25th Infantry Division Tropic Lightning Patch OD Subdued

Soldiers call it the Electric Strawberry, but the shape is a taro leaf, for the Hawaiian Division the 25th was built from in 1941, and the lightning flash is for the way it moves. The 25th Infantry Division was activated at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, on 1 October 1941, nine weeks before Pearl Harbor. Its rapid moves across the Pacific earned it the name Tropic Lightning. In full color the leaf is red with a yellow border and a yellow flash. This version is the subdued one, olive drab and black, made for the field uniform.

After 7 December 1941 the division manned beach defenses near Honolulu and Ewa Point. It began moving to Guadalcanal on 25 November 1942 and landed there in December to relieve the Marines near Henderson Field, entered combat on 10 January 1943, and fought until the junction near Cape Esperance on 5 February. It went on to New Georgia and Vella Lavella in 1943 and landed on Luzon at San Fabian on 11 January 1945, fighting through the Caraballo Mountains. In July 1950, under Major General William B. Kean, it moved from Japan to Korea and held the approaches to Pusan. In Vietnam the division headquarters sat at Cu Chi Base Camp, near the Iron Triangle, from January 1966 to February 1970, and its brigades later deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The patch is 2 inches wide by 3 inches tall, cut to the outline of the leaf with a black merrowed edge. The field is olive drab embroidery, with a black lightning flash running top to bottom through the center. Two short black strokes at the top mark the notch where the stem meets the leaf. There is no lettering. The backing is iron-on, and it can be sewn on, which is how it went on a uniform.

The shoulder sleeve insignia was authorized on 25 September 1944, and it has been on the left shoulder of 25th soldiers from Luzon to Cu Chi to Baghdad. The division still calls Schofield Barracks home, under I Corps. Men who wore it in Vietnam remember the tunnels around Cu Chi, and Korea veterans remember the Pusan Perimeter. The subdued version is the one Vietnam-era soldiers wore in the field.

Put it in a shadow box with a CIB and a set of subdued rank, or on the jacket you wear to a 25th Infantry Division Association reunion. It also makes a good gift for a son or grandson going to Schofield Barracks, the same post his grandfather left from. A leaf from Hawaii and a bolt of lightning.