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    Ugandan Experience To Remember

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    cjtfhoa
    As we made our decent into Entebbe, Uganda’s International Airport, we could see Lake Victoria and the lush green surroundings, which was a drastic change to what we had become accustomed to while in Djibouti.

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    Ugandan Experience To Remember

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    cjtfhoa
    39 views2 pages
    As we made our decent into Entebbe, Uganda’s International Airport, we could see Lake Victoria and the lush green surroundings, which was a drastic change to what we had become accustomed to while in Djibouti.

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    Ugandan Experience to Remember

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    As we made our decent into Entebbe, Uganda’s International Airport, we could see Lake Victoria and the lush green surroundings, which was a drastic change to what we had become accustomed to while in Djibouti.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    39 views2 pages

    Ugandan Experience To Remember

    Uploaded by

    cjtfhoa
    As we made our decent into Entebbe, Uganda’s International Airport, we could see Lake Victoria and the lush green surroundings, which was a drastic change to what we had become accustomed to while in Djibouti.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    Ugandan experience to remember

    By Captain Patrick Morris

    Note: Captain Morris is the battalion captain for the U.S. Army 2nd Combined Arms Battalion,

    137th Infantry Division Combat Operations Center.

    JINJA, Uganda (September 26, 2010) – As we made our decent into Entebbe, Uganda’s

    International Airport, we could see Lake Victoria and the lush green surroundings, which was a drastic

    change to what we had become accustomed to while in Djibouti. Our two-hour drive from the airport to

    our final destination in Jinja included a quick stop in Kampala, the capitol of Uganda, to exchange

    currency. Once we were out the large city, we were surrounded by large sugar cane and tea fields on

    both sides of the highway. Our driver informed us that these are two of the major agricultural exports

    behind coffee, which is their largest.

    We arrived in Jinja late in the afternoon and the city was still buzzing with people along the

    streets and in the market areas. We were very surprised at the amount of shops and goods available to

    people in this area. Our hotel, Gately on the Nile, was a remodeled home along the banks of Lake

    Victoria, less than one kilometer from the source of the Nile River. We were given the opportunity to

    change hotels, but chose to stay due to the extremely friendly staff, great food and amazing location.

    Our lead Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance trainer, Ron Corkrin, scheduled

    a meeting for us and the rest of the trainers on the Sunday prior to our mission beginning where we

    were provided the operations order we would use for the Command Post Exercise. Because of past

    assignments and experience, U.S. Army Major Kevin Braun worked with the personnel and logistics

    sections, U.S. Army Captain Kimberly Young worked with the communications section and I worked with

    the battle captain.

    We spent the first day of training getting to know our counterparts in the UPDF and

    understanding their future mission. The CPX was just one stage in their training for their mobilization on
    deployment to Mogadishu this winter. Instead of having the normal crawl, walk and run phases of

    training, it felt more like we went straight to the run phase, which at first frustrated us and the staff, but

    we were all able to adapt, overcome and complete the mission.

    Radio communications and communication between the staff sections were a huge hurdle that

    they eventually overcame as the week went on. They were eventually able to distinguish between

    current operations and future operations and divide themselves into sections to work on both at the

    same time. We watched as the section leaders took charge of their missions and came up with plans

    that were tactical and efficient to complete each mission. We gave the staff members a questionnaire

    pertaining to their training experience and most of the comments were very supportive of our

    participation and assistance during the exercise.

    On graduation day we presented two battalion coins, one to the battle captain and one to the

    battalion executive officer, to recognize them for their hard work and achievements during the CPX. We

    also received authorization to wear our U.S. AFRICOM patches while in Uganda, so we had our

    counterparts place our new patches on us.

    Being part of this mission helped us gain a better understanding as to why we are here and how

    we can help Africans solve African problems. This will be an experience we will never forget and could

    quite possibly be one of the most rewarding experiences of our military careers. We were not only given

    the opportunity to work with a foreign army with an important mission, but also had the opportunity to

    travel to a part of the world that we might otherwise never have visited.

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