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.