1st Cavalry Division 5th Cavalry Regiment Patch – Black Knights

Count the arrows on top: five of them, bound with a rattlesnake skin that carries five rattles, the 5th Cavalry's mark for its years in the Indian Campaigns. Everything else on this patch is a date in the regiment's history too. The 5th Cavalry Regiment, the Black Knights, began service on 3 March 1855 as the 2nd Cavalry and was redesignated the 5th Cavalry on 3 August 1861. It joined the 1st Cavalry Division on 18 December 1922 and has been part of the First Team ever since. Its colors are yellow and black, and its motto is Loyalty and Courage.

At Gaines' Mill in 1862 the regiment charged Confederate troops under John Bell Hood, a former officer of the same regiment, and saved the Union artillery. It fought at Gettysburg and the Wilderness, then went west, where Corporal John Kyle earned the Medal of Honor at the Republican River in 1869 and Colonel Wesley Merritt led it at Slim Buttes. In World War II the Black Knights fought in the Admiralty Islands on Los Negros and Manus in 1944, landed on Leyte that October, and on 3 February 1945 freed the internees at Santo Tomas in Manila. In Korea the regiment fought on the Pusan Perimeter and at Chipyong-ni and was the first American unit into Pyongyang on 19 October 1950. In Vietnam the 1st and 2nd Battalions served with the 1st Cavalry Division, and during the Ia Drang fighting 2-5 Cavalry reached the lost platoon at LZ X-Ray.

The patch is 2.75 inches wide by 3.5 inches tall with a cut edge that follows the outline of the crest. The shield is cavalry yellow with a black cross moline on the lower half, the cross that stands for the Gaines' Mill charge. Across the top is a black chief with a battlemented lower edge and a white Maltese cross, which marks the regiment's service in the 1898 Puerto Rican Expedition. A gold scroll wraps both sides with LOYALTY on the left and COURAGE on the right in black letters. Above it, on a black and gold wreath, sit the five red-tipped arrows tied with the rattlesnake skin. The backing is iron-on, and it can be sewn on as well.

The regiment's Medal of Honor recipients run from Corporal Kyle in 1869 through six men in Vietnam. The cost has been real. Near LZ Albany in November 1965 a column that included A Company, 1-5 Cavalry, was ambushed and 155 Americans were killed. The regiment went to the Gulf in 1990 for Desert Storm and again in 2004 for Operation Iraqi Freedom II, when Task Force 1-5 Cavalry fought in Baghdad, Najaf and Fallujah. Few regiments can put Gaines' Mill and Fallujah on the same list.

Pair it with a 1st Cavalry Division horse head patch on a reunion vest, or frame it in a shadow box with a photo from Fort Hood or Vietnam. A son or grandson who joins the First Team will know what it means to receive it. Loyalty and Courage, stitched in black on gold.