Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
April 12, 2008 By Meredith Kruse, The Virginian-Pilot
Command Master Chief Andrew Thompson had made nine deployments with the Navy, but none compare to his current cruise: a visit to seven central and west African nations.
Thompson and the rest of the crew of the dock landing ship Fort McHenry have hosted dozens of African soldiers and sailors aboard their ship, trained nearly 1,300 people and delivered more than 500,000 meals and $60,000 in humanitarian aid over the past five months, according to the Navy.
The Fort McHenry, based at Little Creek, is the flagship of the new African Partnership Station, the military’s effort to head off conflicts and combat piracy, drug smuggling and other threats in the area. The high-speed vessel Swift, also from Little Creek, joined the effort in January.
Sailors and Marines trained their African counterparts in a wide range of tasks, including medical care, port security and martial arts.
“It has been extremely rewarding,” Thompson said in a phone interview from Dakar, Senegal. “The training that we’re providing is the first of its kind for them. … Everything that we’re providing, they take on board 100 percent.”
Valuable as that training is, Thompson said, a humbler project struck him as one of the most effective. Sailors built a chicken coop for a youth group in Cameroon so the youngsters could raise and sell poultry.
Service projects like that are a major part of the new initiative. “It sends a signal that we care,” said the Fort McHenry’s skipper, Cmdr. Daniel “Skip” Shaw.
The growing U.S. military presence in the Gulf of Guinea concerns some local residents. But Shaw said he noticed a visible difference in people’s reaction from the ship’s first stop in Senegal to its second.
“We’re getting to the point where we are not only welcomed just for being here” but valued, he said.
The Fort McHenry is scheduled to depart Senegal this weekend and return to Norfolk in May.
April 12, 2008 By Meredith Kruse, The Virginian-Pilot
Command Master Chief Andrew Thompson had made nine deployments with the Navy, but none compare to his current cruise: a visit to seven central and west African nations.
Thompson and the rest of the crew of the dock landing ship Fort McHenry have hosted dozens of African soldiers and sailors aboard their ship, trained nearly 1,300 people and delivered more than 500,000 meals and $60,000 in humanitarian aid over the past five months, according to the Navy.
The Fort McHenry, based at Little Creek, is the flagship of the new African Partnership Station, the military’s effort to head off conflicts and combat piracy, drug smuggling and other threats in the area. The high-speed vessel Swift, also from Little Creek, joined the effort in January.
Sailors and Marines trained their African counterparts in a wide range of tasks, including medical care, port security and martial arts.
“It has been extremely rewarding,” Thompson said in a phone interview from Dakar, Senegal. “The training that we’re providing is the first of its kind for them. … Everything that we’re providing, they take on board 100 percent.”
Valuable as that training is, Thompson said, a humbler project struck him as one of the most effective. Sailors built a chicken coop for a youth group in Cameroon so the youngsters could raise and sell poultry.
Service projects like that are a major part of the new initiative. “It sends a signal that we care,” said the Fort McHenry’s skipper, Cmdr. Daniel “Skip” Shaw.
The growing U.S. military presence in the Gulf of Guinea concerns some local residents. But Shaw said he noticed a visible difference in people’s reaction from the ship’s first stop in Senegal to its second.
“We’re getting to the point where we are not only welcomed just for being here” but valued, he said.
The Fort McHenry is scheduled to depart Senegal this weekend and return to Norfolk in May.