Visit of Pupils to Camp Butmir

Written by Maj Bruce Foster

On 1st July 2010, a joint party of directors, teachers and pupils from Primary School Parsovici, 2nd Primary School Konjic and Secondary School Konjic from Konjic area visited EUFOR Camp Butmir, Sarajevo. They were in the company of Liaison and Observation team (LOT) Konjic commander, Captain Friedrich Schroeder.

The highlight of the visit was a tour of the Austrian Black Hawk and Alouette III helicopters that are used for air transportation and MEDEVAC operations. Visitors were able to see for themselves one such MEDEVAC demonstration during the exercise in which an Alouette III helicopter simulated evacuating a wounded person.

COM EUFOR, Major General Bernhard Bair, joined the visitors during lunch. COM EUFOR was recently in Konjic during the “Connecting Bridges” event which featured a race and a concert whose goal was to raise money to help Miss Amra Hodzic recover from cancer. It was during the visit to Konjic that COM EUFOR met with many pupils from local schools taking part in the race for Amra and it was seeing their enthusiasm that prompted him to invite them to come and visit EUFOR.