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The Americal? They Left, I Think...No, Lemme See from the Pacific Stars & Stripes for Friday, January 15, 1971

Copy of publication provided by Dave Eckberg

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By SPEC. 4 John Durham
S&S Staff Correspondent

SAIGON — An entire U.S. Army division is disappearing from I Military Region with no announcement of troop cutbacks and no GIs celebrating their last days in Vietnam.

In its place, another division has materialized just as quietly, with no unfurling of colors, no additional troops and no exhortations to the men to perform nobly in the field.

The Americal Div., "born in battle under the Southern Cross," as its mottos and slogans proclaim, is being metamorphosed into the 23rd Inf. Div., and no one will say exactly why.

The Division commander, Maj. Gen. James L. Baldwin, said the decision to refer to the unit as the 23rd Inf. Div. in all official dealings did not come from his headquarters.  He claimed he didn't know where the word came from.

But he pointed out that the Division officially had been the 23rd ever since it was reorganized here in 1967.  It was also given the colors and history of the World War II Americal, he said.

"When I was working in the Pentagon," Baldwin said, "I always called it the 23rd Inf. Div."

Still, a replacement coming into the Division might be pardoned for being confused.

As he gets off a plane at the Chu Lai Terminal, the first thing he sees is a large sign at the reception building inscribed, "Welcome to the Americal."

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Americal Sign
Photograph by Dave Eckberg

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As he drives up the bumpy, mud-covered road toward Division headquarters, he comes to a sign pointing down a side road. Over a large arrow he reads "23rd Infantry Division."  Underneath, in much smaller letters and in parentheses, he finds "Americal."

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23rd Infantry Sign
Photograph by Dave Eckberg

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By the time he arrives at Division headquarters, even the parenthetical Americal has disappeared and the sign proclaims only "23rd Infantry Division."

The only place the schizophrenia seems to have been cured is on the bumpers of the vehicles.  Bumper painters have blotted out all the "AMCALS" and replaced them with "23s."

A Division spokesman was just as mystified as everyone else.  He said his office got word from U.S. Army Vietnam (USARV) in the middle of last November that henceforth all official correspondence would be on 23rd Inf. Div. letterheads.

That was about the same time that MACV communiques began referring to a "23rd Inf. Div. (Americal)."

A helicopter pilot, asked about the unit's double identity, said, "I was here with Task Force Oregon when the Division was organized.  It'll always be the Americal to me."

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NOTE:  It has been said that the reason the Americal Division was renamed to the 23rd Infantry Division was because of all the bad publicity the Division received from the trial of Lt. William Calley and his part in the "My Lai Massacre."

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