Page 81 - MERCIAN Eagle 2015

STTT to Uganda Major Tony Seager
Deploying as part of the 4 MERCIAN led Short Term Training Team (STTT) to Uganda has been an aspiration that previously civilian employment had prevented me
from achieving; finally high in their Mount Olympus home the Gods ensured that the omens lined up and this April 2015 I was able to deploy with the remainder of the
4 MERCIAN team to Entebbe international airport (more of this later). For those unaware of the requirement the STTT would be the last of a number of multinational training teams (American, French, Dutch and finally British) preparing the Ugandan Peoples Defence Force (UPDF) for deployment to Somalia as part of the
UN Mission to Somalia (UNISOM) aimed principally at fighting Al Shabaab (AS) and restoring stability to the region.
In the early hours of Good Friday the training team came together at Birmingham International Airport, however the whole experience actually started some time earlier. Previously I had relied on a medical centre to ensure my inoculations were up to date, however this was no longer the case; you can imagine my delight to discover that I would require the full complement pretty much from scratch. Prior to deployment the training team, including the attached RMO came together at Sennybridge for an element of T3; it would seem that training
in wet Wales for deployment to hot Africa would be a continued theme from Regular to Reservist service. Suitably briefed up
on the political and military capabilities of both the UPDF and AS, both in Somalia and Uganda itself and on the capabilities
of the variety of spiders, snakes (including some well travelled ones), ants and plants that were queuing up to harm us, the training teams had the opportunity to come together and plan the lessons that they would be delivering. The next step would be the actual deployment.
The Ugandan experience started
almost immediately at check in, as large numbers of families with vast quantities
of baggage went through the check in gates. In hindsight, somewhat foolishly, I opted to follow a particularly disorganised family through the process. Having been delayed from taking off whilst the luggage of an unnamed group was removed from the plane, we arrived late at night in a very dark and tropical Entebbe international airport. At this stage I discovered half my baggage had not made the same journey and would (apparently) follow on! A universal truth of driving at night in Africa seems to be don’t do it! For that reason the first night was spent in a hotel on the banks of Lake Victoria, midnight swims being swiftly cancelled upon the reminder of the crocodile threat. The next morning the team departed by road for Camp Simba, the Ugandan Infantry Battle School and a trip that plunged us into the chaos of Kampala’s’ rush hour traffic. Having completed the drivers’ and commanders’
matrix test it was immediately apparent we would be the only people in Uganda with any awareness of the local Highway Code. All that remained was a final update on
the AS threat brief and an update on the situation in Somalia from Capt Paul Marriot, attached to the STTT from 2 MERCIAN, who had flow to Uganda via Mogadishu and our training delivery could commence.
The STTT were responsible for delivering two principal elements. Low level tactics would be taught and tested at sub-unit level by discrete 4 MERCIAN training teams; Staff
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