Soon after the 1993 edition of the Pioneering Merit Badge Pamphlet was published, I ventured to contact its author with some questions. Happily, I was able to reach him at his home, and was treated to enthusiastic explanations regarding the projects our troop wanted to build. Mr. Peschke was always very generous with his time and had so much information to share, it always felt I was being given dollar answers for my little 10¢ questions.
Pioneering Legend, Adolph Peschke
The following text has been extracted from the Acknowledgments page of the Pioneering Merit Badge Pamphlet he authored: “Mr. Peschke has more than sixty years’ tenure in the St. Louis Area Council, and is a Wood Badge course director for more than 20 course staff experiences. He has designed thirty original “boy-size” pioneering projects. As a design engineer for five national Scout jamborees, he was responsible for the theme development, site layout, and staff training for the Action Center’s pioneering areas. He also developed the pioneering kit with its color-coded system to identify rope and spar lengths for building pioneering projects, and he has contributed to the BSA Fieldbook, Program Helps, and Boys’ Life and Scouting Magazines.”
Adolph Peschke, a most worthy recipient of the Boy Scouts of America’s Silver Antelope Award, passed away on November 23, 2012. He was 98. I had just spoken with him about two weeks before, during which time he was, as always, enthusiastic and emphatically informative. He will be missed, but his legacy will live on. Thank you Adolph! You have served, and continue to serve, as a most-helpful resource of valuable insight and information.
Some special quotes by JOHN THURMAN, Camp Chief, Gilwell Park from 1943-1969 pertaining to pioneering in the Boy Scouts:
Because It’s FUN!
“There are few activities which, properly presented, have a greater appeal to the Scout and Senior Scout than Pioneering and ever since the introduction of Wood Badge training, Pioneering has been given a full share in the programme of Scouters’ training. In the summer months when Scouters at Gilwell are building bridges, towers, and rafts, and boys are in camp it has been all too common to hear from the boys such remarks as, ‘I wish we did that in our Troop’ or ‘We never do anything like that’.”
“Why Pioneering?To me the over-riding reason for presenting Pioneering is that boys like it. Some years ago we started providing simple equipment which Troops in camp at Gilwell can use. The demand is insatiable. Year by year we add more, but we never provide enough; because as one Troop sees another using the equipment and building a bridge they want to try it also and the desire to do Pioneering spreads like a contagious disease throughout the camp.
But there are reasons for Pioneering other than the fact that, generally speaking, Scouts like doing it. B.-P. wrote: “I am inclined to suggest to Scouters that in addition to the technical details of knotting, lashing, and anchorages, there is an educative value in Pioneering since it gives elementary training in stresses, mensuration, etc., and it also develops initiative and resourcefulness to use local material. Additionally, it gives practice in team work and discipline. In other words, Pioneering is practical and character building: the two essential ingredients of any programme material for Scouts.”
The winning Scouts from 2008, 1st Athol, South Africa, in front of their 35ft-span suspension bridge, built in 4.5 hours.
“The modern cynic may think it is all very old-fashioned but the short answer to this is, ‘Yes, of course it is, but so is breathing and sleeping and other things that mankind has been doing for a long time.’ It does not follow that because an activity has been used for a long time it is out-dated and, in fact, I am prepared to say that there is more interest in Pioneering today than ever before, perhaps because facilities have improved and perhaps because some of us have made an effort to present Pioneering to the Movement in a more imaginative and varied way.
“Quite apart from that, though, Pioneering is not old-fashioned in its purely technical sense. I was showing a Managing Director of a large civil engineering firm round Gilwell when a Wood Badge Course was pioneering near the Bomb Hole. He displayed very great interest in the Pioneering and looked closely at all that was happening. From our point of view there was nothing unusual going on; this was a usual routine exercise with two or three bridges being built, a couple of towers, and a raft. As we walked away my civil engineering friend said, ‘I am delighted that the Scout Movement is still doing this: it is tremendously important. Despite the fact that modern machinery and equipment is magnificent there often comes a time when a man has to use ingenuity and improvise in order to move the job forward and the engineer who has the spirit that your kind of training produces is the man we want in our business.'”
“I hope that Districts will more and more accept responsibility for making pioneering equipment available to be borrowed or hired by any troop. The more expensive things become the more necessary to work on a communal basis, and the Scout community is the Scout District. I know the problems—somewhere to store the gear and someone to look after it, but these are problems which a live District can overcome if real determination is there to give Scouts pioneering practice, and I am satisfied that it comes high in the list of things Scouts want to do. Determination remains the enduring answer to most problems.”
SCOUT PIONEERING 