As one of the first main units in the Southeast region of Vietnam, the Infantry Regiment 1 is a full-strength unit under the Infantry Division 9, the Army Corps 4, with long-established traditions and experience in combat training. Over the past 60 years of building, fighting, and maturing, since its foundation on February 9th 1962, the Regiment’s staff members have fought and sacrificed to achieve a lot of glorious feats of arms, contributed greatly to the national liberation and protection and international mission, building up its tradition of “being loyal, courageous, overcoming all difficulties, continuously achieving feats of arms, annihilating troops of Saigon puppet regime, defeating the U.S.”. Therefore, it was given the title of Hero of the People’s Armed Forces and many other noble awards.
In recent years, the Regiment’s Party Committee and Command have sought to promote its tradition and recorded results, with a focus on making the Regiment comprehensively strong. To that end, the improved quality of combat training has been seen as a breakthrough measure and an important basis for the Regiment to fulfil its task and deserve to be part of the combat formation of a strategic mobile main army corps.
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| Col. Trinh Luu Binh addressing the conference on reviewing the 5-year implementation of the Resolution 765-NQ/QUTW |
To do so, the Regiment’s Party Committee and Command have stepped up the work of education to raise cadres and soldiers’ awareness and responsibility towards the training work. Focuses have been placed on directing offices and units to enhance political and ideological education to create a deep change in cadres and soldiers’ awareness and responsibility towards the training task; on introducing higher echelons’ resolutions, directives, plans and guiding documents on training and combat readiness, particularly the Central Military Commission’s Resolution 765-NQ/QUTW and the Resolutions of the Party Committees of the Corps and the Division on improving the training quality in the 2013-2020 period and beyond; on highlighting the position, significance and importance of the training task towards the improved synergy, combat strength and task performance of the Regiment. Besides, the Regiment’s Party Committee has issued a special resolution which has clearly identified the training goals, targets and requirements, while ordering party committees, party cells, and commanders at all levels to strengthen their leadership and direction over the implementation process. To make it effective, the Regiment has requested its affiliates to step up the party and political work during training and combine propagation and education with the Campaign “promote tradition, devote talent, deserve to be Uncle Ho’s soldiers” and the encouraged Regulations on grass-roots level democracy, particularly military and professional democracy. At the same time, they have been required to enhance the emulation movements, increase contests at all levels, and take the training results as the basis for evaluating and appointing cadres, classifying party members and organizations as well as for the emulation and commendation work. Moreover, the Regiment has actively renewed the work of training direction, management, operation and organization; improved the quality of training plans, particularly at company and battalion levels; directed the Staff to increase inspection of units’ implementation of training plans; resolutely fought against the lowered training requirements, the reduced training contents and duration, subjectivism, self-satisfaction, fearfulness for hardship, and achievement disease during training. Thus, the Regiment’s training work has always been directed closely, uniformly; its staff members’ awareness and responsibility towards the training task have been raised; weaknesses in training have been basically overcome.
As the training requirements are high, the objects of training are diverse, and the facilities are inadequate, the Regiment has directed its affiliates to make elaborate training preparations in both human and material terms. Prior to training season, the Regiment staffs its units with sufficient quantity and particularly provides the units in charge of training new recruits with good training cadres. Under the motto of “training cadres first, training soldiers later”, the Regiment has focused on the work of training cadres and considered it as the key to improving the training quality. While dispatching cadres to attend training courses held by the Corps and the Division, the Regiment has maintained the order for full-time training courses intended for cadres from squad to company levels, asked superiors to train inferiors and offices to give instructions to and train units, with emphasis placed on training the training and graduate cadres. It should be noted that the Regiment has selected capable and experienced cadres to establish groups of special instructors according to groups of soldiers, namely first-year, second-year, technical, specialized ones. Concerning the training contents, the Regiment has concentrated on new issues, inconsistent points, and particularly weaknesses in training and practice organization and method. In addition, the Regiment has directed units to actively promote technical initiatives and innovations, and prepare sufficient training plans, lesson plans, and training aids and grounds. Due to its narrow training grounds, the Regiment has proactively mobilized resources in building the grounds for training infantry combat skills, and individual, team, squad, platoon tactics. In 2018, after the inspection of training preparation work by the Corps and the Division, the Regime was rated as the best among 4 full-strength regiments of the Corps.
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| New recruits practise shooting |
To continue the tradition of “overcoming difficulties, continuously achieving feats of arms”, the Regiment has actively renewed the training organization and method in accordance with its mission, structure and materiel, ensuring that its troops would be capable of continuous independent combat and expert in combat with the existing materiel and the reinforced equipment and forces as well as in joint operations. Accordingly, units have adhered to the motto of “basics, practicality, and thorough grasp”, set store by synchronous, specialized training in accordance with combat reality, operating area, and objects of struggle, and combined training with the performance of their tasks. Units have taken skills training as the basis, tactics training as the centre, and detachments training as the focus, closely combined training with practice, exercises, regularity building and discipline management, and military training with political education and transmission of combat experience, and built up their troops’ faith in the combat method and existing materiel. To meet the requirements for combat within the formation of a main mobile Corps, the Regiment has attached great value to training its troops and units’ manoeuvrability and combat coordination in line with physical training, long, load-carriage marches, field training, night-time training, camouflage, and diversion in the hi-tech warfare. Recently, the Regiment has closely cooperated with higher echelons’ forces, particularly the force of engineers in training troops to cross the river of Saigon with new method (using the military hardware named VNS - 1.500) during marches and live-firing exercises, ensuring punctuality, secrecy, and safety of both personnel and materiel. A part from training, the Regiment has adopted various measures to renew the organization and operation of exercises, increase exercises, particularly tactical, live-firing ones, and improve all-levels cadres’ capability in command and combat coordination and units’ manoeuvrability. As a result, units’ training quality has been raised considerably. Up to now, 100% of the Regiment’s cadres have been capable of providing training for soldiers at their level. Annually, 100% of training sections meet the targets, over 80% of which are rated credit and distinction. All combat and live-firing tactical exercises at section, platoon, company and battalion levels have been rated distinction. The Regiment has been given the title of good training unit for many consecutive years.
Training and combat readiness are always in parallel with each other. Therefore, the Regiment always aligns training with combat readiness. It has strictly maintained the order for and the system of combat readiness duty at all levels and ensured the synchronicity in human, materiel, and vehicle terms. At the same time, it has proactively built, reviewed, adjusted and completed combat plans and resolutions in accordance with the development of the situation and the task requirements as the basis for training, practice and exercises. It is worth noting that over the past years, the Regiment has actively organized training under the situations and achieved the initial results, thereby helping commanders and units flexibly apply theory to specific situations and improve their flexibility and creativity. The work of training and practice under the combat readiness situations have helped the Regiment test and complete the system of combat documents in accordance with the requirements set by reality. Besides, the Regiment has well performed the technical and logistics work, improved its troops’ material and spiritual life, ensured its troops’ fitness and resilience, carefully maintained weapons and technical equipment with high technical coefficient, synchronicity, and stable reliability, meeting the requirements for training and combat readiness.
Fully understanding the position and importance of the training work and promoting the attained results, the Infantry Regiment 1 will continue striving to successfully fulfil the training task of 2019, deserving to be a top training unit of the Division and the Corps.
Col. Trinh Luu Binh, Commander of the Regiment