Deployment — The First Team Arrives in Vietnam (1965)

1965 — The First Team arrives

Context page — division level. The opening of D Company, 2/8 Cav's war: how the unit got to Vietnam. Drawn from the official Army record (CMH Airmobility, the division's Interim Report, and the 2/8 Cav Lineage and Honors). The exact DA General Order numbers are flagged to pull.

On 1 July 1965, at Fort Benning, Georgia, the Army activated the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) — the "First Team." It was built from the assets of the 11th Air Assault Division (Test), which had spent two years proving the airmobile concept, and elements of the 2nd Infantry Division; the 1st Cavalry Division colors were brought over from Korea to carry the new formation. With roughly 428 organic helicopters, it was the Army's first airmobile division — a division that would ride to battle by helicopter.

Into Vietnam

Reorganized and equipped in a matter of weeks, the division shipped to the Republic of Vietnam by sea that summer. Its 2nd Brigade landed at Qui Nhon on 14 September 1965, and the division established its base at An Khe (Camp Radcliff) in the Central Highlands. The 1st Cavalry Division was the first fully committed U.S. division of the Vietnam War, and within weeks it was in combat — the Pleiku Campaign of October–November 1965, for which it became the first division of the war to earn the Presidential Unit Citation.

Where 2/8 Cav — and D Company — fit

The 8th Cavalry had been a regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division since 1921; the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry in its modern form was assigned to the division on 1 September 1963. It deployed as an organic battalion and was in country by September 1965. Its first major action came almost immediately: the pursuit phase of the Pleiku Campaign (see Operation All the Way), and D Company's first recorded losses near Hill 732 on 4 November 1965 — SGT Coffey, PFC Hamill, and CPL Hill, among the division's earliest combat deaths.

This is where the company's war begins. It would end nearly seven years later with the same battalion still in the field — see Departure — The Last Team Out (1972).