FORT MCCOY, Wis. — It’s an age-old question: would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized horses?

Army Sgt. 1st Class Horst Entengesicht of the Minnesota National Guard’s 135th Infantry Regiment answered it when he defeated a horse-sized duck during a recent exercise at Fort McCoy. It’s the first time that anyone has beaten the giant duck, who served as the entire opposing force in the Guard’s annual QUACK A DOODLE DOO field training exercise.

Q-A DOO DOO, for short, tests Soldier skills such as pond navigation, setting human decoys on lakes, and finding a duck the size of a Clydesdale in a nighttime, low illumination environment.

“Our OPFOR was formidable,” said Lt. Col. Peter Foie-gras, an exercise controller.

The lieutenant colonel noted that during DARPA modeling simulations, the duck’s humongous feet had crushed HUMVEEs and a main battle tank. The duck also ate the character of Capt. Miller played by Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. “We were surprised that Miller lost,” admitted Foie-gras.

But members of Entengesicht’s regiment were not surprised at his ingenuity.

“I really didn’t know how we’d do when we went to the Mallard Readiness Training Center (MRTC),” said Maj. Johan Pferdgesicht, the 135th’s operations chief. “But we rallied after seeing Horst defeat an elephant-sized chicken during a risky cordon-and-bleu operation the first day.”

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