NORWAY

Bowdoin resident assumes command of combat engineer company

First Lt. Ellen Morrison assumed command of the 251st Engineer Company after accepting the company guidon from outgoing commander Capt. Jonathan Bratten during a ceremony attended by family, friends and fellow soldiers recently.
An ordnance officer turned engineer, Morrison has served as the unit executive officer since October 2019. She previously served as a platoon leader and executive officer with Augusta’s 152nd Support Maintenance Company and was a platoon leader with the 251st during two large out-of-state training exercises in New York and Louisiana.
Morrison, the first female officer to command Maine’s combat engineer unit, said she is looking forward to empowering junior leaders and building on the unit’s cohesive team, ensuring a positive impact on the future of the company. Her three primary focuses in that endeavor will be empathy, leadership and initiative.

An avid crossfitter and first-degree black belt in taekwondo, Morrison also looks forward to new training opportunities.”I’m excited to create challenging training events,” Morrison said. “As a platoon leader and XO I always felt accomplished at the end of a hard mission. The stories and teamwork that came out of those missions are what kept me in the military.”

Adopted from Russia by American parents at an early age, Morrison spent her formative years in Silver Spring, Maryland, eventually following her brother and godfather into military service. She also was influenced by her father, who worked for the National Security Agency. Morrison holds a bachelor’s degree from New England School of Communications in Bangor and is currently employed by PatraCompany, a visual marketing company located in Brunswick.

The 251st “Sappers” consists of about 95 soldiers from across Maine. The unit traces its lineage back to June of 1810 and saw its first campaign during the War of 1812. The 251st is task-organized to provide assault, obstacle emplacement, route and area clearance, and general engineering support to a brigade-sized element.

In his farewell remarks to the unit, Bratten noted “Two-five-one, you’re getting a great commander in Lt. Morrison – you won’t find another officer that cares for this unit as much as she does.”

Bratten is departing command and taking a leave of absence from his full-time historian position in Augusta to accept a scholar-in-residence position at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York,

followed by a yearlong tour at the U.S. Army’s Center of Military History in Washington, D.C.