Infantry: February 21, 2003

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U.S. Army Special Forces don't just train foreign armies. The demand for American troops to serve in various Balkan peacekeeping missions has required Armor and Engineer battalions to be sent in as infantry. While a lot of the peacekeeping work is basically guard duty and patrolling, sometimes there has been a need for the peacekeeping troops to be ready for some urban combat. This is especially true when the ethnic animosities in the Balkans threaten to get out of hand and the peacekeepers have to do house-to-house searches for illegal weapons in neighborhoods full of tense, and trigger happy, people. In situations like this, Special Forces instructors were brought in to help out with the training of American soldiers to deal with these infantry type operations. The armor troops who regularly get sent to the Balkans for six month peacekeeping tours tend to like the change of pace. They know they will eventually get back to their tanks, and in the mean time get to experience what it's like to be in the infantry. That sort of makes you appreciate working in a tank just a little bit more. 

 

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