During the Chinese Civil War (the part from 1945 to 1949) the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) was known to have used penal battalions. A unit made up of deserters and those accused of cowardice, the penal battalion was given tasks such as scouting ahead of the main forces to check for ambushes, crossing rivers and torrents to see whether they were fordable, and walking across unmapped minefields.[14]