Caribbean Soldiers Graduate From Regional Training
Today, a graduation ceremony was held at the BATSUB unit at Price Barracks for soldiers from across the Caribbean region who took part over the past two months in military training. This time around, the training was more of a refresher for the soldiers and, as Rear Admiral Elton Bennett, Commandant of the Belie Coast Guard said, these kinds of training put everyone on the same page where standard operations are concerned.
Brig. Gen. Azariel Loria
Brigadier-General Azariel Loria, Commandant, B.D.F.
“Over the past year we did a series of courses, trainings and refreshers during the months of October and November, It culminated today. We did the FFQ, that is the first field-firing qualification course. We did the juniors NCO’s training, tracking courses, jungle courses. The students – it is not on me to invite the international students but it is BATSUB’s prerogative and specifically the defence attaché that is located in Jamaica, Col. Brewster, so he was here today to do the closing ceremony. He identifies the students from the region and in today’s graduation ceremony we had from Trinidad, Barbados, Turks and Caicos and Jamaica.”
Elton Bennett
RADM Elton Bennett, Commandant, Belize Coast Guard
“We’ve achieved a lot over the last few months working along with the British Army and the British Army Support Unit in Belize and working along with the Belize Defense Force and members of the police department as it relates to tactical training. We’ve engaged in field firing training, sharp shooting, sniper training, senior officers training as well, so it’s very important for us to have these opportunities, where we can train together. Quite often we’re required to work together. We’re in very risky environment where we may have different techniques, different tactics to achieve different operational objectives, but when we can conduct training like this, together, shoulder to shoulder, doing training, understanding where each other agency is in terms of their techniques, and then standardize that, we’ll achieve a whole lot that we can apply in the operating environment.”
