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Times they are a-changin' Soldier from Rogue Valley trains with ex-Soviet counterparts once considered potential enemies By PAUL FATTIG Throughout school in the Rogue Valley, David Vincent read about the Soviet Union's communist expansionist threat to democracy. Moreover, it was the forces of what President Reagan had called the "Evil Empire" that Vincent and his comrades trained to battle when he joined the Oregon Army National Guard in 1991. March forward to the fall of 1998. Army Spc. Vincent, a 1992 graduate of Phoenix High School, was among the American soldiers deployed by Uncle Sam to train as peacekeepers in the former Soviet Union with soldiers he once regarded as the enemy. "I never once in my life thought I'd ever be training with these guys," he said. "But one of the biggest things I discovered was that these guys are no different than us. "There isn't an infantry soldier anywhere who really wants a war to break out," he added. "We know we're always the first to get involved. We had no problem getting to be friends." In addition to working with soldiers from the host countries, they also trained with soldiers from the Russian, Azerbaijani and Georgian armies. Vincent, the son of Michael and Barbara Vincent of Phoenix, was one of more than 200 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division based at Fort Drum, N.Y. who traveled to remote Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, recently born democracies in the former Soviet Union near China and Russia. With a new year about to begin, offering potential for more change abroad, Vincent mulled over the change he witnessed during a telephone interview from the home he shares with his wife, Marsha, in upstate New York. "It's really incredible how things have changed," he said. "When I joined the Guard, we were still training to go against opposing forces from the Soviet Union." While U.S. forces train for the worst-case scenario, reality turned out to be slightly different, observed the infantryman. "We did shoot, but not at each other," he said of using their weaponry. "One of the things we always heard about was their superior weapons," he added. "I've live-fired their weapons. You're lucky to hit the target at 100 yards. And they have lots of problems with their weapons jamming." The Americans also taught them to fire their weapons, including M-16 rifles. "They wanted to trade straight across for our weapons," he said, adding that was not done. Nor was he impressed with some of their military techniques, such as clearing mines. "You'd be lucky if you could detect a whole tank buried underground, the way they do it," he said. The Americans were also bigger than their former Soviet counterparts, he observed. "We're much larger," said Vincent who had 30 solid pounds on the former enemy's largest soldiers. "Some of their biggest troops were maybe five-nine and 130 pounds. They were a little intimidated by us at first." The Yankees were also better trained, added Vincent, a member of the 1st Battalion, 186th Infantry of the Oregon Army National Guard for seven and a half years before joining the regular Army last summer. "They were amazed by the way our NCOs (noncommissioned officers) handled everything," said Vincent, who will report to Bosnia this summer. In addition to learning how to function together as multinational peacekeepers, the different armies also joined each other's chow lines. "We ate their foods, mostly rice and mutton," he said. "We also had one dinner that I can't pronounce that I later found out was horse meat. It was edible." But Vincent wasn't too keen on mare's milk, a fermented drink popular among soldiers from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. "Only two of us in the whole company tried to drink it," he said, adding that he managed to keep it down. "It tasted like sour cream left out in the hot sun." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA