2nd Reconnaissance Battalion Desert Patch

2nd Reconnaissance Battalion was activated on 1 December 1950 in a tent camp at Camp Lejeune, and its Marines have answered to three words ever since: Swift, Silent, Deadly. The battalion later moved to Stone Bay, the part of Lejeune every recon Marine on the East Coast knows. Its first commanding officer was Major Regan Fuller. 2nd Recon carries the history of the Marine scout companies that fought across the Pacific in World War II. It works for the 2nd Marine Division and II Marine Expeditionary Force, out in front of everyone else.

Its lineage runs back to the scouts at Tarawa in November 1943 and Saipan in 1944. The battalion went into the Dominican Republic in 1965, served with the multinational peacekeeping force in Lebanon from August 1982 to February 1984, and landed on Grenada in October 1983. It deployed for Desert Shield and Desert Storm from December 1990 to April 1991. In Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, Company A served attached to I MEF and shared in a Presidential Unit Citation, and the battalion rotated through Iraq from 2004 to 2008. Recon Marines also went to Haiti for Operation Secure Tomorrow in 2004 and to Afghanistan from 2008 to 2012, earning a Navy Unit Commendation for Operation Enduring Freedom.

This is a 4 by 4 inch arrowhead patch in desert tan, with a cut edge trimmed close to the shape and a brown outline. SWIFT and SILENT arch across the top in rust-orange, and DEADLY sits below the center. Between them a grinning skull in dark headgear stares out with its arms folded, a scar over one eye, holes in its brow and its mouth stitched shut. Five small stars are scattered across the field, and a brown scroll across the base reads 2D RECON BN. The tan, brown and rust colors are subdued for desert uniforms, and the back is iron-on.

Recon Marines work in small teams, ahead of the division, where the information they bring back decides what the rest of the force does next. The battalion has been reorganized along the way: it became a reconnaissance company of Headquarters Battalion in 1994, was combined with Force Reconnaissance Company in 1996, and was redesignated 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion again on 1 January 1998. The desert colors on this patch suit the Marines who served in Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan. Those three words held through every one of those deployments.

It fits a shadow box next to a unit photo from Stone Bay, or the side of a ruck, range bag or field jacket. It also makes a good gift for a recon Marine from the battalion, or a son who wants to understand what his father did in the desert. Swift, Silent, Deadly, in desert tan.