Salvajes or "Wild Geese", formed in 1978–79) and infantry trainees led by Major (later, Colonel) Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero, in armed jeeps and gun-trucks plus two small artillery and armoured car platoons. Training institutions It is estimated that 4,252 Nicaraguan servicemen had been trained by the United States between 1970 and 1976 at the Inter-American Military Academy (a.k.a. "School of the Americas") at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone, in the Psychological and Special Warfare Academy at Fort Bragg, and at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington D.C. Military Academy – AMN Created on 9 November 1939, the Academia Militar de Nicaragua (AMN, Nicaraguan Military Academy) was the noncommissioned officers' and Officer Candidate School and Staff College of the Guardia Nacional. Modelled after the West Point Academy, the AMN was initially staffed by a cadre of US Army instructors headed by Brigadier-General Charles L. Mullins (1939–1942), himself a West Point graduate. He was succeeded as Director of the AMN by other three US Army senior officers, Brigadier-General Fred T. Cruse (1942–1943), Brigadier-General LeRoy Bartlett jr. (1943–1946) and Brigadier-General John F. Greco (1947) until GN Infantry Colonel Anastasio Somoza Debayle was appointed its first Nicaraguan-born Director in 1948. Infantry Basic Training School – EEBI The Escuela de Entrenamiento Basico de Infanteria (EEBI, Infantry Basic Training School) was founded in 1976–77 by then Capitan Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero upon his return from the United States after attending both the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning and the U.S. Army school for psychological and special warfare at Fort Bragg. Initially attached for administrative purposes to the 3rd company of the General Somoza Combat Battalion and headquartered at Tiscapa Hill just outside Managua, the EEBI was an indigenous Special Forces training center modelled after Fort Bragg, and was tasked of training the Guardia's own elite anti-guerrilla Commandos, the "Black Berets" and its first parachute unit, the "Wild Geese". Inspired on the U.S. Special Forces (USSF), Chilean Army Commandos' and Brazilian Army Paratroopers' training programs, the School's own special curriculum placed emphasis on counter-insurgency. Advanced courses ranged from basic light infantry skills, jungle combat and survival to sniper, light and heavy weapons (mortars and artillery), demolitions, 'Commando' operations and intelligence, reconnaissance (Ranger), communications, medical, airborne and even light armor tactics. Ex-USSF and exiled South Vietnamese LLDB instructors conducted most of the training, though the School's teaching staff is said to have included anti-Castro Cuban exiles