Major General Ole Köppen, MNC NE Deputy Commander, visited the French training area in Mourmelon on November 25th, during the exercise Common Effort conducted by the Eurocorps.
Multinational and European exercise
More than 2,000 soldiers from 20 countries from Europe and beyond took part in the Common Effort exercise conducted by the Eurocorps from 12th to 28th November 2008 at the French training area in Mourmelon-le-Grand, France. The support of the Multinational Corps Northeast for this training event was twofold. First of all, the MNC NE Deputy Commander Major General Ole Köppen visited the training area during the Distinguished Visitors’ Day. Secondly, three MNC NE officers – Lieutenant Colonel Maciej Gałązka, Lieutenant Colonel Thorsten Stolp and Master Sergeant Daniel Swiontkowski took part in the exercise.
The Common Effort 2008 was a special exercise for the Eurocorps since it was the biggest exercise ever organised under a European Union mandate. Along with the staff of the Eurocorps Headquarters, in the exercise participated among others the personnel from the Task Force Headquarters 2 from Nantes, France (Etat Major de Force 2), the German-French Brigade from Müllheim, Germany, “Centro de planeamiento operativo esfecífico nacional” (CPOEN) from Valencia, Spain, the 7th Brigade from Marche-en-Famenne, Belgium and the 17th Mechanized Brigade from Międzyrzecz, Poland.
The overall aim of the exercise for the Eurocorps was to maintain and improve its capabilities as a High Readiness Land Component Command Headquarters as well as to train planning and executing a generic European Union-led operation, during which the participants had to face the most current challenges, such as full scale military actions, peacekeeping operations and providing humanitarian relief. Moreover, apart from exercising the coordination between land, air, sea and special forces, the exercise provided an opportunity to test the new Communication and Information System (CIS) of the French Armed Forces.
DV Day
More than 100 guests visited the training area in Mourmelon to see how the exercise Common Effort 2008 was conducted. As an example of close cooperation and mutual support between the MNC NE and Eurocorps, Major General Ole Köppen, MNC NE Deputy Commander, came to Mourmelon. The exercise reminded him of the recently accomplish MNC NE exercise Crystal Eagle 2008, during which he acted as Exercsie Director. As he said, it was mostly because of the similarities between the scenarios. General Köppen not only took part in several briefings, but he also visited the Field Headquarters of the Eurocorps as well as locations some exercise participants were stationed at, for example the Headquarters of the German-French Brigade. Advanced technology of their logistic support was really impressive.
As General said, such DV Days are not only a great chance to get to know each other and create friendly relationships, which would profit at the professional level, but also an opportunity to remain informed about all ongoing issues within the NATO family. The example of that can be the announcement that Poland would increase the participation in the Eurocorps. Poland is going to send about 100 soldiers to the Eurocorps next year and become the sixth framework nation of the Eurocorps.
