The Division 315 under the Military Region 5 was founded on March 6^th 1979 in Bung Lung, Ratanakiri province, Cambodia, including the units within the formation of Vietnam’s Volunteer Force on the battlefield of Cambodia’s Northeast and some economic-defence units in the area of the Central Highlands, tasked with “fighting to help Cambodian people preserve the newly-gained revolutionary achievements”. In spite of being founded and operating under the urgency and fierceness of the battlefield, the Division always grasped the Party’s guidelines, heightened a sense of pure, selfless international solidarity, and devoted efforts to helping Cambodia develop its revolutionary force, mop up the enemy’s remnants, and maintain peace for its people’s life.

After successfully fulfilling the international mission, under the Military Region 5 High Command’s Decision 62, dated November 8^th 1988, the Division withdrew its troops from Cambodia, quickly stabilized itself comprehensively, improved the quality of training and combat readiness, and built a strong comprehensive Unit. With the achievements in fighting, building and developing, the Division and its 4 collectives and 2 individuals were given the title of Hero of the People’s Armed Forces and many other noble awards by the State. It was awarded the Angkor Order by the Cambodian State.

Promoting its tradition, the Division have always heightened a sense of unity, self-reliance, and proactiveness in overcoming difficulties and taking the “three breakthrough measures” to build a comprehensively strong Division” on a par with its mission in the new situation as follows.

1. Building a strong Division politically and a pure, strong Division Party Committee as the basis for making itself comprehensively strong. To that end, the Division has focused its leadership and direction on maintaining the Party’s political, ideological ground, improving the leadership and combativeness of the all-level party committees and commands as the core force in leading units to successfully fulfil all assigned tasks. In the process, the Division has enhanced the party and political work, renewed and improved the quality of political education, stepped up the work of information, propagation, and ideological orientation and management, combined “building” with “fighting”, actively fought against the enemy’s sabotage on the ideological front, and opportunely dealt with troops’ deviations in terms of awareness, ideology and action.

Besides, due regard has been paid to building a strong Division Party Committee politically, ideologically, organizationally and morally as the determinant to the Division’s task performance. To do so, the Division has concentrated on raising the leadership and combativeness of party organizations and the awareness and responsibility of cadres and party members. Emphasis has been placed on enhancing their capacity to elaborate higher echelons’ resolutions and directives, their capability in command and operation as well as their flexibility and creativity in executing resolutions. At the same time, due attention has been paid to promoting the role and responsibility of cadres and party members, particularly party committee members, assigning the responsibility to party committee members and key cadres, strictly implementing the principle of democratic centralism, and exercising self-criticism and criticism during party meetings. New guidelines, models and breakthrough measures have been discussed democratically within the party committees while responsibilities for realizing those have been assigned to each party committee member and key cadre.

Reality shows that in some offices and units, grasping and realizing higher echelons’ resolutions and directives is not relevant to their characteristics while their resolutions are too long and lack specific action plans. Thus, the Division Party Committee has focused on renewing the method for developing the resolutions, making them shorter, sufficient, and easy for its staff to understand, remember, inspect and review; leading central tasks in each period; performing the tasks resolutely, continuously, and thoroughly; staying close to grass-roots units and completely overcoming weaknesses. At the same time, it has frequently organized refresher courses to improve the all-level secretaries, party committee members and political cadres’ capability in organization, leadership and operation, while aligning the work of training this staff with the work of inspecting, supervising and evaluating the task performance as the basis for all-level cadres’ appointment, deployment, and promotion. To make it effective, the Division Party Committee has always combined those above-mentioned points with the implementation of the Resolutions of the 11^th and 12^th Party Committees’ 4^th Plenums on the Party building and rectification and the 12^th Politburo’s Directive 05-CT/TW on the study and following of Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, morality and lifestyle. As a result, its quality of Party building work has considerably improved; its party committee members and key cadres have always played their exemplary, vanguard role and proactively, flexibly formulated breakthrough, creative measures for carrying out the task.

2. Enhancing the quality of training, exercises and combat readiness to make a positive change in the Division’s performance of its central political task. Yearly, grounded on higher echelons’ directives and guidance, the Division Party Committee and Command have strengthened their leadership and direction over tapping all resources and promoting a sense of unity and democracy as well as the role and responsibility of each force and person in conducting the tasks of training and combat readiness.

