Date:         Sun, 9 Jan 2000 03:02:33 -0600
From:         Mike Salovesh <t20mxs1@CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: How far

Ooops!  Somehow, this message bounced yesterday.  Let me try again:

 "JACK T. HUGHES" <102443.3442@COMPUSERVE.COM> asked
> . . .  But I am more interested in learning how far a human
>being can go on foot in a fixed time (carrying all water, food, and
>footgear needed) under optimal conditions, say a 24-hour period, or 48, >or even longer.
>
>Has anyone ever heard of any such competition, for sport, or for
>research?
>
> It should have great appeal for suicidally inclined fitness freaks.

John Graves suggested that you might ask the military.

As for me, I'm a devout pacifist.  As it happens, I held that belief
before, during, and after my two years of service in the U.S. Army
during the Korean War.

Nonethelesss, I can give the start of an answer to Jack's question. It
used to be routine in U.S. Army basic training to have recruits do a
30-mile hike in one day, carrying full field pack (something like 50 to
60 pounds) plus rifle.  The last stragglers still on their feet would
usually come in about ten hours after starting; the bulk of a training
company would finish 30 miles in around nine hours. (The standard
marching rate is 120 paces per minute, and a standard pace is 30 inches.
Allowing the Army's usual 10 minutes rest each hour, that figures out to
a little under three miles per hour. Forced marches in basic training,
however, included a lot of double time, 180 paces per minute, or about
4.5 mph.)

Standard infantry doctrine regarded it as daring, but just possible, to
move a foot army 100 miles or thereabouts in three days and expect them
to do battle shortly after arrival.  Anything much faster than that was
regarded as wasted effort, because the troops supposedly would be so
worn out from the effort that they'd have to rest until the end of the
third day anyhow before they'd be of any use in battle.

Of course, once in a rare while some really daring commander would win a
battle by pushing farther in less time and attacking as soon as his
troops got wherever they were going.  Pursuing enemies or reinforcements
would arrive so late that the battle would be over and the fast-moving
raiders, victorious, would be gone.

As for me, at the peak of physical condition in my youth I wouldn't have
wanted to be in any such fast-moving general's army. Not without a horse
-- or a Jeep, if not a HUM-V.

But I have covered about 60 marching miles in two days,  carrying full
field pack and rifle, together with the whole company I started basic
training with.

I was lucky.  A couple of days later, I came down with pneumonia and was
in the post hospital for eight days. That meant I lost the training
cycle and had to transfer out of that basic training company.

By the end of the cycle, that company had set records in all directions.
Their physical fitness tests were the best of any training company in
the army the month they finished the cycle.  As a company, they set
records for marksmanship with just about all standard weapons. The
company also set new records at Camp Gordon, Georgia for having the
highest AWOL rate, the highest loss of trainees from the cycle due to
illness, and the highest rate of trainees disciplined under Article 15
or by courts martial.  (The next two succeeding 16-week cycles in that
training company were pushed until they bettered those records.)

Some months after leaving basic training, I was in Korea "enjoying" the
war. Well, at least I was happy to read (in the Far East edition of Army
Times) that most of the officers and leading NCOs of Company B, Provost
Marshal Training Center, Camp Gordon, Georgia were being court
martialed, for whatever charge was equivalent to cruelty to trainees.

They deserved it.  I know: that was my old company.

-- mike salovesh        <salovesh@niu.edu>                PEACE !!!

P.S.:  Note to very old Army hands:  Remember the training film "The
late Company B"?  I always thought the cadre of my first basic training
company were moved to their wild efforts by a wish to overcome any
threat of that epithet being attached to THEIR company.

P.P.S.:  Let's be sensible.  I still walk as much as three or four miles
in a day, but that's all I'd want to depend on.  On a LONG day.