At the request of the resistance war against the French invaders, on January 1^st, 1950, 333 Battalion - the predecessor of 239 Brigade, under the Engineering Corps - was established. During the 70 years of construction, combat service, fighting, and maturing, generations of officers and soldiers of the Brigade has always upheld their determination and efforts to overcome difficulties, hardships, and sacrifice to complete their assigned tasks. With its achievements, the Brigade has been awarded with multiple noble rewards by the State. In particular, in 1998, the Brigade was honored with the title of Hero of the Armed Forces in the Doi Moi period.

In recent years, the tasks of the Brigade has been continuously developing, especially the structural adjustment. In order to successfully complete the assigned tasks, in association with strengthening the organization and forces and building a comprehensively strong unit, the Brigade has focused on leading and directing to improve the quality of training that has been defined as a breakthrough to improve the overall quality and combat power of the Unit.

Colonel Luong delivered speech at the openning ceremony of the 2019 training season

First of all, the Brigade has strengthened the leadership and direction of the Party committees and commanders at all levels on training. Thoroughly grasping and implementing Resolution No.765-NQ/TW of the Central Military Commission and Resolution No.274-NQ/ĐU of the Party Committee of the Engineering Corps on improving the quality of training in the period of 2013-2020 and subsequent years, annually, the Brigade Party Committee and its affiliated organizations have all issued specialized resolutions on the training work, and agencies and units have formulated implementation plans. During the process of implementation, the Brigade has requested the Party committees to directly approve important issues and key contents of the training work, such as development of training program contents and rehearse intentions. At the same time, the roles and responsibilities of commanders and agencies in management and administration have been promoted, and the work of inspection and review has been strengthened to timely rectify and overcome shortcomings and limitations in training. Along with that, the Brigade has actively innovated and improved the effectiveness of the Party and political work in training and promoted emulation, of which the training targets have been attached to the Determination-to-Win Emulation movement and the implementation of Directive No.05-CT/TW of the Politburo (the 12^th Tenure) and the Drive on “Promoting the tradition, dedicating talents, deserving to be Uncle Ho's Soldiers”. Thereby, cadres and soldiers have been built with high determination to voluntarily strive to fulfill the training task targets.

Brigade's troops practice river crossing training

Due to the development of the tasks, the Brigade’s forces have different specialties with training diverse subjects and contents. In order to meet the requirements of the tasks, the Brigade has attached special importance to building and fostering to raise the qualifications and capabilities of the contingent of cadres that has been defined as a key step. Sticking to the plans and roadmap for organisational restructuring, on the one hand, the Brigade has actively reviewed and arranged personnel in accordance with the training majors; coordinated with functional agencies of the Corps to promote training, retraining, and sending cadres to second-degree courses specialized in construction works or bridges and roads; on the other hand, attached importance to regular training and coaching of cadres at the units, going into weaknesses, shortages, and new and inconsistent contents. The remarkable point is that, in order to foster and improve the qualifications in all aspects for the contingent of cadres, the Brigade has chosen cadres with extensive experience in training, working or winning prizes in the contests of the Corps to assign as trainers. For the major of construction works - a content with which the units are inexperienced, besides employing cadres trained at higher levels, the Brigade has coordinated with friendly units, recommended the Corps to appoint cadres to help organize training and drills, and maintained the order of contests of good trainers at all levels. As a result, the contingent of cadres of the Brigade has accumulated valuable experiences, contributing to improving the quality of each lecture and lesson. From 2015 to 2019, the Brigade organized 9 contests with many practical contents about engineering and constructions works, contributing to the movement of self-learning and self-training and raising the level of all aspects of the cadres. So far, the Brigade has had 100% of decentralized trainees, including over 90% of battalion-level cadres and over 80% of platoon and company-level good and excellent trainees.

Conducting technical maintenance

Along with the attention paid to building and fostering to raise the all-round quality of the contingent of cadres, the Brigade has directed the units to conduct comprehensive, intensive, and focused training close to the subjects and tasks of the strategic reserve engineering units. The Brigade has required agencies and units to stick to the contents and programs as prescribed and focus on training the soldiers to be strong in infantry combat techniques and tactics and good at engineering techniques and tactics; proficient in exploiting and using technical equipment included in the staffing; and capable of using one to two other equipment and new ones. In order to achieve high efficiency, the Brigade has focused on doing well the preparations, from human resources to training plans and schedule, and assurance of facilities, training fields, and practice yards. At the same time, the Brigade has actively innovated training methods - strengthening practical training, night training, and task-based intensive training; and associating physical and theoretical training with practice, special practice on vehicles and equipment. In particular, the Brigade has led and directed units to attach importance to specialized training in the performance of tasks: natural disaster prevention, search and rescue, construction of defensive works, construction of border patrol roads; or clearance of bombs, mines and explosive objects, etc. With that way, every year, the Brigade has completed 100% of its contents, programs, and training time as prescribed. The number of regular military trainees has reached 98%, and the quality of training has been improved. In the period of 2013 - 2019, through annual inspection, the Brigade had 100% of the fairly-good and good contents achieved, and excellence for river-crossing major. The general-round company and battalion-level rehearsals were safe and excellent. Battalions and companies were all qualified for excellent training units. The Brigade had 7 consecutive years being awarded the "Excellent Training Unit" Flag by the Ministry of Ministry Defence. In 2016, it was awarded the "Excellent Training Unit in 5 years 2011 - 2015" Flag by the Ministry of National Defence.

In order to improve the quality of training, the Brigade has paid much attention to doing well the assurance work. Facing the high demands on materials and supplies for training, the Brigade has adopted several measures to manage and effectively use the funding sources guaranteed by the superiors. At the same time, it has proactively leverage the internal resources, strengthened the movement on promoting innovations and technical improvements; consolidating training grounds, fields, and specialized training rooms; repairing and building new training models and tools; well performing the task of ensuring logistics, improving the life and health of the soldiers; and strictly maintaining the technical working routine associated with the implementation of the Drive 50, ensuring the technical ratio of weapons, equipment and means as prescribed, meeting the requirements on training and task performance.

By the above positive and synchronous measures, the quality of training of 239 Brigade has had a positive and progressive change. This is an important basis to ensure that the Brigade will fulfill all assigned tasks, constantly promoting the 70-year tradition of building, fighting, and maturing in the new period.

Colonel Mai Xuan Luong, Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of the Brigade