New recruits practise shooting

As the Division is tasked with training both the active force and the reserve force, the Division has always adhered to the training programs and plans and grasped each group of troops to adopt proper training methods. As for the active force, the Division has organized sufficient training courses in accordance with combat reality, objects of struggle, and the existing materiel, with a focus on shooting, field training, night-time training, and tactical training at each level on the new terrain. At the same time, it has improved troops’ manoeuvrability and flexibility in the deployment of combat formation, making them expert in independent operations, joint operations, and operations in the defensive zone, maintaining readiness for fighting and winning the victory in all situations. As for the reserve force, the Division has followed the motto of “basics, practicality, and effectiveness” under the guideline: “training the reserve force and the active force in the same way”. Emphasis has been placed on renewing the training content and method, combining training in the barracks with field training, and holding battalion-level exercises in line with the task requirements.

During the training process, the Division has concentrated on renewing the work of direction, management, operation, organization, method, and exercise, with great importance attached to providing synchronous, intensive training and taking practice as the main content. Significance has been attached to training new and weak contents and closely combining military training with political education and technical-logistics training, cadre and office training with detachment training, and technical training with tactical, military order, and physical training. As a result, the Division’s quality of training and exercises has ceaselessly improved; it has well fulfilled difficult parts of the exercises, such as infantry battalion’s offensive on inshore islands with platoon and company-level live firing, and infantry company in defence of islands. Besides, the Division has paid special attention to organizing exercises and competitions to enhance cadres, offices, and units’ capability in command and combat coordination. Yearly, it holds the one-side, two-level command and office exercises on the map and in the field with battalion and company-level live firing and the live-firing tactical exercises for its combat training units from infantry section to infantry company levels, together with the live firing at each level after each training course. In the process, it demands that the command and office exercises and tactical exercises of all types must begin with the shift in combat readiness state.

Moreover, the Division has frequently introduced and comprehensively performed the tasks of combat readiness, mobilization readiness, and hostile force’s “peaceful evolution” and conversion prevention and combat, proactively grasped and opportunely dealt with the situations, thereby contributing to maintaining political stability in the stationed area. The system of combat readiness document has regularly been adjusted and supplemented while it has strictly practised combat readiness projects in order to promote the capability in command, coordination, and settlement of the situations. At the same time, it has cooperated with localities in inspecting and grasping the reserve force as well as organizing mobilization readiness training under the plans. Up to now, the Division’s synergy, capability in combat and mobilization readiness, and manoeuvrability have considerably improved; it has successfully fulfilled the tasks when being ordered.

3. A breakthrough in enhancing the quality of standard order building and discipline management. Grasping higher echelons’ directives on standard order building, the Division has educated its troops to clearly understand and strictly implemented the regulations and required each office, unit and staff member to stringently maintain the working regulations according to their task and duties. At the same time, it has focused on carrying out military administrative reform, building up cadres’ scientific, professional working style, correcting troops’ manners, and encouraging measures for the management of troops’ ideology under the Regulations on ideological management, particularly for those who work outside the barracks.

Under the motto of turning towards the grass-roots units, focusing on thoroughly overcoming weaknesses, and making a steady change in standard order and discipline management, the whole Division has adopted creative measures to combine the contents and requirements of standard order building and discipline management with the implementation of the Determined to Win emulation movement and the Campaign entitled “Building units’ diverse, healthy, fine cultural environment within the Military”. At the same time, it has launched many emulation movements, such as “peak month of action without violations of discipline”, “working according to the responsibilities, acting under the military regulations”, and “good words and deeds”. Cultural, sports, artistic activities have been organized plentifully and built up a sense of unity and sentiment for units among troops. As a result, the Division’s observance of the State’s law and the military discipline has made progress; it has witnessed no serious violation of discipline and minimized traffic accidents and normal violations of discipline.

Implementing the above-mentioned breakthrough measures has provided an important prerequisite for the Division 315 to build itself comprehensively strong, which has expressed its staff members’ sentiment and responsibility for continuing its tradition of “being loyal and united, quickly mobilizing the force, and skillfully fighting”.

Sr. Col. Huynh Van Trong, Political Commissar of the Division