1371 Combat Engineer MOS Patch

When Marines need a lane through a minefield, a wall blown open or a road swept for IEDs, the job goes to the Marines carrying MOS 1371. The combat engineer is a rifleman first and an engineer right after, working out in front of the infantry or alongside it. Demolitions, obstacle breaching, mine detection, field fortifications and expedient bridging all belong to the 1371. The MOS sits in occupational field 13, the engineer field of the Marine Corps. Grunts tend to notice the engineers most when the route ahead is already clear.

Entry-level combat engineers learn the trade at the Marine Corps Engineer School at Courthouse Bay, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where Combat Engineer Instruction Company trains them. The school goes back to 8 May 1941, when the first Marine Corps Engineer School was activated at Quantico, Virginia, and it moved to New River, North Carolina in August 1942. It took the name Marine Corps Engineer School in April 1952, and since 2007 it has also taught counter-IED training. From school, 1371s go to the combat engineer battalions, including the 2d Combat Engineer Battalion right there at Courthouse Bay and the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion at Camp Pendleton, California. In Iraq and Afghanistan that meant route clearance, breaching with mine clearing line charges and the M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle, and building up patrol bases and forward operating bases.

The patch is cut in the familiar MOS shape, wider than it is tall, with flared corners and a red merrowed border. MARINE CORPS runs across a black band at the top and COMBAT ENGINEER across a black band at the bottom, both in white block letters. The red center panel carries 13 on the left and 71 on the right in big white numerals, with the eagle, globe and anchor in gold and silver between them. SEMPER FIDELIS is stitched in white beneath it. It measures 4.5 inches wide by 3.25 inches tall with an iron-on backing.

Marine engineers have been in every fight since the island campaigns of World War II, clearing beach obstacles, blowing bunkers and building what the division needed to keep moving. The work is dangerous in a quiet way, because the threat is usually buried and the engineer is the one who goes looking for it. Route clearance teams in Iraq and Afghanistan took that risk day after day so convoys and foot patrols could move. Marines who held the MOS tend to describe it plainly: they made the breach, they swept the road, they built the berm. That is the reputation the 1371 carries.

It belongs on the vest a former engineer wears to a battalion reunion, or in a shadow box with his ribbons and a photo of his platoon. It also makes a good gift for a young Marine who just earned the MOS at Courthouse Bay, or for his father who earned it years before. The iron-on backing goes down with a household iron, and a few stitches at the edge make it permanent. Red and black, numbers front and center, and no mistaking what it is.