Ceremonial Stand-Down

The 3,000 men of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Air Cavalry Division, lined up on the parade field at Bien Hoa airbase last week, as a spectators' section filled with high-ranking officers from the U.S. and South Vietnamese commands. General Creighton Abrams, newly appointed U.S. Army Chief of Staff, was there; so was Military Region III Commander Lieut. General Nguyen Van Minh, who pinned the National Order of Viet Nam, fourth class, on the chest of Brigadier General James F. Hamlet, the 3rd Brigade commander. Then, while a pickup band played slightly off key, Hamlet slowly rolled up the brigade's guidon.

Thus, with a low key ceremony, the last sizable army combat unit remaining in Viet Nam stood down last week--officially, if not entirely in fact. Though the 3rd was mustered out, one of its three battalions will remain behind. The 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, will form the nucleus of a force of 2,000 or more men named Task Force Garry Owen. The troops will help protect the Bien Hoa-Saigon-Long Binh area. That is basically the job of the 3rd Brigade, except that now, as the task force's commander, Lieut. Colonel Robert W. Walker Jr., put it last week, "we have more terrain and fewer men to cover it with."

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