Engineering Brigade 550 of the 4^th Corps was established on July 20^th, 1974. Over 45 years of construction, combat, and maturity, under the leadership and direction of the Corps’ Party Commission and High Command and thanks to the help of the local Party committees, authorities, and people and other agencies and units, generations of its officials and soldiers of have always been united, brave, and creative to overcome all difficulties and challenges and successfully complete their assigned tasks. With these achievements, the Brigade has been conferred with the title of "Hero of the People's Armed Forces", First-Class National Defense Medal, Feat Order, and Military Exploit Order by the State; Angkor Wat Medal by the State of Cambodia; and many other noble rewards by the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Defense, the 4^th Corps High Command, and the localities.

An oath ceremony of new recruit

At the request of the cause of construction and protection of the Fatherland in the new period, the Brigade's tasks have new requirements. Along with training and combat readiness, the Brigade also performs the work of demining, construction of border patrol roads and defense projects, and search and rescue, etc. During such process, the Brigade's forces have frequently been on the move, scattered, and operated in mountainous, remote and isolated areas with high risk of insecurity. Meanwhile, as the Brigade is stationed in a highly populated area, its officials and soldiers are prone to adverse effect of the market economy and social evils. Given that fact, the Brigade’s Party Commission and commanders have set out numerous appropriate leadership and direction guidelines and measures to improve the overall quality and combat strength to meet the requirements and assigned tasks.

First of all, the Brigade has focused on building a strong political base, which creates a basis for improving the overall quality to successfully complete all assigned tasks. The Brigade has also promoted the work of political and ideological education for the firm political stance and strong determination of officials and soldiers. This is an important content, especially when the tasks of the Engineering Arm, in general, and the Brigade, in particular, has the character of "fighting in peacetime". In order to meet such requirement, the Brigade has thoroughly grasped the superiors’ instructions, resolutions, and guidelines and the unit's task requirements for its officials and soldiers with attention put on the troops and forces who perform important and independent tasks or those who operate beyond the supervision of superiors. Implementing the Project on "Renovating political education in the unit in the new period", the Brigade has attached great importance to diversifying forms; selecting appropriate methods of grasping and education; and closely combining basic education with continuing education and task-based education, traditional education, legal education, and discipline, morality and lifestyle education for officials and soldiers. At the same time, the Brigade has compiled 14 topics, updated policies and guidelines of the Party and State, the situation and tasks of the Army, the Corps, and the Brigade with shortened, easy-to-remember, and easy-to-implement contents that are included in pocketbooks for the soldiers. In addition to the general program, the Brigade has adhered to the characteristics and tasks of each unit to select the appropriate content, such as educating the soldiers so that they have high spirit and good sense of responsibility to excellently fulfill the task of river crossing for the Corps in all circumstances and be ready to participate in search and rescue when requested. Importance has also been attached to educating the soldiers to overcome difficulties and take arduous efforts to build defense projects and border patrol roads in the spirit of "Opening road to victory", ensuring absolute secrecy and safety. The units have built several creative and effective educational models, namely "Model lectures" or "Every week with a story about Uncle Ho" and applied initiatives such as "Dual-use table", "Table of good people exemplification”, etc. Concurrently, the Brigade has strengthened management and discipline, well implemented the Grassroots Democracy Regulations, paid attention to doing well the policy work, and actively fought against the signs of recession in political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle and fearfulness of difficulties and hardship. As a result, 100% of its officials and soldiers have peace of mind with the unit and are ready to receive and complete all assigned tasks.

Building the Party is a key task that decides the results of leadership in performance of tasks. Therefore, the Brigade has regularly taken care of strengthening, consolidating, and building Party organizations and cadres and Party members and promoting exemplary role of officials in charge of all aspects of work. The Brigade Party Commission has focused on consolidating and renewing the content; improving the quality of meeting of the Party committees and cells, especially at the grassroots units that perform independent and distant tasks; paid attention to fostering and improving capacity, innovating leadership and working style for the team of secretaries and commission members. In particular, much attention is paid on fostering the capacity on concretizing the superiors’ resolutions of the drafting resolutions, and developing methods of organizing activities at the Party cell level. Recently, the Brigade has taken several measures to boost the implementation of the 4^th Central Resolution (the 12^th Tenure) on building and adjusting the Party in association with the Politburo’s Directive No.05-CT/TW (12^th Tenure) on learning and following Ho Chi Minh's thought, morality, and style. The Brigade Party Commission has required the its Party members, especially the leading cadres, to be good examples of moral qualities, lifestyles, and working styles for the masses to follow. At the same time, the policy of "Four together" (eating together, staying together, working together, and sharing together) has been strictly implemented at the platoon and company levels. Therefore, high solidarity has been built up among the units, and the beliefs of the masses have been gained, contributing to the successful implementation of all assigned tasks. In 2018, the Brigade successfully completed its mission and built a comprehensively strong unit. The Brigade Party Commission was rated clean and strong, and was awarded with the Flag "Leading unit in the Determination-to-Win Emulation movement" by the Government.

