Last week, soldiers from the 129th Field Artillery Battalion got a lot closer to Kosovo. By May 28, the troops landed safely in Hohenfels, Germany, ready to begin their last month of training before heading to Kosovo.

For the last month and a half, the entire brigade of Missouri Army National Guard soldiers had been at Indiana’s Camp Atterbury, a joint forces training center. The Missouri soldiers got about 45 days of training for Kosovo. The 129th Field Artillery provided about 150 citizen/soldiers from Northwest Missouri as part of the 1,000 soldiers in the brigade.

“Training at Camp Atterbury tested our ability to work as a team from the squad size all the way up to battalion size operations,” said Lt. Col. John Parker, the battalion commander. “This will carry over into Germany, and everything will be stepped up a notch.”

If not on active duty assignments, Mr. Parker drills in Maryville, Mo., and lives in Smithville, Mo.

At Hohenfels, Germany, the brigade of Missouri soldiers will train at the U.S. Army’s Combat Maneuver Training Center. The center has 39,858 acres and is the second largest training area available to U.S. forces in Europe. The training seeks to improve soldiers’ responses to situations they will experience and bring them together as cohesive units.

In Indiana, platoons from the 129th conducted traffic control exercises; performed cordon and search operations; worked on information, surveillance and reconnaissance patrols; and received Blackhawk helicopter training. The Blackhawk helicopters will be one form of transportation in Kosovo.

Each week in Indiana, the training became more intense and kept soldiers busy day and night. Often, the platoons split up into smaller squads to train. Missions for the squads dealt with speaking to the local populace and gathering information on the current situation in an area. Other missions had squads set up traffic control points to search vehicles for contraband.

Individual soldiers also found themselves teamed up to perform missions. Soldiers learned the basics of how to perform advanced first aid, including controlling bleeding, conducting CPR and reintroducing fluids into the body. Some of the Kosovo-bound citizen/soldiers also received three-second shocks from Tasers.

“When the battalion gets to Kosovo,” said Command Sgt. Maj. John Sportsman, “after all the training we have completed, it will be like a walk in the park, comparatively speaking.”

Mr. Sportsman lives in Maitland, Mo., and drills in Maryville, Mo.

Marshall White can be reached

at marshall@npgco.com.