Peacekeeping in Kosovo: no tanks required; U.S. Army tank operators learn new infantry skills, miss their armored vehicles.

Freezing rain has been pouring for days, washing away the first December snow. The fog stubbornly lingers over the mountains of Kosovo and the ravaged villages of this embattled region in the Balkans.

Inside a still-dry field tent at a training range--one of many fields now serving that purpose for NATO forces--the waxen light reveals a group of soldiers huddled together, humming the sound of preparation.

Any other rime, one would find Sgt. First Class Andrew Turrentine, Sgt. Jeremy McDaniel, or Private First Class Doron Pyfrom perched up in their tanks, cutting the thick mud with ease. But today--and every day of their six-month tour of duty--they will be on foot, wading through the slosh.

These soldiers are part of Kosovo's Multi-National Brigade East, led by the United States. They were trained to operate tanks, but have come to Kosovo to realize that they will be on foot for the rest of their stay, because tanks are too intrusive for the peacekeeping mission they have been assigned.

"Here in Kosovo, it is a little different than our normal wartime mission of using our tanks with a lot of shock," says Capt. Bernie Stone, the commander of the company. "We do not have our tanks during our daily peacekeeping missions. We have to train on being able to do the mission of an infantryman, without a doubt. So we are here to learn."

Stone is shepherding his company into a live-fire exercise. He has nursed and refined the scenario, and from his observation tower overlooking the muddy field, he is working on the last derail of the training day--getting a stuck Humvee out of the all-enveloping mud. His energy is enough to set everybody into action.

Carrying M-4 and M-16 rifles, the tankers will have to become a quick reaction force that must help a farmer family attacked by armed insurgents.

"We are called by the KPS (Kosovo Police Service) to hurry up and get down there to help that family, because there are armed insurgents. We have a squad with two trucks, and that consists of two teams [three people per group], one truck per team [that would pick them up at the end of the mission]."

Stone explains that they have written the rules of engagement in such fashion that "the insurgents down there have recently killed a couple of people, and they are very hostile. That allows my soldiers within the ROE to engage them, so we are testing their ability to use the targeting."

If the soldiers do not execute the training safely, the exercise stops, and they have to conduct medical evacuation. "We get training benefits out of whatever happens on the lane," said Stone. If they run their course successfully at the end of the exercise, they have to call indirect fire on a plywood panel in the field, representing a Soviet-era fighting vehicle, Stone adds.

"First thing we do is we distinguish between the armed insurgents and the civilians that have [been attacked]," says Pyfrom. "Then, we will run to the house to make sure it is safe, while one guy runs up the hill and calls in indirect fire."

Stone explains that the tankers only get to use their 5.56 mm rifles and call indirect fires. "Because I am [in] a rank company, I am not doing as much tinning as the infantry companies. They are using grenades, etc., and that is way too difficult for us," Stone says.

Turrentine has been a tanker for 14 years, but today is the first time that he gets to train as an infantryman. "As rankers, we train the same concepts, but on a much more grandiose scale," he says.

Pyfrom says he is planning to rake advantage of the infantry experience. "It is an actual chance to really see what it is like in a situation like this, where you actually have to rake control," he says. He emphasized that they are not necessarily preparing for something new, but "just making adjustments. ... Even though it may be infantry stuff, it is still common sense," he says.

Planning tactics has not changed much from what they are used to as rankers, McDaniel explained. "Here, it's just that we are running, instead of going on the tanks." McDaniel has been tasked to lead the first team.

"One guy will sir and cover the move, while the other guy will move," he explains. "You just take it and conform it to what you have to do. We are all infantry down at heart."

Meanwhile, Stone says that he is trying to achieve two main goals our of the training. "One is that my sergeants, the lowest non-commissioned officers ... are prepared to lead their soldiers in whatever situation. They have gut to learn to use their minds in situations they are not used to."

"[Second], what I am looking for is somebody who can think and go 'OK, I haven't done this before, but it does not matter, because I know what I should be doing,' and they just figure it out on the way."

Truck Stuck in Mud

At least an hour has passed, and the Humvee is still stuck in the mud on the Falcon 4 training range. Stone decides to go ahead with the exercise and only begin shooting live ammunition after the ream has passed the vehicle and visibility is clear.

