4th Parachute Battalion

The gendarmes could hardly qualify as an elite. They were military policemen, when asigned to military units and simple policemen in the rural areas or guards in oil producing area of the country.

Basicaly u re right but ... lets think deeper.
The best conscripts were sent to the gendarmes corp. All of them was with some studies, and good physical condition. They were well trained in hand to hand combat and usualy they use more munition in the fire practice than the regular army units. The conclusion: as a "corp" can be considerated an elite one.

The "securitate" troops as the attenders of the gendarmes was also one of the best corps of the romanian forces. All of them (at last in the '80s) were high school graduated. One of my cousins wich served in the securitate troops told me how they do a fire trainig in their very last day of the military service.

This post has been edited by Dan Po on November 09, 2004 10:22 pm

Not exactly. The best recruits were sent to the royal guard units first, then the cavalry or mountain troops, tanks and the others. The gendarmes hardly had the best of conscripts, as it would have been stupid to send the best conscripts to non-fighting units. All troopers were trained in hand-to-hand fighting (with the bayonet at they rifle), as it was part of the normal training. But I doubt that they used up more ammo than the regular army. On the contrary. The gendarmes didn't take part in royal maneuvers and were not trained to fight like the regular army, in large units. In fact they had less time for training, as they probably spent more time attending their police duties, even though they had one extra year of service (like the Navy or frontier-guards). They were from being an elite. They were a totally different thing form the 19th century mounted gendarmes, which later formed the Royal Guard Cavalry Regiment.

The "Securitate" troops can't be considered, IMO, the continuation of the Royal Gendarmerie. That would be the Militia, which was, just like the gendarmes, a militarized police force.