April and September / October, a month earlier. Recruits were selected from soldiers and NCOs who served in the NVA as volunteers for three years. Sometimes, service with the FDGR could potentially lead to a career in the Stasi. Most soldiers in the regiment are known to be parachute-qualified. Several players of BFC Dynamo and SG Dynamo Dresden made their military service with the regiment, such as Lutz Eigendorf and Matthias Sammer. The head of the Stasi Erich Mielke was also the president of SV Dynamo. It became publicly known in 2011 that also the incumbent president of football club 1. FC Union Berlin Dirk Zingler was a member of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment for three years during his military service. Dirk Zingler has explained that he had sought to spend his military service in Berlin and that he was unaware beforehand that the regiment belonged to the Stasi. However, it was not possible to apply for the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment. The Stasi selected who it thought fit to serve with the regiment. Equipment Weapons The FDGR received the same training and weapons as the Volkspolizei-Bereitschaft and some of its personnel were paratroopers. It was also equipped with modern armored fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft weapons and mortars. The regiment was equipped with small arms (Makarov, Walther PP, PM-63 RAK, AKM, AK-74, LMG, RPG-7). They were also reported to be armed with the StG-943 in 1989. Stationed in the command 3 (on military Teupitz - cones), there was also a battalion of special weapons. It consisted of a company, which was armed with heavy anti-tank recoilless gun SPG-9 (in 1987, was reorganized into a rifle company), a company which is an essential weapon, the heavy machine gun (HMG-company) and had the 70mm - anti-aircraft missile armed "Strela-2 'Company. Until 1982 there was also an artillery detachment armed with 122mm D-30 howitzer. Previously, they had 85-mm PaK D-44, and 82mm mortars and 120 mm in the stock. Regulators company RSK was additionally can be equipped with the AKS-74 around the shoulder stock to collapse. At least in the 1970s, the former intelligence battalion, the mortar batteries and the I-battalion with Kalashnikovs in the S version were equipped. Specialized units such as the honor companies (28. and 29 MSK of the 10th MSB) were fitted in addition to the above-mentioned weapons, rifles and sabers. The paratrooper