U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Thomas, a mortar section sergeant with 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, marches across a training area with his platoon and soldiers from 1st Paratrooper Battalion in Thies, Senegal.After graduating from Soddy-Daisy High School in 2004, Daniel Thomas enlisted in the Army at age 20. After a decade of service, the now-30-year-old has been all over the world.
Right now he’s getting a crash course in the culture of West Africa. That is, when he’s not directing barrages of explosive mortar rounds or hoofing it through Senegal’s arid grasslands in full tactical gear.
Staff Sgt. Thomas’ latest mission is part of a training program designed to build relationships and coordination between the U.S. and its African partners.
Thomas and his men work in a program called Africa Readiness 16, training Senegalese infantrymen in American tactics and exercises.
ART16 is the first exercise of its kind on the continent and will be carried out in other countries over the next several years.
“They’re really receptive to our tactics,” Thomas said in a phone interview last week. “I haven’t met one soldier who hasn’t been amped up to learn what we know.”
Thomas is a mortar section sergeant, and several of the exercises his men lead their counterparts through involve laying, directing and firing weapons systems. The goal is to train the Senegalese troops to be faster and more effective. More deadly.
Maj. Michael Weisman, the plans and operations chief in the Army’s Africa public affairs office, said the mortar is an essential component of any infantry force because of its mobility and firepower.
“It’s the most devastating weapon they can bring,” he said.
As for the odds of someone from the Chattanooga area winding up in Senegal, Weisman said it’s probably a first.
“I’m guessing the number of people that have come from Soddy-Daisy and gone to Senegal is ‘one’ right now,” he said.
Through all the marching and shooting, cooperation between the Americans and Senegalese troops also leads to some friendly competition in the field. Thomas said they have races with setup and teardown.
“Whoever wins picks an exercise everyone else has to do,” he said.
The three weeks of training are intensive – exercises start before 9 a.m. and stretch into the late afternoon – but the troops have also found time to cut loose on what down time they have.
Thomas said they hosted a culture day at the training center and the Senegalese locals set up a bazaar for the soldiers. Merchants brought handmade goods like sculptures and carved boar tusks.
And after everything, they had a little more friendly competition, this time without the weapons.
“We played [our version of] football and then we played their football,” he said.
His unit also had the opportunity to go on safari to the Bandia Reserve, an attraction that hosts everything from giraffes to crocodiles on more than 8,000 acres. But with hunting season fast approaching, Thomas said, he’s ready to get back to the wildlife back home in the American Southeast.
“Especially during the hunting season, I live in the woods down there,” he said. “And fishing. You can’t forget fishing.”
It won’t be long before Thomas gets to return home to his wife in Hinesville, Ga., but he misses things in Chattanooga, too. His parents still live in Soddy-Daisy.
At the top of the list?
“Griffin’s Hot Dogs,” he laughed.
Contact Emmett Gienapp at egienapp@timesfreepress.com or 757-6731.