The 15th Public Information Detachment

15th Public Information Detachment
By Mack D. Gooding, 1968-69

The 15th Public Information Detachment was a MACV Unit assigned to the First Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division.  Our mission was to provide logistical support and accommodate visiting news personnel, to act as an in-house news reporting staff for those units in our area of operations, and to provide feature stories and general news releases on ALL units within our area of operation.

We had a lot of hometown news releases that we prepared on valor awards, hometown radio tapes of troops just saying "Hi Mom", features about the Phillipines Civic Action Group (PHILCAG) that was stationed at Tay Ninh, the S-5 Civic Affairs and medical action teams activities, and hard news coverage of combat operations.

The 25th Infantry Division Information Officer, Maj. Sullivan, was responsible for the Tropic Lightening News.  He had a staff in Cu Chi and a small detachment in Japan and they actually produced the paper.

The 15th PID had (at its peak) 2 officers, 3 non-coms and 3 ems.  However, we "recruited" a few men from each battalion to act as battalion correspondents.  These men were front line troops who, with the permission of their Battalion Commander, also took photos and wrote the after-action hard news stories and features.

Typically, a Battalion Correspondant would spend five or six days in the field with his squad, then, when the squad returned to Tay Ninh for a breather, the battalion correspondent would spend the day at the PID office developing his film, making prints and writing his stories.  These were forwarded to Cu Chi and the Information Office desiminated them from there.

Every member of the 15th PID also doubled as combat correspondent, photographer and darkroom tech, in addition to their regular duties within the office.  We enjoyed extraordinary freedom of movement within all of Viet Nam, traveling on MACV Press Credentials which gave us priority seating on MAC flights.  We rarely used this priviledge, but it was there.  We were welcomed by all of the units in the 1st Bde 25th Inf Div, and rarely had a problem receiving transportation or accommodations wherever we went.  I recall vividly the warm welcome I received upon one occasion .... a SP4 greeted me by saying, "Sir, you're the ranking man here, we're taking small arms fire from over there and await your orders ... here's an M16 and an ammo belt."

Thanks to
Mack D. Gooding, 15th PIO, 1st Bde. for the materials on this page,
Kirk Ramsey, 2nd Bn., 14th Inf. for creating this page.

This page last modified 8-12-2004

©2004 25th Infantry Division Association. All rights reserved.