Cold Steel:*
Charge of the Dragoons*
*
February 2005*
Peru*
Advance*
*
The coup has started!  Rebel elements are driving on Lima, the capital of Peru.*
*
Enemy units are laagered outside the city and are presently organizing for the final drive.  2nd Battalion, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team is serving as the counter-recon force and is ordered to destroy the enemy recon forces in the area.*
*
Intelligence suspects that enemy forces consist of an infantry company reinforced with a number of armored cars.  The terrain has numerous dips and valleys which will provide effective hides for both friendly and enemy units.*
*
To help detect enemy units, an APC equipped with ground surveillance radar is available.*
*
Moving on horseback but fighting on foot, dragoons first appeared in the mid-sixteenth-century French army.  In the 1620s the Swedish and French armies created regiments of dragoons, who wore no armor, rode small horses, and fought with musket and saber.*
*
In 1690 the French army included forty-three dragoon regiments, while in 1710 the Russian army contained twenty-four.  By then, although the term survived, dragoons operated both on and off the battlefield as medium cavalry and no longer fought on foot.*
*Clearly, the Stryker teams are the historical descendents of this concept.* 
*
Marginal or Decisive Victory is necessary to advance.*

