A joint team of six service members, along with privately contracted dock workers, successfully offloaded and staged 262 pieces of gear from the BELUGA FUSION, a Liberian flag ship, in support of Exercise SHARED ACCORD 2010 here. The 10-day exercise, which will commence Aug. 2, is an annual, bilateral field training exercise aimed at conducting small unit infantry and staff training with partner nations for the purpose of peace and stability operations. This year’s SA is being held in Mozambique.
The offloaded gear, which includes Humvees, 7-Tons, and bulldozers, will be used to sustain the mission and accomplish humanitarian initiatives established by U.S. Marine Forces Africa, according to U.S. Army Maj. Gina SanNicolas, commander for the 950th Transportation Company with the Surface Distribution and Deployment Command.
“Our mission as pre-enablers was to make sure the ship was offloaded,” said Chief Petty Officer Robert Propp, battalion medical chief and ground safety manager with 4th Landing Support Battalion. “However, our mission has shifted to staging and moving the vehicles.”
Aircraft maintenance issues in the United States meant that the full advance team, replete with heavy equipment operators and engineers, would not arrive in time to conduct the first part of their mission and stage the vehicles, according to Propp. So a skeleton team of three Marines, one Sailor and one Soldier, was assembled and began functioning to complete the mission.
“What we’re doing out here is called mission success,” Propp said. “We are accomplishing this mission.”
Success with such small numbers is due in part to the makeup of the SDDC and its operators, according to SanNicolas.
“We are very small in size, but we have strategic impact through our agents,” SanNicolas said. “We become the center of gravity, linking agents for the vessels with port authorities, and to the military sealift command. Also, because we had the 4th LSB on the ground, we were able to utilize that team and come with a plan. We pulled upon our experiences, established a great rapport, and overcame the challenges to react to a fluid timeline.”
SanNicolas praised the efforts of her small, improvised team, who worked through the night to complete the offload as scheduled. “They had the drive to complete the mission despite the challenges,” she said.
“They have been absolutely phenomenal, and the attitudes I’ve observed have only made (this experience) better.”
Exercise SHARED ACCORD is a U.S. Africa Command-sponsored, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Africa-planned exercise that supports U.S. Africa Command’s Theater Strategic Objectives. The exercise is scheduled to conclude on Aug. 13. All U.S. forces will return to their home bases in Europe and the U.S. at the end of the exercise.