-three-bravo. I am unable to proceed.  Please replace rear station, over”
Chief: “This is five-three-alpha.  Five-three-bravo. What happened to your rear station? Over”.
Me: “This is five-three-bravo. Those thieving cannon-cockers stole it.  Over.”
Chief: “This is five-three-alpha.  Roger, Wilco; that’s OK, because we got a bunch of theirs.”