Lesson Overview
Lesson 01 defined a map: a scaled drawing of the ground seen from above, marked with agreed signs. This lesson opens that drawing up and teaches what a soldier must understand to read it and to write on it. There are four parts: the marginal information printed around the edge, which tells you what the map is and how far to trust it; the scale, the fixed relationship between map and ground; the language of the map, its conventional signs and its grid for naming any point exactly; and the military symbols a soldier uses to mark a unit and a task.
This is the knowledge layer. Reading a map quickly, pacing a measured distance, and pinpointing a feature to ten metres are skills built on the ground with a real sheet in hand, and certified in person. Learn here what the map is made of and how it works, so that when you take one onto the ground you already understand what you are looking at.
By the end you will be able to explain why the marginal information matters and where to find it, say what scale means and convert a map distance into a ground distance, recognise the main classes of conventional sign, give a four-, six-, or eight-figure grid reference reading eastings before northings, and read and draw the basic military symbols used to mark a unit and a task on a map.
Key Terms
- Marginal information: the printed matter around the edge of the map, including its title, sheet number, scale, legend, north points, edition, and adjoining sheets.
- Scale: the fixed ratio between a distance on the map and the real distance on the ground, written as a ratio such as 1:50,000.
- Conventional sign: an agreed symbol used on the map to show a real feature, explained in the legend.
- Grid: the network of numbered lines printed over the map, dividing it into squares, that allows any point to be named by a grid reference.
- Grid reference: a set of figures, read eastings before northings, that names a point on the map to a stated degree of precision.
- Romer: a small printed scale, often found on the edge of a compass baseplate, laid into the corner of a grid square to read off the tenths of a six- or eight-figure reference accurately.
- Military symbology: the common, international set of map symbols (the NATO Joint Military Symbology, published as APP-6) used to mark units, equipment, and tasks on a map so that any trained soldier reads them the same way.
- Echelon: the size of a unit (section, platoon, company, and upward), shown on a military symbol by a small mark above the frame.
What the margin tells you
Before reading the body of a map, read its edges. A soldier who ignores the margin can make a sound reading of the wrong map, or of the right map misunderstood.
The title and sheet number name the area covered and identify the sheet within a national series, so that you can call for the correct one and know that you and another soldier are working from the same ground. The scale is stated as a ratio and usually drawn as a bar; it governs every measurement you make, and is the first thing to confirm. The legend lists the conventional signs, so an unfamiliar symbol can be looked up rather than guessed at. The edition and date of revision tell you how old the information is; ground changes, and a road or building may have appeared, moved, or gone since the survey, so a feature near a settlement is best treated as provisional until confirmed on the ground. The diagram of adjoining sheets names the maps that border this one, so a route running off the edge can be continued without delay.
The north points set up the whole of the next lesson. A map carries not one north but three, and the margin shows the angles between them in a small declination diagram. True north is the direction of the geographic pole. Grid north is the direction the grid lines run up the page, which differs from true north by a small, fixed amount. Magnetic north is where a compass needle actually points, and it is the one that matters when you walk on a bearing, because it differs from grid north by the magnetic variation, an angle that is printed for the sheet and that slowly changes year by year. The margin gives both the variation and its rate of change, so an old sheet can still be corrected to today. Reading the margin first is simply good order.
Scale: measuring the ground on paper
The scale is the fixed ratio between a distance on the map and the same distance on the ground. A scale of 1:50,000 means one unit on the map represents fifty thousand of the same units on the ground: one centimetre on the paper is fifty thousand centimetres, that is five hundred metres, of real country. A scale of 1:25,000 means one centimetre stands for twenty-five thousand centimetres, that is two hundred and fifty metres. The smaller the second number, the larger the scale: each centimetre of paper devotes more detail to less ground, and one sheet holds less total country.
A soldier meets a few scales, and it helps to hold them together:
Scale 1 cm on the map equals Best for
1:25,000 250 m on the ground working an area closely (a search)
1:50,000 500 m on the ground moving across country, route planning
1:250,000 2.5 km on the ground the road journey, the wide picture
Confuse two scales and you misjudge a march badly: plan a leg on a 1:25,000 sheet as though it were 1:50,000 and you allow half the distance the ground truly demands. So the rule from Lesson 01 stands: read the scale before you read the map.
To measure a straight-line distance, lay the straight edge of a paper strip between the two points, mark both, then lay the strip against the bar scale in the margin and read off the ground distance directly. Use the bar scale rather than a ruler and arithmetic, because the bar is printed at the same scale as the map and stays correct even if the sheet has been enlarged or reduced on a photocopier. To measure a winding distance along a road, river, or track, work the paper strip around the curve in short straight steps, pivoting at each bend and marking as you go, then read the total against the bar. Remember that a map measures the ground flat: a steep climb adds real distance and a great deal of effort that the flat measurement does not show, which is why the next lessons add the shape of the ground and the timing of a route on top of the bare distance.
