Departure — The Last Team Out (1972)

1972 — The Last Team out

Context page — division level. The close of D Company, 2/8 Cav's war: how the unit came home. Drawn from the official Army record (the 2/8 Cav Lineage and Honors and the 3rd Brigade Operational Reports). The exact DA General Order numbers are flagged to pull.

By 1971 the American ground war was winding down, and the 1st Cavalry Division colors redeployed to Fort Hood, Texas, where the division reorganized as a "Triple Capability" (TRICAP) division. But the war was not over for the men who carried its lineage.

The division goes home — the brigade stays

To continue operations in country, the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division (Separate) — the "Garryowen Task Force" — was organized and activated on 30 April 1971. It became one of the last two major U.S. Army ground combat units in Vietnam, operating in War Zone D out of the Bien Hoa area. The brigade stood down on 20 June 1972 in a ceremony attended by the COMUSMACV commander, General Creighton Abrams, and its colors departed for Fort Hood, arriving 29 June 1972; 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry (Task Force Garry Owen) stayed on into the summer.

2/8 Cav — in the field to the end

2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry was one of the 3rd Brigade (Separate)'s maneuver battalions. It left Vietnam in 1971 and was inactivated on 28 June 1972 — present to the very end of the brigade's tour. This is why D Company kept taking losses after the division proper had gone home: the FSB Fontaine actions (April 1971), the Núi Bà contact (October 1971), and the Chinook crash of 10 May 1972 — D Company's single costliest day — all fall in this final period, the Chinook loss coming just weeks before the brigade stood down.

First in, last out

D Company, 2/8 Cav brackets the American ground war about as cleanly as any unit can: in country with the first full division in September 1965 (see Deployment — The First Team Arrives) and still in the field with the last brigade out in 1972, the battalion inactivating on 28 June 1972. The same battalion designation opened and closed the division's war.