Word: battalion
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Though the Paul Revere battalion has received other awards in the past, such as the top training award from the U.S. Army for the superior training scores of its cadets, this is the first time it has been honored as the most outstanding in the nation...
...only a dozen or so members of the storied 82nd Airborne Division, but the blame for the tawdry details seeps far higher up their chain of command. Their woes didn't come after a year of boring peacekeeping duties in southeastern Kosovo, but rather began shortly after the 3rd Battalion of the 504th Parachute Regiment arrived in the Balkans last September. Once deployed to the town of Vitina, the soldiers morphed, figuratively if not literally, into cops, poised delicately between the minority Serb population and Kosovar Albanians eager for revenge against the horrors wrought upon the Albanians by the Serbian...
...report criticized the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael Ellerbe, for ignoring claims that his men were mistreating the civilians they were supposed to be protecting. "Unit members violated the limits and terms of their military assignments by intimidating, interrogating, abusing and beating Albanians and by traveling outside of their physically assigned sector to conduct some of these activities," the report said. "The facts reveal several incidents of soldier misconduct towards females, including inappropriate touching, grabbing of breasts and buttocks and the perception of Kosovar females of improper searches conducted by soldiers." Ellerbe didn't see it that way. "My goal...
...parallels with Milosevic's earlier wars are unsettling. An estimated 15,000 heavily armed Yugoslav troops are already stationed in the republic. That includes a battalion of elite, well-paid soldiers selected for their loyalty to Milosevic. As in Slovenia and Croatia a decade ago, the Montenegrin government is training and arming an equal number of police to counter the army's threat. In regions such as the northern town of Kolasin, 19 miles from the Serbian border, the two armed sides are taking each other's measure. "If there is a war, we will have no other choice...
...This is precisely what Annan proposes, suggesting, too, that countries put their peacekeeping units on permanent alert and allow them to train together outside of crisis moments, so that, for example, a Jordanian infantry battalion is deployed together with a British logistics unit with which it has previously trained and worked. But all of this will take investment, and the U.N. has a hard enough time getting member states to pony up for its existing commitments. Still, because Western countries are unlikely to raise their enthusiasm for committing combat troops, they may be more inclined to foot a higher bill...