Over the years, to meet the requirements of building an “adept, compact, strong” Engineer Corps towards modernity, the Party Committee and Command of Engineer Brigade 239 (hereinafter referred to as the Brigade) have focused their leadership and direction on taking measures synchronously to perform the Brigade’s central political and contingency tasks as well as to build the Brigade into an “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong unit as the basis for improving the Brigade’s task performance. As a result, cadres and soldiers’ political awareness and steadfastness have been unceasingly raised; there have been positive changes in training, combat readiness, regularity building, and discipline management; logistics and technical work has been renewed with practical outcomes. The Brigade has always successfully or excellently fulfilled its assigned tasks. It has been rated as a “good training unit” in many consecutive years, while winning top prizes in all-level competitions.

Commander of the Corps inspects documents of the Brigade’s BC-23A exercise

In the process, the Brigade has drawn some lessons on building itself into an “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong unit; those lessons will continue to be applied in the upcoming time as the Brigade’s measures.

First of all, focusing on building a politically strong unit. This measure is of paramount importance to the building of an “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong unit and the task performance of a unit. Due to the particularities of its function as a strategic reserve river-crossing engineer unit, the Brigade has to perform different tasks simultaneously, leading to the dispersion of its manpower in various locations; its cadres and soldiers have to work with high intensity and riskiness. Besides, the dark side of the market economy and family circumstances also have negative impacts on the Brigade’s cadres and soldiers' thoughts and feelings. Against that backdrop, the Brigade has stepped up political and ideological education and law propagation, dissemination, and education, while improving the efficiency and effectiveness of party and political work during its operations. Emphasis has been placed on realising the Central Military Commission Standing Board’s Directive 2423-CT/QUTW, dated 9 November 2023 on “renewing and enhancing political education in the new period”. Besides, the Brigade has concentrated on educating troops on its tradition, the Engineer Corps’ tradition of “Opening road to victory”, plots and artifices of hostile forces’ “peaceful evolution” strategy, the political security and social order situation in its stationed area, and targets, requirements, content, and measures relating to the building of an “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong unit. At the same time, it has actively renewed methods and forms of education and closely combined regular education with tasks-based education to achieve a new positive change in troops’ awareness and action. Besides, in order to manage and settle troops’ ideological development and opportunely deal with arising issues right at grass-roots level, the Brigade has directed its offices and units to promote democracy and especially cadres and party members’ responsibility to set good examples and resolutely fight against wrong perceptions, fearfulness of difficulty, and complacency.

It is worth noting that in order to build a politically strong Brigade, importance has been attached to improving all-level party organisations’ leadership capacity and combativeness and aligning the building of pure, strong party organisations with the building of “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong offices and units. Due attention has been paid to developing, reviewing, supplementing, and strictly implementing party committees’ work and leadership regulations, particularly for key tasks. Moreover, the Brigade has maintained the quality and effectiveness of the Determined to Win Emulation Movement in tandem with the study and following of Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle and the Campaign “promoting tradition, devoting talent, deserving to be Uncle Ho’s Soldiers” in the new era, with a view to improving cadres and soldiers’ revolutionary morality, awareness, and responsibility for the performance of their tasks.

Practising river crossing by PMP ferry

Raising the synergy and combat power to meet its task requirements in all situations is of utmost importance to a unit tasked with ensuring forces’ combat manoeuvrability at strategic and operational levels. To that end, the Brigade has actively raised the quality of training and combat readiness. Grasping and implementing the Central Military Commission’s Resolution 1659-NQ/QUTW, dated 20 December 2022 and the Engineer Corps Party Committee’s Resolution 464-NQ/ĐU on raising the quality of training in the period of 2023 – 2030 and beyond, the Brigade Party Committee has developed a specialised Resolution on training work, with a lot of measures to renew leadership, direction, management, and operation in this work and better the quality of specialised training to satisfy the requirements set by modern combat during a war to defend the Fatherland. The Brigade has stepped up decentralisation of training work and delegated responsibilities to all-level party committees, commands, and offices for leadership, direction, and organisation of training work. It has closely managed training plans and schedules and intensified inspection to practically assess its training work, opportunely draw lessons, and settle weaknesses.

