502nd Airborne Infantry Regiment Widowmaker Patch

At Carentan on 11 June 1944, Lt. Col. Robert G. Cole led the 3rd Battalion, 502nd Parachute Infantry in a bayonet charge toward the Ingouf farm, and the charge put his name forward for the Medal of Honor. Five days earlier the 502nd had dropped in the first wave of the 101st Airborne Division, and Cole's battalion had seized the causeways running inland from Utah Beach. The regiment's 1st Battalion traces back to the 502nd Parachute Battalion, activated at Fort Benning, Georgia, on 1 July 1941. The rest of the regiment stood up at Benning on 2 March 1942. The 502nd has spent most of its life since then with the Screaming Eagles of the 101st.

In Operation Market Garden, near Best in Holland, PFC Joe E. Mann threw himself on a German grenade to shield the men in his foxhole and received the Medal of Honor posthumously. Cole was killed in Holland in September 1944, before his own medal could be presented. At Bastogne in December 1944 the regiment held the north and northwest of the encircled town, and on Christmas morning German tanks broke into its line at Hemroulle. The 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne went to South Vietnam in 1965, and the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry stayed almost seven years, where Dale E. Wayrynen, Milton A. Lee and Frank R. Fratellenico each earned the Medal of Honor. In 2003 the regiment led the division's air assault into Iraq and fought at Najaf, Karbala and Mosul, and in 2010 it went to Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, where Operation Dragon Strike opened on 15 September.

The patch is round, 3.38 by 3.38 inches, with a cut edge and an iron-on backing. Three rings of blue, white and red circle a black field. On that field a white skull hangs under a gray parachute canopy stitched with the number 502, and a pair of pointed white wings spreads out to either side. A small fan of white stitching sits below the jaw like gathered shroud lines. Parachute, wings and skull together say what a parachute infantry regiment does for a living, and the number is the only lettering it needs.

The 502nd's rolls carry Robert Cole and Joe Mann from World War II and three Medal of Honor recipients from a single battalion in Vietnam. Bastogne put the regiment on the line through the siege the 101st is still known for. Today the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 502nd Infantry Regiment serve in the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, the Strike Brigade, of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. A trooper from any era of the regiment, from the Utah Beach causeways to Kandahar, will know the skull and the number at a glance.

Frame it in a shadow box with a Screaming Eagle patch and a set of jump or air assault wings, or put it on the vest that goes to the next reunion at Fort Campbell. For the son or daughter of a 502nd veteran it is a plain, solid way to mark where a parent served. The number on the canopy does the rest.