The first try would be the training run, or "the crawl" in military parlance, without the use of the live rounds. It's the first test of the surroundings. As the soldiers huddle up around Stone, the wind carries away their distorted voices.

"You should write this down," Stone's voice prevails. He wants them to write down the coordinates and the steps of their mission. As they start racing towards their target, the soldiers are really hard to distinguish in a sea of mud and melting snow.

A good half an hour later, the tankers return on a Humvee. The adrenaline is still rushing. Now comes the real deal. But this time, they have to make sure they rake their Global Positioning System receiver and the correct map. For the "dry" run, McDaniel forgot his GPS, which is needed to call the indirect fire. He also took the part of the map that did not have the location of the house they needed, Stone says.

For the live-fire drill, the three soldiers with McDaniel in command, move swiftly on the ground they have just scouted. In a matter of minutes, the armed insurgents have been subdued, and the team leader is ready to call in the indirect fire.

Stone says that he intentionally did not remind his soldiers to take what they needed, "because if you forget them once, you never will again."

Calling in the azimuth, McDaniel is 400 mils off, says Stone. A mil is a unit of measure used in field artillery. "He did that incorrectly; he gave them a wrong number," he says. "That would have made his [fire] hit very far to the right [of the target]. We've had him redo it and he saw that his number was wrong and sent the right number." However, Stone stresses that calling indirect fire is just a diversion that he inserted in the exercise because in real life, "I don't see them call for fire that much."

"I have injected that into the scenario just to make it a bit more complicated for them," he says.

On the whole, he says, "I think the ream did very well. The ream leader controlled the unit movement very well. He controlled his fires, when the target popped up, two guys with two shots at the same rime, and I was very happy about that."

Turrentine says that this kind of training gives the soldiers a better perspective and "makes them appreciate the tank a lot more. ... It is an OK break from the tanks, but as a tanker I still get warm and fuzzy every rime I see my tanks."

These exercises are paramount for these soldiers to be able to do the kind of peacekeeping missions required in Kosovo. "We are combining war-fighting missions with our actual missions," Stone says.

Many of the KFOR (the NATO Force in Kosovo) missions resemble civilian police work, as the guerrilla war between the Serbs and the Kosovar Albanians has ceased. It has been more than three years since NATO bombed Belgrade and the United Nations starred leading the interim civilian administration of the war-ravaged province.

While the region has starred slowly building up its society, the NATO forces are still looked upon as the key to responding to problems such as illegal border crossing, illegal goods (drugs, weapons, merchandise) smuggling and unexploded ordnance. Their routine has become patrolling and keeping the peace. Under such circumstances, the soldiers need to adjust their training.

The homegrown Kosovo Police Service, established by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the United Nations, is expected eventually to take over the responsibilities now assigned to the NATO forces.

"We are transitioning to a safe and secure environment, and you can tell that KFOR is getting out of the places where the KPS is working our," Stone says. "If there is a theft reported to us ... I call the KPS, whereas in the past, we did not do that."

However, he emphasized that there are still some areas that require KFOR presence.

"There are armed insurgents that are running around and what I tell my soldiers to focus on are weapons, explosives and everything that stops them from creating a secure environment." They also look for unexploded ordnance. "My biggest thing lately is to talk to the civilians to be aware if they see something they should let us know."

"Going on ground patrols is really good experience for me, because otherwise I would get on the ground and would not know what to do," Pyfrom says. "All I know how to do is maneuver tanks, shoot from ranks, that type of thing-that is my whole career."

McDaniel says that going out on patrols tends to be "more like a security guard type of thing, but we are required here to help out the KPS and the augmented forces. We pretty much assess the situation, call them up and once they get on site they rake over."

For McDaniel and the tankers of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 63rd Armor, based at Camp Montieth on the eastern side of Kosovo, the month of February is going to test what they have learned for the past two months.

"We are going to make it much harder on them to see what they learned between now and then," Stone says. "We are going to have the whole squadron down there, so there will be two teams maneuvering with the squad leader in the middle, more targets, more stuff to do, more battlefield effects like smoke, that messes these people up."

Coming Next Month: The challenges facing Kosovo's first homegrown national guard.