 It's the start of another long day for the Marines and their Ugandan students. Ahead of them lies several hours of hard labor under a burning sun. The machine gun nests they're building on a training site still needs work hardening the roof against mortars and a trough needs to be dug around it to stand the flow of heavy rains. Before they start sweating, however, they make time to sing. About 30 Marines with special purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 spent two months in Uganda training a company of combat engineers to counter Al-Shabaab, Insurgency Tactics, and Somalia. The UPDF make up more than half of the 9,000 African Union peacekeepers working to stabilize Mogadishu and bolster the Somali transitional government. The combat engineers allow for the infantry to move through the battlefield. When the infantry unit stops, they set in the defense. That's when the engineers begin to work. It's not as simple as laying down sandbags and stringing out barbed wire. The threats combat engineers must mitigate are as varied as they are deadly. What we have is protection from an up to an 82 millimeter mortar indirect fire weapon and from the sides we have protection the front and the sides we have protection from RPGs, direct fire weapons, recoilless rifles, AKs, snipers. One side of the defense and moving towards an objective enemy officers can break the momentum of an advancing infantry unit. Their mission is to go all the way to one end and blow a cache at the end of their route. But in order to get there they could face IEDs there are several of their obstacles. They have to clear them in case they need any follow-on forces to come on this route. When the patrol comes up against the locked gate they call the breach team. As they have an oval charge set up on the wall this is the breacher. It's going to leave a perfect oval shape in the wall so everyone can run through. Make sure you have control. Okay give them the commands. A bevy of explosives at their disposal. The team must decide which to use and how for any given obstacle. Now they're just designed to teach. When the combat engineers are effective the rest of the force can move quickly. You are now as a practicing assaulting objective. They took contact if they're coming through the breach point. As they're using squad rushes and bullet barriers. To assault an objective, a limited advance. I've at least achieved a load from the American marines. So now I'm also just a Ugandan Marine, a UPGF Marine. I'm strong. Basically I'm now strong according to as far as my job as a soldier is concerned. Their training mission complete. The Marines bid farewell to their students. As they leave Uganda they know that many of the Ugandans they've grown to count as friends will soon find themselves in Somalia. During the closing ceremony the Ugandan troops end the training the same way they start most every day. In Somalia, follow Uganda. I'm Corporal Jadsling.