[Field_Sailor]

A badge of their own
It’s official!: CCB design isn’t final, but recognition is retroactive to Sept. 11, 2001

By Joseph R. Chenelly
Times staff writers


Soldiers who aren’t officially infantrymen but have taken part in “infantry specific” missions since Sept. 11, 2001, now have a combat badge to call their own.
The Close Combat Badge was created in response to recommendations from the most senior commanders in Iraq. But the new badge also is a result of a long-standing debate over how to recognize soldiers for combat duty. It is designed to recognize soldiers in ground combat arms — specifically armor, cavalry, combat engineer, and field artillery soldiers.

Since World War II, infantrymen and medics — who receive the Combat Medical Badge — were the only soldiers who receive branch-specific awards for combat service.

Lt. Gen. Franklin L. “Buster” Hagenbeck, the Army’s chief of personnel, sat down with reporters Feb. 18 to discuss the Army’s newest award.

“The Close Combat Badge is the right way to recognize those soldiers who were in units purposefully reorganized to serve as infantry and conducting infantry unique missions,” he said.

Troops who come under fire during a convoy or while on post will not necessarily be eligible for the CCB, Hagenbeck said. A soldier rating a combat patch will not necessarily rate a CCB, he said, referring to the practice of allowing soldiers to wear unit patches on the right shoulder to recognize service in a combat zone.

“This is not for just coming under fire,” he said. “This is for doing an infantry job and enduring the daily endeavors that come with that job.”

Not long after the ground campaign ended in April 2003, the Army began training noninfantry units such as cavalry companies and artillery batteries to perform dismounted infantry missions.

Lieutenant and major generals began writing Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Chief of Staff of the Army, last year asking for a way to reward noninfantry soldiers under their command who were filling roles doctrinally reserved for infantrymen.

According to one such letter shown to reporters, a lieutenant general wrote: “On a daily basis, these noninfantry troopers will execute the same missions and share the same hazards as infantrymen, and should be recognized as such.”

So Schoomaker decided to find a way to do just that. The Army convened a panel of retired three- and four-star generals and command sergeants major. The Army turned to the retirees in an effort to ensure the “CIB’s steeped history” was preserved, Hagenbeck said. At least one of the panelists is a veteran of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

The group looked at several options before deciding on the CCB, including awarding the CIB to noninfantry or Special Forces soldiers; creating a combat action ribbon like the Marine Corps and Navy, and making no move at all.

The criteria for earning a badge will mirror that of the CIB, Hagenbeck said. The official wording is being finalized by lawyers and policymakers and is expected to be officially released in an administrative message in March.

The regulations governing the CIB are fairly specific:

• The soldier, either enlisted or an officer below colonel, must be in an infantry or Special Forces branch or military occupational specialty.

• He must have “satisfactorily performed duty” while engaged in ground combat for any length of time with an infantry, Ranger or Special Forces unit no larger than a brigade or regiment.

• The recipient must be “personally present and under hostile fire” in a unit “actively engaged” in ground combat with the enemy.

• Personnel with an MOS other than infantry or Special Forces are not eligible, “regardless of the circumstances. Commanders are not authorized to make any exceptions to this policy.”

Approval authority for the CCB will be granted to major generals and cannot be delegated. Soldiers can be nominated for the badge immediately after the message is released, Hagenbeck said, but the badge itself is not expected to be available in post exchanges for about six months.

The design of the badge is still in a “predecisional” phase, but Hagenbeck said plans have it looking much like the CIB, but with a bayonet in place of the rifle. The CIB is a silver and enamel badge one inch high and three inches wide, with an infantry musket on a light blue bar with a silver border, on and over an elliptical oak wreath.

Soldiers who rate the badge will pick up 15 points toward promotion just like infantrymen do when they earn the CIB.

Other branches of the U.S. military, as well as foreign forces, may be eligible for the new badge, but Hagenbeck would not estimate the number of soldiers who may already be eligible since the CCB is retroactive to the 9/11 attacks.

Word of the CCB already is trickling in among rank-and-file soldiers in Tikrit, Iraq, and reaction is mixed.

Soldiers of 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, a unit of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, arrived there about a month ago to begin their second rotation for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Set up under the new unit of action organization, the infantry battalion has two tank companies and an engineer company assigned to it permanently, a forward support company in direct support of the battalion plus its two original infantry companies, for a total of six.

Depending on eligibility requirements, the tankers and engineers stand to be awarded the badge for their roles in dismounted operations. Even so, as far as these combat engineers are concerned, the badge won’t change a thing.

“These patches and badges encompass standards for meeting requirements. [What we do] is part of the job of a soldier. I don’t think it deserves any huge recognition,” said Sgt. Louis Berwald, 23, of Atlanta, a squad leader with Easy Company, which was formerly organic to the 11th Engineers Battalion, a division asset. “It’s not about wearing patches. It’s about keeping your buddies alive.”

Another Easy Company combat engineer, Spc. Michael Seaman, 22, of St. Clair, Mich., said he thinks that wearing a combat badge invites problems.

“All it does is make people want to ask you about it back home,” said Seaman, who recalled that when he went home, a number of people asked him about the darker side of being in Iraq, about the people he may have had to kill when he was here during OIF I.

Some of the battalion’s tankers seemed more receptive, but, like the engineers, didn’t feel it would validate what they already know they’ve done in Iraq.

“I think it’s great that Gen. Schoomaker is wanting to do it for us, but for me, personally, I don’t need it,” said Capt. Jason Freidt, 31, of Temecula, Calif., commander of Charlie Company, one of the tank companies with 2-7. “I know what I’ve done.”

Boasting about the amount of ground they cover and the number of missions they go on every day, especially their abilities as a quick reaction force, the infantrymen of Alpha Company were, nevertheless, accepting of a close combat badge for their fellow artillerymen, tankers and engineers as long as they did something to deserve it.

“I could see, like, tankers and combat engineers [getting something], but not these FOB dwellers,” said Spc. Mark Mohler, 22, of Liberty Center, Ohio, referring to troops who work on the forward operating bases but never go outside the wire.

But “if they’re doing an infantryman’s role they should get something,” said Spc. Brandon Daniels, 24, of Richland, Miss., an infantryman with the 2-7’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company who is on his first rotation to Iraq and expects to get his CIB while he is here.

“I wouldn’t say the CIB, because that’s for infantrymen, but they deserve something.”