BUDAPEST, Hungary – It is perhaps the highest compliment yet to the National Guard State Partnership Program.
When the Central European nation of Hungary – which, after 17 years partnered with the Ohio National Guard, has gone from being a former Soviet Bloc country to full North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union membership – chose to deploy on a NATO mission to Afghanistan, leaders had a request:
Deploy us with our Ohio National Guard partners.
For almost two years, Hungarian-led Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams have rotated through Afghanistan, and each unit has been 50 percent Hungarian, 50 percent Ohioan.
“That was … the most beautiful six months of my career,” said Hungarian 1st Sgt. Tamas Galgoczy, the acting sergeant major for OMLT 1.3.
OMLTs are up to 60 non-commissioned officers and officers, whose duties include acting as mentors, liaison and advisors to a kandac – a battalion – of the Afghan National Army and providing their own force protection.
NATO’s OMLTs are similar to the U.S. Army’s smaller Embedded Training Teams.
Guard leaders say OMLTs helped the ANA increase its missions and expand its operational area.
Coordinating between the Hungarian Defense Force, Ohio National Guard, U.S. Army Europe, European Command and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan to facilitate OMLTs became an additional duty for Ohio’s bilateral affairs officer posted here in Hungary.
“They invited us to join their OMLT,” said Air Force Capt. Jeremy Ford, BAO. “They are the lead nation. The co-deployment … came from the state partnership, because we have such a good relationship.”
“Think back 17 years,” said Army Maj. Gen. Gregory Wayt, the adjutant general of the Ohio National Guard. “Could anybody have ever imagined that we would be jointly deploying to Afghanistan to train the Afghan National Army in the middle of a war?
“It’s amazing to think how far we’ve come in this partnership.”
Three OMLTs have deployed to and returned from Afghanistan, a fourth is in theater and a fifth is training for deployment. Additional rotations are contemplated.
Hungary and Ohio are not the only partners in the almost 20-year-old, 62-nation SPP to co-deploy, but their OMLTs are the most enduring such partnership. The long-term goal is for the OMLTs to be solely Hungarian.
“It’s been going extremely well,” said Army Brig. Gen. Rufus Smith, commander of the unit that provides command and control for OMLTs in Ohio. “Not only has the mission been going well, but the partnership between our two countries has significantly improved the last two years, since we’ve been working together.
“It’s a great example of what it is when you have countries who are focused on a single mission. … It’s great for the country … that we’re partnered with other countries to assist in that global war on terror. … [Ohio] benefits because of the expertise and the training our soldiers receive. … The teams and the Soldiers … gain experiences that will last them a lifetime.”
OMLT members must overcome challenges. Hungarians and Ohioans train together six months, working through language and cultural differences to become a team.
“There was a big challenge for both nations,” said Galgoczy, the Hungarian first sergeant. “We worked well together.”
Once on the ground for the six-month rotation in Afghanistan, a third element joins the mix, bringing more language and cultural differences – the ANA.
Army Lt. Col. James Eriksen, Jr., was Ohio’s commander for the first OMLT, which deployed in January 2009. Since the OMLTs are Hungarian-led, Eriksen was deputy commander for the overall team, officer-in-charge for the U.S. element.
“The first challenge was just putting the team together,” said Eriksen, who handpicked Ohio team members before domestic training followed by five months’ European training with HDF counterparts.
About one-third of the Hungarians spoke fluent English.
“It was all new,” said Eriksen, who used a NATO concept of operations to design individual and collective training plans. “We trained ourselves; there was no external team … brought in.”
He said a convoy live-fire exercise near Grafenwöhr, Germany, was the single-best training event.
“We did the convoy live fire about 12 or 15 times,” Eriksen recalled. “Everyone rotated positions, and everyone got an opportunity to go through about 12 collective tasks. That was … the biggest moneymaker.”
OMLT 1 picked up its ANA kandac from basic training in Kabul, performed the Afghan soldiers’ final certification and deployed with them to Camp Kelagay, 130 miles north of Kabul in Baghlan province.
Eriksen’s team trained the ANA kandac, helped with operational orders and planning and, as advisors, executed missions with them.
“Many of the Afghan soldiers had never seen running water,” Eriksen said. “Never had electricity in their homes. Many of them are indigent – poor, by our standards.
