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| rdfs:comment | - The 1st Battalion, The Rhodesian Light Infantry, commonly the Rhodesian Light Infantry (1RLI or RLI), was a regiment formed in 1961 at Brady Barracks, Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia as a light infantry unit within the army of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. A year after its creation it relocated to Cranborne Barracks, Salisbury, where its headquarters remained for the rest of its existence. The Regiment became part of the Southern Rhodesian Army when the Federation dissolved at the start of 1964 and later that year reformed into a commando battalion.
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| Garrison | - Cranborne Barracks, Salisbury
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| Nickname | - The Incredibles
- The Saints
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| Caption | - A British-made L1A1 SLR
- A Heckler & Koch G3A3 rifle
- An FN FAL battle rifle with bayonet fixed
- Emblem of the Rhodesian Light Infantry. The absence of the Queen's crown indicates that this is post-1970 pattern.
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| Allegiance | - --02-01
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| Battles | |
| decorations | - 1975-07-25
- Freedom of the City of Salisbury
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| Header | - Battle rifles of the Rhodesian Light Infantry
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| Alt | - A black FN FAL battle rifle with a wooden stock
- A black FN FAL battle rifle lain on a grey background, pointing to the viewer's left
- A green Heckler & Koch G3A3 battle rifle lain on a grey background, pointing to the viewer's right
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| Image | - Early FN FAL.jpg
- G3a3 edit.png
- SLRL1A1.jpg
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| Source | - On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, 1996
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| abstract | - The 1st Battalion, The Rhodesian Light Infantry, commonly the Rhodesian Light Infantry (1RLI or RLI), was a regiment formed in 1961 at Brady Barracks, Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia as a light infantry unit within the army of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. A year after its creation it relocated to Cranborne Barracks, Salisbury, where its headquarters remained for the rest of its existence. The Regiment became part of the Southern Rhodesian Army when the Federation dissolved at the start of 1964 and later that year reformed into a commando battalion. After Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence on 11 November 1965, the RLI became one of the country's main counter-insurgency units during the Rhodesian Bush War, which pitted the government security forces against the rival guerrilla campaigns of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA). An exclusively white regiment, the RLI was made up wholly of professional soldiers until 1973, when conscripted national servicemen were first introduced. Foreign volunteers from across the world, many veterans of foreign conflicts, also joined and became a key part of the Regiment. The RLI was nicknamed "The Saints" or "The Incredibles", and regarded, through astounding success with both internal Fireforce operations in Rhodesia and external preemptive strikes against guerrillas based in Mozambique and Zambia, as one of the world's foremost exponents of counter-insurgency warfare. So prominent were the airborne aspects of typical RLI operations that the Battalion became an airborne parachute battalion in 1977. The RLI served under the short-lived government of Zimbabwe Rhodesia in 1979, the interim British government that followed and briefly in Zimbabwe before it was disbanded in October 1980. The RLI's tactics and training contributed to repeated successes in its counter-insurgency operations. "The advantage this gave them," says United States Army Lieutenant-Colonel Dave Grossman, "added up to nothing less than total tactical superiority." Alexandre Binda writes that the RLI "earned for itself an enviable reputation as one of the world's foremost anti-terrorist forces," while Major Charles D. Melson, chief historian of the United States Marine Corps, calls it "The Killing Machine".
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