What is a pike man?

Answer 1

A "POINT MAN", was a selected Infantryman (Grunt) to walk ahead of a column of Infantrymen through terrain. The terrain could be jungle, forest, a city, a desert, snow, mountains, or a beach; ANYTYPE OF TERRAIN (every moving column of "anything" in the military needs a "Point Man" or "Point Tank, etc."). Terrain depending, he could be ten yards in front of a moving column of men, or a quarter of a mile. For "jungle busting" (or "beat 'n the bush") the point man was normally no further than a hundred yards from the front of the column. During the Vietnam War, there were usually TWO types of grunts put on point. Your very BEST man or your very WORST man. The best man was used when things "got serious", and everyone was concerned about a real possibility of "contact!" In I Corps (MR-1/Military Region One) the NVA were a constant threat. Moving through NVA territory demanded your best point man. A "good" point man knows when to walk, how to walk, what signs to look for (such as foot prints, broken tree branches, man made trash, depressed vegetation showing that someone had been there recently), he knows how to be quiet, WHAT HAND SIGNALS TO USE & WHEN TO USE THEM when communicating with the "following column of men." He can spot booby-traps, knows how to dis-arm them or "blow them in place", and can "Sense" an ambush. A unit's worst man will turn out "good" if he survives. Sooner or later, even "the best point men" begin to burn out, and may have to be rotated out of that position. If not rotated out, he'll begin to make mistakes, and either get shot, blown up, or allow the moving column of men to enter "a kill zone." In either of the above cases, he becomes a casualty and/or fails his mission of "walking point." Point men were NOT MOS's (Military Occupational Specialities), there was no formal school for them. An officer or SGT simply picked out the best (or worst) man for the job. He might say, "Jones...you've got point...head that way!", or to a subordinate, "tell Jones he's taking point...back to the NDP." (Night Defensive Position). When a column heard gunfire at the point, we would listen to sounds of the gunfire: AK-47's sounded different than M-16's. If we heard both, then maybe our "Point" survived and will be running back in any moment, or if only the AK was heard, then he's probably just laying out there, and we'll have to send either another point man to check on him or a small group of men. Normally the point man would come running "helter skelter" stumbling, jumping, and then flying into his waiting buddies. Then he'd tell us what he saw, or what happened. We'd either start laughing or start shooting, depending upon what he saw (could've been he ran into a tiger!).