By Brigadier General Raymond E. Bell Jr., Ph.D., USA-Ret.
What kind of medical unit was the 5th Psychological Operations Group (5th PSYOP Group) was the question the in-coming deputy group commander asked. He was a doctoral candidate but not in a medical field, so what duties were he expected to perform? He was soon to find out.
Practicing medicine of any kind was not the remit of the group. Rather than treat ill or wounded bodies, it was tasked to manipulate people’s minds. It was a military influencer of the actions of soldiers and civilians, by producing and disseminating information that molded the activities shaping the battlefield. It did then, and does today, operate according to a variety of categories and through different combinations thereof. There is the transparent or white category. There is the obscure or gray category. There is the false or dark category. The 5th PSYOP Group distinctive unit insignia incorporated three arrows symbolizing the three operational categories.
The distinctive unit insignia for the 5th Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Group was first approved for the 5th PSYOPS Battalion on 31 January 1967. The two curved arrows represent enemy propaganda, distorting the truth, aimed at friendly forces; the straight arrow represents truth piercing enemy propaganda. (Institute of Heraldry)
In peacetime, the basic mission of the 5th PSYOP Group was to prepare to execute operational combinations of the categories outside U.S. territories during periods of armed conflict. In the 1970s and 1980s, the targeted countries were several nations in the Soviet Union-sponsored Warsaw Pact.
During the group’s tenure, it had to deal with two different contingencies serving two different masters. Because of the unique force structure of Army Reserve units, the group had additional tasks to its wartime responsibilities that influenced its peacetime mission. The peacetime and wartime organizations tell the story.
During peacetime, the group consisted of the Headquarters and Headquarters Company and the 7th PSYOP Battalion, with the 3d, 7th, and 360th PSYOP Companies. In wartime, these companies would provide direct support to combat divisions. Reporting to the group in peacetime, on the other hand, was a number of additional units unrelated directly to PSYOP. These included a counterintelligence company, a separate brigade intelligence detachment, a division intelligence company, and two chemical warfare detachments. The 5th PSYOP Group had administrative responsibility for these units which required oversight but no operational command and control.
During wartime the group, in shedding its other than PSYOP peacetime structure, picked up two other PSYOP battalions. The 13th PSYOP Battalion (Prisoner of War) and the 360th PSYOP Battalion, both Army Reserve organizations, came to the 5th PSYOP Group under what was known as the CAPSTONE mobilization organization. Both of these battalions were located at Fort Snelling in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and reported during peacetime to the 88th Army Reserve Command.
While there was no 5th PSYOP Group administrative responsibility for these battalions in peacetime, it was very much in the interest of the group headquarters to maintain close liaison contact with them. A working relationship was thus established, allowing the 5th PSYOP Group to monitor the battalions’ training and influence their combat readiness status. During annual training, visits were made to the battalion sites which resulted in close collaboration towards achieving battlefield success.
Group dealings with the 13th PSYOP Battalion, which had previously been a Regular Army unit stationed in West Germany, were particular in nature. During wartime, the battalion was tasked with conducting PSYOP within enemy prisoner of war (POW) camps. This meant the battalion would coordinate with the 290th Military Police Brigade, which ran POW confinement facilities. During the battalion’s annual training, personnel from the 5th PSYOP Group, which had a number of fluent “hostile” speaking members, play-acted the role of captured enemy soldiers who were interrogated for PSYOP purposes.
By the beginning of 1979, the group had been active as an Army Reserve organization since 1975. Its first commander had assembled a group of talented officers, noncommissioned officers (NCOs), and enlisted men from a variety of different military career fields. The Washington, DC, area proved a fertile source for recruiting highly motivated Army reservists, many of whom worked for federal government agencies in the capital region.
Then-Colonel Raymond E. Bell, Jr. (left), commander of the 5th Psychological Operations Group (5th PSYOP Group) stands with the 5th’s senior noncommissioned officer Command Sergeant Major Howard Drew during the group’s 1983 annual training at Fort Meade, Maryland. (Author’s collection)
Just the idea of performing military tasks not normally associated with high-intensity combat had a great appeal, thus bringing together highly motivated individuals. Even the term psychological operations had a magical connotation which drew reservists to the group’s colors.
High expectations, however, required that unit members had to be challenged by unit leadership. Successfully employed and productive in civilian life, the group’s complement expected to be accorded the same high level of leadership competence in the organization they experienced in their everyday vocations. At the same time, members looked forward to career advancement and opportunities in their military occupation specialties.
