1st Special Forces Group Beret Flash With Crest Patch

This is the 1st Special Forces Group beret flash with the Special Forces crest worn at its center, the way an enlisted Green Beret of the group wears it on his beret. On the beret, soldiers and NCOs pin their unit crest to the middle of the flash, while officers and warrant officers wear their rank there instead. The crest here is the dagger and crossed arrows over the scroll DE OPPRESSO LIBER, Latin for "to free the oppressed." The 1st Special Forces Group was activated on 24 June 1957 at Fort Buckner, Okinawa. Its home ground has always been the Pacific.

In the Vietnam years the group sent teams into Vietnam on six-month temporary duty from Okinawa, and it ran the Camp Hardy Combat Training Center, which trained Special Forces soldiers, Navy SEALs and Marines bound for the war. The group was inactivated in 1974 during the drawdown that followed. Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, came back on 15 March 1984 at Fort Bragg, and the group headquarters with the 2nd and 3rd Battalions was reactivated on 4 September 1984 at Fort Lewis, Washington. Today the group is headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, with its 1st Battalion forward at Torii Station on Okinawa. Its area of operations is the Indo-Pacific, under U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

The patch is a small shield, 1.5 inches wide by 2 inches tall, the size and shape of a beret flash. It is a cut edge patch with an iron-on backing, and it can be sewn on as well. The field is gold, framed by a black band inside a gold outer border. Over it sits the crest in white and black: a dagger pointing upward through two crossed arrows, with the black and white scroll curving below and carrying DE OPPRESSO LIBER in white letters. The colors and proportions read as a 1st Group flash to anyone who wore one.

Only a Special Forces qualified soldier wears the group's flash on the green beret. That makes the flash personal in a way most unit patches are not. For 1st Group men it meant Okinawa, Fort Lewis and long years working alongside partner forces across Asia and the Pacific. The motto on the crest is the mission in four words, and the group's own motto says where it has done that work. Men who wore this flash know exactly what both mean.

It fits a shadow box beside a green beret and a set of jump wings, or a vest or jacket worn to a group reunion. It makes a good gift for a 1st Group veteran, or for a family member who wants to understand what he did. Small as it is, it carries the whole story.