353rd Civil Affairs Command US Army Reserve Patch

The stepped purple shape climbing across the top of this patch is the Manhattan skyline, a nod to the New York City streets where the 353rd was first organized in 1952. The 353rd Civil Affairs Command is an Army Reserve headquarters, today based at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. Purple and white are the colors of Civil Affairs, and anyone who served in the branch knows them on sight. Civil Affairs soldiers work the space between a military force and the civilians living around it. When a town needs its water, roads, clinics and local offices running again, these are the people who sit down with the mayor.

The unit began on 14 July 1952 as the 353d Military Government Area A Headquarters in New York City. In 1968 it moved from Manhattan's West Side to the Patterson USAR Center in the Bronx, and on 9 December 1976 it was redesignated the 353d Civil Affairs Command. In 1980 the command housed and relocated roughly 20,000 Cuban refugees from the Mariel boatlift. About two dozen of its soldiers deployed to Panama for Operation Just Cause in December 1989, others went to Kosovo with Operation Joint Guardian in June 1999, and the command supported Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, activating for OIF-II to command its subordinate units in Iraq. It falls under the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (USACAPOC), with the 304th Civil Affairs Brigade in Bristol, Pennsylvania and the 308th Civil Affairs Brigade in Homewood, Illinois beneath it.

This patch measures 2 inches wide by 3 inches tall, an arched-top rectangle finished with a merrowed purple edge. It is sew-on, with no backing, the way a shoulder patch goes on a uniform. A white band across the top carries the purple skyline steps. Below them, on a purple field, a white torch rises over a civic crown, with a quill and a sword crossing behind it. The quill, sword and crown stand for planning, training and readiness, and the torch for guidance.

Civil Affairs is a Reserve-heavy business, and the 353rd has drawn its soldiers from the Northeast for more than seventy years. Many of them bring civilian careers into the job, which is the point: a soldier who runs a public works department at home knows what a broken one looks like overseas. The command's record runs from refugee camps in 1980 to Panama, the Balkans and Iraq. Since October 2021 its focus has been on Europe. That is a long line of weekend drills that turned into real missions.

Sew it on a field jacket, a ruck or a vest you wear to unit reunions, or frame it in a shadow box beside your Civil Affairs crest and USACAPOC patch. It also makes a fitting gift for someone who served with the 353rd in New York or deployed with it. It is a small patch with the whole command's history behind it.