The 5th PSYOP Group was particularly successful in helping members advance in rank and position. At the general officer level, at least three officers were promoted to that rank as a result of their performance in the group. At a lower level, many NCOs were advanced to warrant officer grade and even beyond. Group leadership emphatically endorsed soldiers to extend themselves, even if it meant leaving the group, for advancement purposes. One talented private first class, for example, received a direct commission in the Naval Reserve in the intelligence field. Not content with that move, she saw a better opportunity in the Air Force Reserve in the same career field. By the time she retired from the military, she had attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. Another example was that of an NCO who not only became a warrant officer but obtained a civilian bachelor degree through a military command initiative.
Ambassador Bruce Laingen, Vice-President of the National Defense University, promotes Captain Felix Vargas to the rank of major during GLOBEX ’83 in June 1983. Vargas, a State Department employee soon on his way to a posting in El Salvador, was one of several experienced federal employees assigned to the 5th PSYOP Group. (Author’s collection)
While there were many successful group personnel actions, there were also challenges peculiar to the 5th PSYOP Group as an Army Reserve unit. One was that the group’s missions and activities were so closely aligned with similar civilian government organizations engaged in information dissemination.
Voice of America, for example, could be viewed as a viable civilian counterpart. An attitude then developed that the group was more of a civilian than a military entity. Efforts were required to ensure that even though they were part-time members, the men and women of the 5th were still very much in the U.S. Army. The men and women had to act like soldiers and participate in military-oriented activities in addition to their more civilian-aligned ones.
An important activity, for example, was the proper conduct of military formations. For some time there had not been much emphasis placed on unit ceremonies. At first, at the beginning of the weekend morning assembly, there was a kind of informal get-together for accountability purposes. It was hardly a military formation. This was easy to fix, but more was required to advance the idea that there were other formalities in the way of formations and ceremonies to be conducted.
While the reservists of 5th PSYOP Group were “part-time” soldiers, the men and women of the group had to act like soldiers and participate in military activities, such as morning assembly and evening retreat ceremonies. (Author’s collection)
One that was adopted took place before the group’s members were dismissed for the day to march, accompanied by music, to the reserve center’s flagpole. There the American flag was lowered to the notes of the national anthem in front of the entire command. A sense of special pride in being a soldier was engendered and proved a major step in enhancing unit esprit de corps. Other ceremonies that were emphasized were the promotion of individuals and the awarding of decorations.
A special challenge was to provide meaningful work with adequate tools. Group printers, for example, had to have access to not only printing presses but all the ancillary equipment necessary to produce published items. The group’s printers, many of whom were in the printing business in civilian life, were never able to fully ply their trade in the unit because the group’s Modified Tables of Organization did not authorize the inclusion of the appropriate team to prepare the plates required for the unit presses. While this did not become a major source of frustration to the resilient printers, it had an adverse impact by lowering the unit’s overall performance rating during evaluations.
Indeed, according to the group’s 1981 annual training report within the entire group, there was a lack of PSYOP “peculiar equipment to conduct meaningful mission-related training and which detracts from overall mobilization readiness (i.e., public address sets, recorder reproducers, magnetic tape splicers, and TG terminals).” Nevertheless, such limited material resources did not deter the group’s members from putting forth their best efforts and work around the resulting challenges.
To be sure, the group’s unit history consists not only of conducting PSYOP activities but also missions that were not exactly normal operations-related. In 1980, there was upheaval in Cuba and thousands of its citizens left the communist country. They arrived in the United States by boat in the Mariel boat lift and were gathered together in makeshift accommodations at various Army installations. One of those was the Pennsylvania Army National Guard post at Fort Indiantown Gap north of Harrisburg, which consisted of numerous old wooden World War II-era buildings. These served as housing for reserve component units conducting their annual and monthly training at the location and could be considered as primitive but just functional at best. They became home for many émigrés until they could be found sponsors willing to help them integrate into American communities.
The task to oversee and facilitate the transition at Indiantown Gap fell to the 5th PSYOP Group. Headquarters and Headquarters Company personnel were called to active duty in increments from 27 April to 30 September 1980 in lieu of annual training and assigned to the post where they ran the relocation operation. The caliber of the group members who participated was such that there was a high degree of effectiveness in accomplishing the unit’s unusual mission. As a result of their superior performance each participating soldier and officer was awarded the Humanitarian Service Medal.
