The Ukrainian military command's plan to throw high-skilled Air Force personnel into the infantry was said to be halted when ...

Coal miners became 'sappers', experts at tunnels and trenches ... fire thousands of shells to flatten enemy defences before the infantry ran forward. This was known as a barrage.

McTighe’s previous operational assignments began at Fort Drum, New York, from 2002–05, where as a Sapper platoon leader he deployed with the 2-14th Infantry in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

TASS/. Sappers destroyed on the site the live part of a missile that fell on Saturday in the northern Moldova's village of Larga, near the border with Ukraine, the country's Interior Ministry ...

and sappers — to replenish the infantry, often causing a shortage in the now forcibly depleted units. On Jan. 14, a video featuring about a dozen Air Force servicemen surfaced online.