Exercises Start in Lithuania

The first week started with building up cohesion on company level. In this period, the companies of participating nations carried out their pre-planned combat tasks either by cooperating or opposing each other. According to schedule, the next training event is a battalion-level battle drill to be executed on Friday, November 7, and at the end of the combined training, the Hungarians will form the “Iron" infantry battle group (battalion) together with British, US, Lithuanian and German troops.

On the first day, the Hungarian company – which is drawn from the HDF 5th “Bocskai István" Infantry Brigade – carried out an offensive combat task. The company headquarters received the operation order from the battalion’s commander the previous evening. By this order, the company first had to occupy a concentration area, and then, within the pre-set time limits, it had to rebuild the phase lines and launch an attack against a British company which was playing the role of the opposing force. In the interest of successful task execution, the Hungarian company was reinforced with a German engineer platoon. During the attack against the main forces, the German platoon basically provided rear area protection for the company. The German troops would have been actually deployed if the company had encountered an obstacle while advancing to contact. During a search and seizure mission, the Hungarian company was tasked with locating, observing and, by the OPORD, seizing a building, which, of course, was being defended by armed “insurgents".

On the third day, the company had to play the role of forces in defensive positions during the task mentioned in connection with the first day. Capt. Gábor Vastag, the company commander of the Hungarian forces sent to Lithuania said that the training was of course very useful, as the troops rarely encounter such forests and heavily broken terrain in Hungary. Due to the terrain features, some errors occurred in the command and control of the units, but our troops quickly adapted themselves to the terrain and dealt with the challenges. The commander added that they had quickly overcome all problems, which also contributed to the successful execution of the final offensive combat task.

Photos by the author