Many armed forces faced shortages of map-reading skills during the 1920s and 1930s. Britain's experience of troops becoming lost during the Boer War had prompted wider instruction, including training for corporals and above. Reading a military map requires understanding its symbols and orienting it correctly with a compass. Simply issuing a map and compass does not give an untrained soldier the ability to navigate efficiently. Japan's difficulties belong partly to a wider military education problem that required deliberate training.
Notable Point · 2:40:04-2:41:12
British map-reading instruction after the Boer War
Boer War navigation failures prompted wider British instruction in a skill that many interwar armies still needed to teach.