WEBVTT

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Since I had less than two weeks left in

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the region . This seemed like an

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impossible task . But I reached out to

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the Latvian and Lithuanian embassies to

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see if they could support such a

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request . While they looked for someone ,

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we made our way down to Lithuania

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bypassing Latvia for the time being for

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the next part of the exercise ,

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our unit down there was first battalion

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109th filled artillery regiment based

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out of pennsylvania . Their weapons

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system is the M 109 howitzer . When we

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arrived , our soldiers were set up at a

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range next to the german and Lithuanian

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filled artillery men , both of which

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were firing german panzer howitzers and

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all were receiving missions from the

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Lithuanian joined air ground

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coordination tower where we had a

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brigade liaison team linking the

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Lithuanian command to our headquarters

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in tapa Estonia . True to the

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overarching goal of interoperability of

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the exercise . Our soldiers there were

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receiving and executing missions that

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originated from the Lithuanian army .

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Another interesting coincidence from

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this entire exercise was the role of

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each state in each country . I talked a

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bit about the state partnership program ,

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but fate would have it . That

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pennsylvania is the state partner of

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Lithuania . This meant I had a chance

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to talk to our own soldiers who had

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been building a relationship with

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Lithuania for years for this , I spoke

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to my own counterpart for the first of

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the 109th military Regiment , Captain

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Jeremy Whitmer . One of the major

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things that we've learned is their ,

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their sheer dedication of country and

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their willingness to improve and

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they're wanting to improve . Um you

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know , sometimes we lose when we're

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training back home , you can lose focus

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on some of the , not necessarily why

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you're doing it , but you lose some of

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the morale and here the morale is just ,

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you know , everywhere and everybody's

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just continuing to improve and continue

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to want to improve . And it's just the

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commonality that we all have as

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artillery .