31st Marine Expeditionary Unit Special Operations Capable Patch

The SPECIAL OPERATIONS CAPABLE scroll on this patch puts it in the years between 1992 and 2006, when the unit carried the full title 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable). The 31st MEU is the only permanently forward deployed MEU in the Marine Corps, based at Camp Hansen on Okinawa since 1994. It has gone to sea on amphibious assault ships such as USS Essex (LHD-2), USS America (LHA-6) and USS Tripoli (LHA-7). Its Marines stay in the western Pacific year round, ready for a raid, an evacuation or a typhoon. In 2006 the SOC letters came off the name, which makes this scroll a marker of its own era.

The lineage runs back to Vietnam. The unit was activated on March 1, 1967, as Special Landing Force Alpha and was designated the 31st Marine Amphibious Unit on November 24, 1970. On April 12, 1975, CH-53s of HMH-462 flew Operation Eagle Pull, the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and later that month the unit took part in Operation Frequent Wind, the final evacuation of Saigon. It became the 31st MEU (SOC) on September 9, 1992, and in 1999 operated from USS Belleau Wood (LHA-3) in support of the Australian-led INTERFET mission in East Timor. From September 2004 to March 2005 it fought in Iraq and played a major role in Operation Phantom Fury, the clearing of Fallujah, in November 2004.

The patch is 4 inches wide by 3.75 inches tall, with a cut edge that follows the round center and the two scrolls. A gold scroll across the top reads 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, and a matching scroll along the bottom reads SPECIAL OPERATIONS CAPABLE. In the middle, on a scarlet field, a brown and white eagle flies with a gold lightning bolt in its talons, over a white fouled anchor wrapped in its own line. Scarlet and gold are the Marine Corps colors, and the eagle and the fouled anchor both belong to the tradition of Marines who fight from ships. Every element is outlined in black, so it reads clearly from across a room.

Because the 31st never rotates home, its Marines have answered many of the calls in the western Pacific. In March 2011, after the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the MEU worked from USS Essex (LHD-2) in Operation Tomodachi, with HMM-262 helicopters flying relief and Marines on the ground at Oshima Island. In November 2013, MV-22B Ospreys of VMM-265 flew more than 415 hours after Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines. The same unit that cleared Fallujah in 2004 was carrying food and water into the Philippines nine years later.

Put it in a shadow box with your float photos from Okinawa, or on the vest you wear to a reunion. It also makes a good gift for a Marine who did a float with the 31st in the SOC years. The backing is iron-on, and it can be sewn on just as well. Two scrolls, one anchor, and a unit that stays forward.