The Combat Non-Infantry Badge
[See update at end] This isn't exactly new news, but the Army has just authorized an award for soldiers involved in direct combat who are not infantrymen. The award is called the Close Combat Badge. Infantrymen have had their own, unique (and highly coveted) "proof I was there" award since World War II, the Combat Infantry Badge, CIB.

Therein lies the rub. The CIB was created as a way visually to distinguish between infantry combat vets and everyone else, including infantrymen with no combat experience. In WW2, infantry troops accounted for something like 80 percent of all Army casualties. For them, all combat was close combat. For most other soldiers, service in a combat zone usually didn't involve actually getting shot at.

However, the criterion for awarding the CIB slipped in subsequent wars. I knew a CIB wearer in the early 1980s who had earned his CIB by guarding a PX in Saigon. Never fired a shot and never ducked one. An 82d Airborne Division paratrooper told me he'd received his CIB for stepping off an airplane in Grenada, sitting on the tarmac for an hour, then flying back to Fort Bragg. He said infantry commanders were rushing troops down and back because when 80 percent of an infantry unit's infantrymen wear the CIB, the unit can be designated a "combat infantry" company or battalion or whatever size unit it is. A special streamer is authorized for the flags or guidons of such units and they are quite prestigious within the infantry community.

There was a Bill Mauldin cartoon in which the company clerk is explaining to the company medic - a beaten, bedraggled, unshaven, exhausted man with months on the front line - "The reason you don't get combat pay is because you don't fight." Being a medic assigned to an infantry unit has long been recognized as perhaps the most hazardous assignment in the Army. For that reason the Army authorized the Combat Medic Badge, awarded to medical personnel who were assigned to or attached to a medical detachment of the infantry.

Then came Iraq, when the old, familiar front lines disappeared. Support soldiers had always had some risk of direct combat, but in Iraq close combat became routine for everyone; the bad guys attack all kinds of units, not just infantry. Not only that, but many non-infantry units in Iraq were assigned the same kinds of missions that infantry units were assigned, such as patrolling to root out insurgents, area security operations and direct attack. The support troops have taken many casualties conducting these missions.

Hence the creation of the Close Combat Badge, denoting non-infantry soldiers who engage in direct combat. But not all non-infantry soldiers.

The Army will award the CCB to Armor, Cavalry, Combat Engineer, and Field Artillery Soldiers in Military Occupational Specialties or corresponding officer branch/specialties recognized as having a high probability to routinely engage in direct combat, and they must be assigned or attached to an Army unit of brigade or below that is purposefully organized to routinely conduct close combat operations and engage in direct combat in accordance with existing rules and policy.

The CCB will be presented only to eligible Soldiers who are personally present and under fire while engaged in active ground combat, to close with and destroy the enemy with direct fires. (link)

So the truck drivers who fought their way through roadblocks are excluded.

IMO, the Army has gotten carried away with combat recognition. Any soldier who serves in a designated combat zone is authorized to wear the unit patch of his/her assignment on the right shoulder forevermore. Now, in addition, we have three different badges to denote exposure to enemy fire (plus the Purple Heart, which sort of proves the case). We are salami-slicing the character of service among our soldiers too thinly. I say keep the right-shoulder patch tradition, ditch all the badges and when any soldier of any specialty engages in direct combat, do what the Marines do - give 'em a combat action ribbon, and let it go at that.

The principal eligibility criterion is that the individual must have participated in a bona fide ground or surface combat fire fight or action during which he was under enemy fire and his performance while under fire was satisfactory.

Why we need anything more complicated than that, I don't know.

Update: I knew an infantry first sergeant who had been awarded the CIB for Vietnam combat. He always wore the Expert Infantry Badge instead. The EIB is the same as the CIB, but has no wreath. The top said that he wore the EIB because it was harder to earn and denoted true infantry expertise. Does he have a point? Here's a Fort Bragg Paraglide article on what is required to earn the EIB, and for the truly detail oriented among you, the US Army infantry web site has a 90-page, Word 97 document that tells you everything you need to know.

I have always had the suspicion that the CIB is so highly coveted because it is a very attractive, handsome badge and stands out on the class A uniform. I bet that if the Army took the wreath away from the CIB and gave it to the EIB, the prestige pecking order would change, too.

Update 2: Reader Max J. emails:

I'm sure you've heard this from other infantrymen before, but I was far more proud of my EIB than I was of the CIB. Every infantry soldier was awarded the CIB for time in country (in Afghanistan that was how I understood it. I may be wrong but our injured mail-man "earned" one). So regardless of combat experience or skill they were authorized to wear a badge that should be the mark of ultimate respect. The EIB (in my opinion) designates far greater achievement than the CIB. Unfortunately, the CIB trumps the EIB on the uniform, and there is no distinction for those individuals who were capable of mastering all of the skills required of the infantry.

Having been an artilleryman, I don't have a personal dog in the CIB/EIB hunt, but I still say the Army has gotten too badge happy overall.

by Donald Sensing, 2/22/2005 07:49:00 PM. Permalink |