Conventional signs: reading the map at a glance
A map could not show every feature as it truly looks and remain legible, so it uses agreed symbols, the conventional signs, each standing for a class of thing on the ground. The legend explains them, and the experienced soldier learns the common ones until the map can be read at a glance. Colour and shape carry most of the meaning, and the signs fall into a few main classes.
Relief, the shape and height of the ground, is shown mainly by contour lines, usually printed brown; Lesson 03 is devoted to reading them. Water, shown in blue, covers the sea, lakes, rivers, streams, and marsh, and is among the most reliable detail on the map because water sits where the ground compels it. Vegetation, shown in green, distinguishes woodland, forest, scrub, and orchard, which matters both for cover and for the going underfoot. Communications, the routes of movement, are shown by lines coded for class: roads by width and colour, tracks and paths by dashes, railways by their own symbol. Settlement and buildings are shown by outlines and tints for built-up areas and by marks for individual structures, with special signs for a church, a public building, or other landmark worth recognising. Boundaries, the administrative lines, are shown by distinctive broken symbols. The legend on the sheet is always the authority; where a local or specialist sign is not in your memory, look it up rather than guess. Learn the colour code first, blue for water, green for vegetation, brown for relief, and half the map reads itself.
The grid: naming any point exactly
The most useful thing on a military map, after the ground itself, is the grid. A network of lines is printed over the whole sheet, running north-south and east-west and crossing to divide the map into squares of equal size; on the standard sheets each square is one kilometre across on the ground. These lines let any point be named precisely, so a position can be passed by voice or radio and plotted exactly by another soldier, with no room for the vagueness of "near the wood".
The lines have names. The eastings are the lines running up the page, numbered left to right, so called because their numbers increase as you move east. The northings are the lines running across the page, numbered bottom to top, increasing as you move north. To give a reference you always quote the easting first and the northing second. The old aid is exact: go along the corridor, then up the stairs, that is, read across to the right before you read up. Reverse the two and you name a different point entirely, often miles away, so fix the discipline of eastings before northings early and never let it slip.
A grid reference can be given to different degrees of precision by adding figures. A four-figure reference quotes two figures for the easting and two for the northing, and names the one-kilometre square whose bottom-left corner those lines meet: for example, 27 61 names the square, and is enough when the square itself is the answer. A six-figure reference divides each square mentally into tenths and adds a third figure to each, naming a point to within a hundred metres: 274 612 means just over four-tenths east and just over one-tenth north into square 27 61. An eight-figure reference carries the estimate to hundredths, naming a point to within ten metres, the precision used to mark a found casualty or a sharp landmark.
You estimate those tenths by eye, or read them off accurately with a romer, a small printed scale marked on many compass baseplates. Lay the romer into the bottom-left corner of the square with its scales running up and to the right along the grid lines, and read the easting tenths along the bottom and the northing tenths up the side. A romer turns a guessed sixth figure into a measured one, the difference between a hundred-metre estimate and a confident ten-metre fix.
One more piece makes a reference truly unique. The numbered squares repeat every hundred kilometres across a country, so a six-figure reference alone is only unique within its own hundred-kilometre block. The national grid divides the country into large lettered squares, and the grid-square letters printed in the margin name the block. Quote those letters before the figures and the reference is unambiguous anywhere on the national grid. For most local work within one sheet the figures alone serve; when passing a reference that may be plotted on another sheet, or to another agency, give the letters as well.
Reading a grid reference:
Northings
(read 2nd, "up the stairs")
62 +----+----+----+----+
| | P | | | P is in grid square 2761
61 +----+----+----+----+
| | | | | 4 figures 2761 = the 1 km square
60 +----+----+----+----+ 6 figures 274 613 = a point to 100 m
| | | | | 8 figures 2741 6132 = a point to 10 m
59 +----+----+----+----+
26 27 28 29 30
Eastings (read 1st, "along the corridor")
Marking the map: the military symbols
A map is read, but it is also written on. When a commander plans a task, or a soldier reports what they have found, positions and intentions are drawn onto the map, or onto a clear sheet laid over it called an overlay, using symbols that any trained soldier can read. So that one soldier's marking means the same to another, armies across the world share a common standard, the NATO Joint Military Symbology, published as APP-6. The Royal Kaharagian Army adopts it, as it adopts the phonetic alphabet, because a common language of symbols prevents the confusion that wastes time and risks lives. You do not need the whole system, only the few symbols a section uses.
Every unit symbol is built from three things: a frame, a fill, and an icon.
The frame is the shape and colour around the symbol, and it shows whose the unit is, its affiliation. Four are standard, their shapes chosen so they can be told apart even in one colour or a poor light: a friendly unit is a blue rectangle; a hostile unit is a red diamond; a neutral unit is a green square; and an unknown unit is a yellow quatrefoil, a four-lobed cloverleaf shape. The fill is the colour inside the frame, which reinforces the affiliation the frame already shows. The icon is the small drawing inside the frame that says what kind of unit it is. A few are worth knowing: infantry is a single diagonal cross (a saltire, an X); armour or cavalry is an oval; artillery is a filled dot; engineers a shape like a small fieldwork; medical a cross; and a headquarters is shown by a staff, a flagpole, drawn down from the left of the frame.
