Combat Action Badge - History

History

Throughout the Vietnam War and afterward, troops serving in combat engineer and armored units clamored for their own version of the EIB/CIB. Despite numerous staff studies and recommendations, the request never gained the support of senior army leadership. However, as soldiers from across the spectrum of military occupational specialties engaged in direct contact with enemy forces in the Global War on Terror, the proposal gained new traction.

It appears that the concept for the current Combat Action Badge came from an article written for Armor magazine in the Spring of 2004 in which Major Matthew De Pirro asserts the need for such a badge based upon the evolving face of warfare and the ongoing transformation of the army. De Pirro stated:

Fellow troopers, I submit to you that our Army would be better served by recognizing our soldiers who have faced an enemy in direct-fire combat with a Combat Action Badge. We are an Army in transformation. A few years ago, we donned the black beret as a symbol of that transformation. It is time for the disparity of the Combat Infantry Badge to end. It is time for the perceived badge wars to end. It is now time to take our transformation one step further. It is time for the Combat Action Badge.

The CAB was originally planned as a ribbon which was to have been known as the "Combat Recognition Ribbon". However, as ribbons are generally seen as less prestigious than medals and badges, the CAB was then proposed as the "Close Combat Badge" (or CCB), thus granting the award badge status vice ribbon. This was to be a combat award only for soldiers who did not hold the infantry military occupational specialty (MOS), but who were deployed specifically to fulfill an infantry duty. This was in response to the large number of non-infantry (tank crews, for example) who were deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and whose units were reorganized to function as infantry (motorized or light) due to the lack of need for tanks and shortage of infantry.

The change from the Close Combat Badge to the CAB may have come about thanks to a question put to Donald Rumsfeld in an April 2005 Afghanistan town hall meeting by a female military policeman as to why the CCB would not include military police soldiers in its awarding criteria despite the combat nature of the military police's job in Afghanistan and Iraq's 360-degree battlefield.

The CAB creation was approved on May 2, 2005, and was retroactively awarded to soldiers who engaged in combat after September 18, 2001. On June 29, 2005, General Peter J. Schoomaker awarded the badge for the first time to Sergeants April Pashley, Michael Buyas, Manuel J. Montano, Timothy Gustafson and Sean Steans. Over one hundred thousand badges have been awarded since the creation of the award.

Most commanders do not issue this award to qualified soldiers unless they are directly engaged in combat. Notably, it is granted exclusively for contact with enemy combatants, so actions by noncombatants like detainees or rioting civilians do not qualify. The CAB is not awarded unless the soldier is engaged in direct enemy fire. Combat Action Badges awarded to soldiers under indirect enemy fire are awarded to those injured or in direct personal injury threat by said indirect fire.

The award is not available to U.S. Army combat veterans of previous conflicts.