One of the 1st Infantry Division’s main jobs during peacekeeping in the Balkans was seizing and destroying unauthorized weapons and ammunition. They collected thousands of pistols, rifles, automatic weapons and mortars, which they melted down, cut up or crushed under tanks. Donated by Dwight “Andy” Anderson, this bayonet came from a Yugoslavian Model 59/66 SKS rifle that was seized as part of a larger cache of weapons from a Serbian police station. The rifle this bayonet is from is a copy of the Soviet SKS, manufactured under license in the former Yugoslavia. The SKS is a Soviet semi-automatic rifle chambered for the 7.62x39mm round, designed in 1943 by Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov. SKS is an acronym for Samozaryadnyj Karabin Sistemy Simonova.