1st Battalion 24th Marines Terror From The North Patch

The scroll at the bottom of this patch carries Nemo Me Impune Lacessit, "no one provokes me with impunity," the motto of a Marine Corps Reserve battalion that started as a 70-man volunteer company in Detroit in 1922. That battalion is 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, and its Marines call it Terror From The North. It is a reserve infantry battalion of about 1,000 Marines and sailors in the 4th Marine Division. Its headquarters moved in 2005 to Selfridge Air National Guard Base, about 35 miles north of Detroit. Its rifle and weapons companies drill across the Great Lakes states, which is why Michigan and Ohio are stitched under the nickname on the shield.

In World War II the battalion fought at Kwajalein, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima, where Lt. Col. Austin R. Brunelli reorganized it under heavy losses in February 1945. Detroit Marines were mobilized again for Korea in 1950 and went into 1st Marine Division units. In December 1990 1/24 was activated for Operation Desert Shield and sent to Okinawa and the Philippines, where it became the first Marine battalion qualified as Special Operations Ready, and it helped with rescue work after Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991. In 2003 its companies deployed to Djibouti, Kuwait and southern Iraq. In September 2006 the battalion arrived at Camp Baharia and fought in Fallujah in Al Anbar Province through 2007.

The patch is 3.25 inches wide and 4 inches tall, a white shield with a black border and a cut edge that follows the shape, so the bear's head breaks right through the top line. A brown bear roars across the top, with a gold eight-point star on the left and a gold eagle, globe and anchor on the right. TERROR FROM THE NORTH runs down the center in blue block letters over MICHIGAN and OHIO. Banners on each side read 1ST BATTALION and 24TH MARINES, and a brown eagle with spread wings stands on the motto scroll at the base. It has a sew-on backing, so it is meant to be stitched in place.

Reserve infantry is a particular kind of commitment. These Marines hold jobs in Battle Creek, Lansing, Perrysburg and the towns around them, and when the battalion was called they left those jobs and went. The 2006 to 2007 deployment to Fallujah cost 22 Marines killed and 331 wounded, and the battalion's work there is credited with helping the Sunni Awakening take hold. The names of those Marines are not forgotten in Michigan and Ohio. Anyone who drilled at a 1/24 reserve center knows exactly what the bear on this shield means.

Sew it onto the vest you wear to battalion reunions, or frame it in a shadow box with your deployment photos and unit coin. It also makes a good gift for a Marine who served with 1/24 or the family of one who did. The sew-on backing means it stays put through years of wear. Terror From The North, Michigan and Ohio, stitched the way the battalion wears it.