BYU students play large role in foreign language corps

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    By CHRIS TOWNE

    BYU students and alumni are playing a major role in helping the U.S. Army’s Military Intelligence Corps foreign language operations.

    From the 13th to the 27th of this month, Company D of the 142nd Military Intelligence Battalion, Utah Army National Guard is training with the regular army’s 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion at Ft. Gordon, Ga. A large percentage of Company D comes from BYU.

    Captain Brent Forsgren, a platoon leader in Company D, says the army recognizes the language assets in Utah, and has built an organization around what he calls “a rich resource of returned LDS missionaries from foreign speaking missions.”

    Forsgren learned Italian while serving in the Italy Milan Mission, and then graduated and commissioned as an officer from BYU in 1992. Since that time, he has seen the Army’s linguistic needs grow, but so also has Utah’s multilingual population. Presently Utah is the only state whose National Guard organization has an entire military intelligence brigade, the 300th.

    Company D operates out of the Provo Armory, at 222 W 500 N, which it shares with Company C of the 141st Military Intelligence Battalion. Together, the two companies have functioning sections for Arabic, Russian, German, Spanish, Romanian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Thai, and Japanese. Other companies throughout the state feature the balance of the 300th Brigade’s languages.

    Next year both C and D companies will move to a new armory just west of I-15, on the Orem Utah Valley State College campus. Construction on the new building began late last year to accommodate upgrades in intelligence technology.

    While the majority of the Brigade’s linguists learn their languages from serving LDS missions, some soldiers attend the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. With locations at the Presidio of Monterey, Calif., and Washington D.C., the Defense Language Institute supports all of the linguistic training of the Department of Defense, and other government agencies. Yet, in years past, personnel from all branches of service have been sent specifically to BYU for language refresher courses. Similarly, Defense Language Institute representatives have come to Provo to study BYU’s program, as well as that of the church’s Missionary Training Center language program.

    The army also uses local linguist resources for its Joint Language Training Centers. At various locations around the state, including Camp Williams, army personnel and civilians are employed to assist various other state and federal agencies with linguistic requirements.

    Forsgren says that this, in addition to the army’s linguistic operations, offers a variety of opportunities for returned missionaries or other students who want to maintain their languages. Presently he says Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Romanian speakers are in the greatest demand.

    “Into all the world,” he adds is the motto of the 142nd Battalion. “With training missions and various other duty assignments, we can help linguists while they help us.”

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