“You are taking an entire battalion-sized unit. Every soldier has basic training, nothing more. Some soldiers were pulled out and selected to be NCOs and sent through a special school, but you’re talking about [a] battalion that, … for the most part, … had never seen combat, any kind of real big training exercises. You don’t have that institutional knowledge.
“To their credit, two months after we showed up at Camp Kelagay, they conducted a successful battalion-sized cordon and search clearing operation of probably seven or eight villages in a fairly heavily fortified Taliban zone, and they did it very well.”
Eriksen was struck by the Hungarians’ professionalism. They “were able to take Afghans who had never fired an indirect weapons system in their lives, ever, and take a Soviet-style mortar system … and in three rounds put direct effective fire on an enemy target.”
The 17-year SPP helped the Hungarians with military culture, tactics and doctrine, he said. “You can learn doctrine out of a book … but until you work with somebody who’s done it again and again and again, you really don’t understand how to embrace it. The number of learning opportunities on both sides [is] tremendous.”
“Everybody came back a little bit [more professional],” said Hungarian army Lt. Col. Istvan Megtert, who commanded OMLT 1.3. “There are many … things the Americans know because of … experiences from Iraq [or elsewhere.]”
Megtert was a veteran of four deployments before OMLT 1.3. “The OMLT work is very tough work,” he said. “The OMLT mission is absolutely different than the other missions.”
Challenges listed by Megtert included working with three different nationalities, cultures and languages; the security situation and teamwork under fire.
Megtert noticed a tendency for each nation to slip into its own slang during enemy contact. “Every nation used … special language and we were mixed, and it was a big challenge for us,” he said.
After months training together, grappling with thinking in their native language then translating for radio transmissions, the team overcame. “There were many very warm situations, very dangerous situations,” Megtert said, “and they could work together … We complement each other.”
Like other U.S. and Hungarian officers and NCOs, Eriksen, the Ohio commander, said the OMLT was a rewarding experience.
“I had the opportunity to, from a U.S. perspective, command [and,] from a multinational perspective, be the deputy commander, of some of the best soldiers I’ve ever met,” he said. “I miss them. I miss being with those guys. I had great officers. Superb NCOs. … I don’t think I’ll ever have a job in the Army that will be more rewarding.”
Last month, Wayt recognized Hungarian soldiers here, pinning them with Ohio commendation medals and giving additional recognition to standouts, including a gubernatorial proclamation.
The general also met with Hungarian and Ohioan soldiers training side-by-side.
“This is graduate-level work,” Wayt said. “It’s graduate-level work for the OMLT to go mentor the Afghan National Army … and to ensure that the [ANA] is ready and prepared to assume the mission in the near-future.”
“I’m very excited about it,” said Army Sgt. 1st Class Jess Daniels. “We’ve been involved with the Hungarians for quite some time, and to actually be part of a mission where we’re side-by-side with them is really important to a lot of us here.”
In 1993, Ohio was selected as Hungary’s SPP partner in part because the largest expatriate population of Hungarians is in Cleveland, Ohio. Guardmembers have ties to Hungary or neighboring countries.
Army Sgt. 1st Class Goran Mandic is a first-generation Ohioan, his mother Croatian, his father Serbian.
“I love this part of the world,” Mandic said. “I’d pick the East and the Balkans over France and Spain any day of the week.”
Mandic served as an infantry company mentor in OMLT 1.2 and returned to his favorite region with other Ohio Soldiers from previous OMLT rotations last month to meet with Hungarian counterparts for an after-action review conference.
“The [AAR] couldn’t have been more timely and more important,” Wayt said. “That we make sure these OMLTs keep improving and improving and that we identify any weaknesses.”
“I’ll do it again, if I can,” Mandic said. “The Hungarians were very easy to work with. It is a different culture … but Hungarians are a Western culture, so we had more commonalities than we did differences.
“They do have a professional military. That’s one of the things the Americans went in underestimating … They do have a professional military culture and a lot of pride, and their military history is very old.”
Ohioans had their own challenges. “Some people had never left Ohio, much less the United States,” Mandic said. “That’s why you have to go in prepared. All that cultural study … is very important … because there are just many things you can do where you have the potential to alienate the people you are supposed to be mentoring and advising.”
One measure of the Hungarian commitment to allied operations in Afghanistan: Four HDF members have died from injuries sustained on non-OMLT missions there, including friends of Galgoczy.
“That’s a huge loss, especially when you know them well,” he said. “Especially as a comrade, as a friend as well.”