They did indeed earn the medals, especially the lower grade soldiers. To them fell the more mundane and often odious tasks which they had to perform. The temporary camp was divided into several sectors. There was the secure or violent actor prevention area, a place for legitimate families and single females, one location for single males of different sexual persuasions, the eating and laundry collection facilities, and the administrative area. All of these areas presented their own challenges which had to be met effectively and humanely.
Soldiers line up for pay formation following the 5th’s 1983 annual training at Fort Meade. (Author’s collection)
Two particular examples illustrate some unique aspects of such challenges. The laundry collection point was where camp inhabitants exchanged soiled items like dirty sheets for clean ones. For most Cubans, this turn-in task proved to be no challenge, but for the single males, many of whom evidently had not had access to clean sheets in their former homeland, it proved a major problem. Sometimes they waited too long to exchange them and they became so filthy that they had to be destroyed. One can imagine the adverse impact the results of the exchange process had on the American soldiers who handled the collection point. Yet, no adverse sanitation situation occurred on their watches in spite of the odious nature of the work.
The other example had cultural implications which were particular to Cuban males. Mealtime at the dining halls serving single men was a big social event where they gathered before the time to serve meals began. To prevent problems two female soldiers of the unit were assigned control duties at each dining hall: one at the entrance the other at the exit. As part of the social environment, the men frequently attempted to outwit those soldiers performing the control measures. Those tasks included seeing that one man did not try to enter the hall more than once to get additional food or after leaving the hall at the other end, then try to sneak back through the hall exit to obtain more food. However, the Cuban male culture with regards to respecting women meant the men seldom tried to take serious advantage of the American female soldiers performing their control duties.
While the 5th PSYOP Group’s primary wartime mission had nothing to do with running what amounted to a relocation center, the experience was very beneficial to group members. Psychology played an important role in dealing with a population that escaped en masse from the Cuban communist dictatorship. Sensitivity to the needs and desires of the severely repressed foreign population exhibited by group members at Fort Indiantown Gap served as excellent background for conducting potential future effective PSYOPs involving the repressed populations of Warsaw Pact countries.
Beginning in April 1980 and continuing through September of that year, soldiers of the 5th PSYOP Group assisted with the resettlement of Cuban refugees from the Mariel Boatlift at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. (PennLive.com/Patriot-News)
1980’s deployment to Fort Indiantown Gap was the first time that the group headquarters and headquarters company performed annual training in its entirety. For all intents and purposes, it represented a major shake-down in how the group staff and headquarters company were going to function in the future.
Certain assignments and staff procedures had already changed. The group command sergeant major no longer served as the commanding officer’s coffee cup orderly. Instead, he became the commander’s chief enlisted personnel advisor, soldier advocate, discipline monitor, and mentor for officer and enlisted men alike.
Staff meetings had become short, devoid of irrelevant discussions, and to the point. They were run by the group executive officer after the commander gave his guidance to the assemblage. After a set period of time, the commander was then briefed on the meeting’s covered content, on decisions made, and on remaining problems requiring commander input or further guidance. If a staff member or individual required a one-on-one session with the commander, it was held outside the presence of the others in the staff meeting, thus avoiding tying up the entire staff with one individual’s subject matter.
The scene was now set for a productive year leading up to annual training to be conducted at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where for the first time the 5th’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company, the 7th PSYOP Battalion, and the 7th’s three PSYOP companies would be evaluated by Regular Army PSYOP personnel from the group’s counterpart 4th PSYOP Group. The extensive 1981 evaluation was designed to highlight performance strengths and weaknesses of the staff and subordinate units while making recommendations for future improvement. The results would be important progress markers for all five of the Army Reserve units.
Major Carl Monroe prepares a psychological warfare message at the National Defense University’s war game GLOBEX ’83. (Author’s collection)
Part of the lead-up to the next year’s annual training was further development of the relationship with the 4th PSYOP Group. Manned by experienced and highly competent officers and enlisted men and women, the 4th PSYOP Group represented a state of professionalism that the 5th PSYOP Group sought to emulate. As a result, the 5th followed the 4th’s lead and was able to benefit greatly from the relationship on a continuing basis. This manifested itself in the close coordination in researching and producing area studies which would benefit PSYOP in the event of war with the Warsaw Pact. The expertise of members of 5th PSYOP Group thereby made valuable contributions in expanding the 4th PSYOP Group’s information base for operations and helped relieve operational burdens that the Regular Army unit had to deal with.
