32nd Armor Regiment Patch

The 32nd Armored Regiment went into combat at Villiers-Fossard on 29 June 1944 and did not come out of the fight until 24 April 1945. It was one of the tank regiments of the 3rd Armored Division, the Spearhead. Of six armored regiments that went to war, the 32nd and the 33rd were the only two to deploy at full regimental strength. Ten months of combat earned it two Distinguished Unit Citations. The motto on this patch was never a slogan to these men.

The regiment was activated on 15 April 1941 at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana, and redesignated the 32nd on 8 May 1941. It reached Normandy in mid-June 1944 and fought through Northern France, the Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace and Central Europe, including the Hurtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. After the war it was reactivated in 1947, and its battalions spent the Cold War in West Germany, watching the Fulda Gap. In the Gulf War it served with the 3rd Armored Division in the liberation of Kuwait, while 3rd Battalion, 32nd Armor went with the 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood. The 1st Battalion, 32nd Armor, the last active battalion of the regiment, was inactivated at Fort Lewis, Washington, on 15 September 2000.

This is a 3.5 by 3.25 inch shield with a scroll, cut to the outline of the design. A broad red bar with squared, stubbed edges runs corner to corner across a golden yellow field, like a staff with its branches lopped off. A thin red line traces the shield. Underneath, a yellow scroll carries VICTORY OR DEATH in red block letters, its ends folded out past the edges of the shield. The whole design reads at a glance from across a motor pool. The back is iron-on.

The lineage did not end in 2000. On 10 August 2005 the 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry Regiment was activated at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, with the 1st Brigade Combat Team, Bastogne, of the 101st Airborne Division, and it took on the 32nd's lineage and honors. As Task Force Bandit, the squadron served in Diyala Province from 2005, in Salah ad Din Province during the 2007 surge, and in Nuristan and Kunar Provinces in Afghanistan in 2010. So the same red bar and the same motto have been worn by tankers from Normandy and the Bulge, Cold War crews in Germany, Desert Storm soldiers and air assault cavalry troopers. Few regiments can put all of that under one crest.

It fits a shadow box with a 3rd Armored Division patch and a photo from Germany, or a vest worn to a Spearhead or Bandit reunion. It also makes a solid gift for a son or grandson who wants to know where his family's tanker served. Press it on or stitch it down for good. Victory or Death, from Villiers-Fossard to Kunar.