Figure 1. A friendly infantry unit symbol in the NATO Joint Military Symbology (APP-6). The blue rectangle frame marks it as friendly; the diagonal cross (saltire) inside is the icon for infantry. Add two dots above the frame and it reads as a friendly infantry section. Symbol by CdnMCG, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Above the frame sits a small mark, the echelon or size indicator, that says how large the unit is. The ones a soldier meets are: a section, two dots; a platoon, three dots; a company, one short vertical bar. (Larger formations carry more: a battalion two bars, a regiment three, a brigade an X, a division two X's.) So a blue rectangle with a saltire inside and two dots above it reads, at a glance and in any army that uses the standard, as a friendly infantry section.
Positions are points, but tasks also need lines and areas, drawn as control measures: a boundary between two units' areas; a phase line, a line on the ground used to control movement; an objective, a point or area to be reached or secured; a route, the line a patrol will follow. These are how a plan is drawn so that everyone reads it the same way.
For the RKA this matters most in two places, both taught later. On a sketch or an overlay made on patrol, the Patrolling and Tactical Movement course uses these symbols to record what was seen and where. And when a position is reported, the Signals and Field Communication course pairs the symbol on the map with the grid reference and the standard report spoken on the net. A symbol drawn on the map and a grid reference passed by voice are the two halves of saying exactly where something is.
In Practice: The Reference That Reached the Right Hillside
A section of the RKA is working with the civil rescue service on a stretch of high ground above a coastal town, each section allotted a part of the hillside to search. A soldier moving up a shallow valley finds the missing walker's rucksack, abandoned beside a stream where the path forks. The find must be passed at once, and passed so that the control room, working from its own copy of the 1:25,000 sheet, can mark the exact spot and send help to it directly.
The soldier reads the margin first and confirms the scale and the grid-square letters for the block. Then the grid. The find sits between the eastings 27 and 28, a little over four-tenths of the way across, and between the northings 61 and 62, about three-tenths up. Along the corridor, then up the stairs: easting 274, northing 613. Using the romer on the compass baseplate to sharpen the estimate, the soldier reads it to eight figures, 2741 6132, ten-metre precision, and passes it with the lettered prefix so it is unique on the grid. On the section commander's overlay the find is marked with a small symbol and its grid, so the section's own picture stays current. Control plots the reference without hesitation and vectors a rescue team straight to the stream junction. Because the reference was read in the right order, to the right precision, with the letters that make it unique, no time was lost searching ground that had already given up its answer. A reference read carelessly, eastings and northings reversed, would have sent help to empty country a valley away. The map did its work because the soldier knew how to read it, and how to mark it.
Check Your Understanding
- Name three pieces of marginal information and say what each one lets a soldier do. What are the three norths, and which one do you actually walk on when following a compass bearing?
- A straight leg measures four centimetres on a 1:50,000 map. What is the ground distance, and how did you work it out? How would your answer change on a 1:25,000 map, and why is the bar scale better than a ruler?
- Explain the difference between a four-, six-, and eight-figure grid reference and the rule for the order the figures are read. In the military symbols, what do the frame, the icon, and the echelon mark each tell you, and what does a blue rectangle with a diagonal cross and two dots above it mean?
Reflection (write a short paragraph): The vignette turns on a position passed so that someone who cannot see what you see can act on it: a grid reference read in the right order and to the right precision, and a symbol marked on the map. Think of a real RKA task, a search find, a rendezvous, a hazard to report, where a position must be shared this way. Describe what goes right when it is done correctly, and what goes wrong if the eastings and northings are reversed or the precision is too coarse. Why must this become an automatic skill on the ground rather than something you work out slowly each time?
Summary
- Read the margin first: the title and sheet number, scale, legend, edition and date, adjoining sheets, and the north points (true, grid, and magnetic, with the magnetic variation) tell you what the map is and how far to trust it.
- Scale is the fixed ratio between map and ground; 1:50,000 gives one centimetre to five hundred metres, 1:25,000 one centimetre to two hundred and fifty. Confirm the scale first, measure with the bar scale, and remember the map measures the ground flat.
- Conventional signs are the agreed language of the map, grouped into relief, water, vegetation, communications, settlement, and boundaries; learn the colour code, and treat the legend on the sheet as the authority.
- The grid names any point exactly. Read eastings before northings, along the corridor then up the stairs; four figures name a kilometre square, six a point to a hundred metres, eight to ten metres, with a romer to make the estimate exact, and the grid-square letters to make it unique.
- A map is also written on. The military symbols (NATO Joint Military Symbology, APP-6) mark a unit by its frame (affiliation), its icon (type), and its echelon (size): a blue rectangle with a saltire and two dots above is a friendly infantry section. These foundations are mastered on the ground with a real map and certified in person.
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