In August 1981, the 5th PSYOP Group and all its psychological operations subordinate units assembled at Fort Bragg. The companies traveled from as far away as Newark, Delaware, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to conduct annual training and be evaluated on their performance. Although there was contact with the subordinate units throughout the year, the physical distance from 5th PSYOP Group headquarters made it difficult to provide all the guidance and assistance they desired. This year’s annual training with all units in one location, it was hoped, would therefore be especially noteworthy, productive, and helpful.
The U.S. Army Forces Command Report of Annual Training Performance of Reserve Components of the Army Form 1R, dated 1 October 1980, became the benchmark for future activity of the 5th PSYOP Group. The 1981 four-page report provided an in-depth evaluation of training conducted and listed unit strengths, weaknesses, tasks requiring remedial training, and effectiveness of nuclear, biological, and chemical as well as operational security training. While unit leadership and performance were considered laudable, the lack of proper PSYOP equipment upon which to train was cited as a major deficiency and led to weakness in operational readiness.
Major General Wayne Jackson, commanding general of the 97th Army Reserve Command, visits with members of the 5th PSYOP Group during GLOBEX ’83 as Colonel Bell (in civilian clothes) looks on. (Author’s Collection)
In spite of the handicaps, the 5th was able to execute an effective training program, which was highlighted by a wide range of activities to include a judged tactical field exercise for the subordinate companies that tested their deployment readiness. Unit members honed their individual military and psychological operations skills, participated in the 1981 CAPSTONE conference, and performed administrative, maintenance, and other support tasks. The overall annual training evaluation rated the group at the excellent performance level. Considering this was the group’s first such evaluation, the unit leadership felt that a firm basis had been established for striving for heightened combat readiness in the future.
Having made its mark as a competent unit ready to advance to the next step of effectiveness at annual training, the 5th PSYOP Group returned to its home station outside Washington, DC. There, in addition to continuing to work on enhancing its military performance, opportunity was taken to conduct unit social amenities to heighten comradeship and esprit de corps. These included “dining-outs”—meals conducted according to special protocols—where unit members and guests assembled to celebrate accomplishments, acknowledge promotions, present awards, and to enjoy each others’ company.
Members of the 5th toast the President of the United States during an informal using the 5th PSYOP Group’s regimental silverware. (Author’s collection)
In the military tradition, a set of regimental silverware was gifted to the group consisting of a punch bowl, ladle, and cups on which the names of group commanders and command sergeants major were inscribed. At dining-outs, a special punch was concocted, tested for its potency, judged for its drinking suitably, and served from the punch bowl.
The 5th PSYOP Group’s silver regimental punchbowl was used to mix and serve a special punch at dining-outs. (Author’s collection)
The group continued to engage in such social as well as mission-oriented activities throughout a short life. When the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact disintegrated in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the 5th PSYOP Group’s Eastern European remit ceased to be relevant and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the unit was redesignated as the 5th PSYOP Battalion and allotted to the Regular Army. Still, the 5th PSYOP Group had come a long way since the incoming deputy commander learned it was concerned more with one’s mind than the body.
5th Psychological Operations Group Lineage
The 5th Psychological Operations Group was originally constituted as the 5th Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company on 3 March 1951 during the Korean War. It was activated on 19 March 1951 at Fort Riley, Kansas, in the Regular Army. On 24 June 1961, the company was reorganized and redesignated as the 5th Psychological Warfare Company; on 25 June 1965, it was reorganized and redesignated as the 5th Psychological Operations Battalion. On 20 June 1975, the battalion was inactivated in Germany. On 30 December 1975, the 5th was redesignated as the 5th Psychological Operations Group, assigned to the U.S. Army Reserve as a component of the 97th Army Reserve Command, and activated at Upper Marlboro, Maryland. It was later stationed at Camp Springs, Maryland, just outside Andrews Air Force Base. The group was inactivated on 15 September 1994. On 18 November 2003, it was allotted to the Regular Army as the 5th Psychological Operations Battalion and activated on 16 October 2004 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This narrative covers the 5th PSYOP Group’s Army Reserve service from December 1979 to December 1983.
Author Bio
Brigadier General Raymond E. Bell Jr. Ph.D., AUS-Ret., has published more than 400 articles, book chapters, book reviews, and monographs. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, Class of 1957, and holds a masters degree in History from Middlebury College and a doctorate in Central European History from New York University. He has also attended the Army War College and the National War College.