In the training process, the Brigade has requested its offices and units to adhere to the motto of “basics, practicality, and solidity” and attach importance to synchronous, specialised training relevant to their objects of combat, stationed area, task requirements, structure, and equipment. Emphasis has been placed on improving troops’ tactics and skills in infantry combat, river crossing, and use of their assigned equipment. The Brigade has focused on bettering commands and offices’ staff work for combat and training as well as their methods of directing and organising training and exercises. As for detachment-level cadres, significance has been attached to improving their methods of organising training and developing lesson plans and their professional competence. For detachment-level affiliates, consideration has been given to training troops to exploit their assigned weapons and equipment, intensifying field, night-time, and long-distance march training in harsh weather conditions, and organising training courses on building wharves and setting up bridges and ferries for combat readiness. It should be noted that in order to raise the quality of training, in spite of poor training facilities, limited budget, and a decrease in the number of cadres experienced in training work, the Brigade has directed its offices and units to include specialised training in the performance of the tasks of natural disaster prevention and control, search and rescue, construction of defensive works and border patrol roads, and bomb and mine clearance under the motto of “taking construction sites as training grounds”. That is an effective approach to the “dual goals” and the training of troops’ coordination. Additionally, the Brigade has regularly developed and supplemented plans on support for combat, natural disaster prevention and control, search and rescue, intensified practice and exercises, particularly at company and battalion levels, and taken part in joint exercises so as to meet the requirements of engineering support during a war for Fatherland protection.

Due to the particularities, complexity, riskiness, and danger of its tasks, in order to fulfil its political missions and build itself into a really “exemplary, typical” unit, the Brigade has selected regularity building and discipline management as a breakthrough. To that end, the Brigade has directed its offices and units to step up the observance of military discipline amongst cadres and soldiers; offices have been requested to set good examples for units, while cadres have been asked to set good examples for soldiers to follow. Cadres and commanders have actively enhanced the work of education to build and raise troops’ self-awareness to comply with the State’s law, the Military’s discipline, and the Brigade’s regulations. At the same time, the Brigade has strictly maintained regulations on meeting, study, and work and closely managed troops, weapons, and equipment, especially in days off and rest hours. Units of the Brigade have taken a lot of measures to proactively prevent and stringently handle violations of discipline. Great value has been attached to combining regularity building and discipline management with the building of a cultural environment and “regular, bright, green, clean, beautiful” barracks. As a result, in recent years, work regulations from offices to units across the Brigade have been really maintained; there has been a positive change in cadres and soldiers’ observance of discipline; there has been no serious violation of discipline; the Brigade has achieved comprehensive safety.

In addition to those above-mentioned measures, the Brigade has always well performed logistics and technical support work. Under the Corps’ direction, in 2023, the Brigade successfully fulfilled the task of merging its logistics section with its technical one. As the Brigade has to manage and use a large quantity of equipment and vehicles, including many specialised, old-generation, and new-generation ones, it has always attached paramount importance to technical support for both regular and irregular tasks. To do so, the Brigade has strengthened its leadership and direction over technical work and especially stepped up the implementation of Campaign 50 and the emulation movement on promoting technical initiatives and innovations. Offices and units within the Brigade have tightened regulations on maintaining and repairing equipment and vehicles at all levels; the quality of “technical hour” and “technical day” has been raised. As a result, the Brigade’s technical coefficient has always been guaranteed to meet the requirements of training and combat readiness.

For logistics work, the Brigade has always focused its direction on ensuring troops’ catering, accommodation, and health. On a yearly basis, the Brigade has always fulfilled or exceeded targets of logistics work under regulations. All affiliates of the Brigade have been highly rated for their catering and ordnance management; the rate of healthy troops has always been above 99% without any epidemic for many years. Besides, the Brigade has proactively mobilised all resources, particularly its own human resources to construct and consolidate its barracks, internal roads, and flower gardens, thereby contributing to building a “regular, bright, green, clean, beautiful” unit and improving troops’ material and mental life.

Those above-mentioned good results constitute an important precondition for the Brigade to continue synchronously implementing measures to build an “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong unit, raise its synergy and combat power, and successfully fulfil its assigned tasks.

Col. PHAM VAN HUYNH

Commander of the Brigade