Detachment R (also known as the U.S. Army Russian Area School) was a special
U.S. Army School initially located in a former
Wehrmacht garrison in
Oberammergau and later moved to
Regensburg
Regensburg or is a city in eastern Bavaria, at the confluence of the Danube, Naab and Regen rivers. It is capital of the Upper Palatinate subregion of the state in the south of Germany. With more than 150,000 inhabitants, Regensburg is the f ...
,
Germany, where it remained from 1950 to 1954, when it was moved back to Oberammergau.
The school operated as the two-year final component of the Army's Foreign Area Specialist Training (FAST) Program in
Russian and was designed as a full-immersion experience in the language, economics, and culture of the Soviet Union. The first component of the FAST program involved a one-year Russian course at the
Army Language School
The Defense Language Institute (DLI) is a United States Department of Defense (DoD) educational and research institution consisting of two separate entities which provide linguistic and cultural instruction to the Department of Defense, other f ...
in
Monterey, California
Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bo ...
, and was followed by a year at Columbia University studying Russian history, economics, political science, and other topics of strategic importance.
Oppenheimer, Max, ''Russian Area and Language Studies in the U.S. Army,'' The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Mar. 1959), pp. 116-121.
/ref>
Detachment R was described at length by Peter Bridges, former U.S. ambassador to Somalia, in his 2000 book, ''Safirka: An American Envoy'':
Bridges goes on to describe the structure of the program, its leadership, and its faculty:
References
{{Reflist
Military education and training in the United States