River crossing practice

Accompanied by political and ideological education and construction of a clean and strong party organization, the Brigade has promoted the training work to improve professional qualifications for officials and soldiers, that has been determined as a key and regular mission and a basis to complete all assigned tasks. By thoroughly grasping the superiors’ resolutions and directives, the Brigade has focused on strengthening the leadership and direction of the Party committee members and commanders at all levels in training. Annually, the Brigade Party Commission and committees at all levels have issued resolutions specialized in leading the training work and developed specific guidelines, goals, and measures close to the assigned tasks. The organizational characteristics of the Unit include different forces and specialties with various types of specialized military equipment, while it performs the training work and tasks concurrently. The Brigade, therefore, has always paid attention to well performing the training preparation work from coaching and retraining of officials to attentive and synchronous development of plans and schedules, and training and field material preparation. Thoroughly grasping and implementing the requirements on innovation and improvement of the quality of training in the spirit of Resolution No.765-NQ/QUTW of the Central Military Commission, the Brigade has always adhered to the "basic, practical, and solid" motto and organized comprehensive and intensive training, taking technical training as a basis and tactical training as a center to be close to the characteristics and tasks of each force and combat practice. Under the direction of the Brigade, the units have taken specialized technical training standards and "good training" engineering unit standards as a basis for practice. The units have also conducted basic training from the beginning and combined basic training with advanced training and technical training with tactical training. Much attention has been paid to night training, particularly practical training, and training on engineering assurance in the conditions that the enemy uses high-tech weapons. Of which, attention has been paid to training for the soldiers to proficiently use staffed weapons and technical equipment to be skillful in their specialties. In order to meet its specific tasks, the Brigade has attached special importance to fostering and training for the soldiers to be patient, meticulous, courageous, and aware of discipline and compliance with the work of safety assurance in performing tasks, etc. To achieve high efficiency, the Brigade has actively innovated the organization forms and training methods; promoted the Party and political work in training; and closely combined training with the performance of tasks, considering "the construction site as the training field" and flexible in organization of training in shifts and crews, and reasonably revolving and assigning in practice. With appropriate measures, the Brigade has met the standards of “Good Training unit”. The level and capacity of commanding organization and performance of tasks of officials and soldiers has been improved. This is the basis for the Brigade to complete the tasks of construction of military works and border patrol roads and clearance of bombs and mines to ensure absolute safety and restore more than 6,000 hectares of "dead land", contributing to socio-economic development and ensuring a safe life for people. Thereby, the qualities of the "Uncle Ho's soldiers" of the Engineering soldiers in peace time have been beautified further.

Along with that, the Brigade has focused on improving the quality and efficiency of the logistics and technical work. Since 2016, the Brigade has deployed the construction of example units of technical engineering work at the campaign level model (period 2016-2018). During the implementation, the Brigade has promoted the roles and responsibilities of all levels, branches and forces and upheld the spirit of solidarity, initiative, creativity, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency to overcome difficulties and well complete the contents of example construction. The Brigade Party Commission and commanders have effectively deployed the Drive 50, maintained strict discipline and technical assurance regime according to decentralization, and implemented the technical days as instructed. The Brigade has also actively researched, remedied, and promptly repaired arising damages to assure regular and combat-readiness weapons and military equipment and those for flood and storm prevention, training and construction of defense projects. Technical factors of weapons and equipment have always been reached and exceeded the assigned targets. In addition, the Brigade has well ensured logistics for the tasks, promoted cultivation and production with focus put on processing and improving the quality of meals for the soldiers and food safety. The emulation movements, such as "Military Logistics Branch follows Uncle Ho's teachings" in association with the movement of "Good soldier rearing and good management of military supplies" and the movement of "Building and managing regular, green, clean, and scenic barracks", have been effectively implemented. The health care work has been well performed, not allowing epidemics to occur, and the rate of healthy troops has reached 99.6%.

Promoting the wisdom, stuff, and the tradition of "Opening road to victory" of Engineering troops, officials and soldiers of the Brigade 550 continue to strive to further improve the overall quality to meet the requirements on construction and protection of the Fatherland in the new period of revolution.

Senior Colonel Nguyen Van Binh, Political Commissar of the Brigade