505th Airborne Infantry Regiment Patch Panthers

The 505th's motto, H-Minus, was earned in Normandy, where the regiment jumped into the Sainte-Mere-Eglise area ahead of the scheduled H-Hour. The regiment was activated as the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment on July 6, 1942, at Fort Benning, Georgia, under Colonel James M. Gavin, then 35 years old. It joined the 82nd Airborne Division, under Major General Matthew Ridgway, in February 1943. Five months later it was in the air over Sicily. The black panther became the regiment's animal, and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd still goes by the Panthers.

Early on July 10, 1943, the 505th jumped near Gela, Sicily, the first regimental-size combat jump in U.S. Army history. Its second combat jump came at Salerno on the night of September 14, 1943. Normandy brought a Presidential Unit Citation, Operation Market Garden in Holland in September 1944 brought a second, and that December the regiment fought in the Battle of the Bulge. In February 1968 the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne, with the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 505th Infantry and the 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry, was alerted for Vietnam after the Tet Offensive, returning to Fort Bragg in December 1969. The 2nd Battalion air-landed at Point Salines in Grenada during Operation Urgent Fury in October 1983, and in December 1989 Company A of the 3rd Battalion made the regiment's first combat jump since the Second World War in Operation Just Cause, Panama. Desert Shield and Desert Storm followed in 1990 and 1991, then Afghanistan in 2002, Iraq from 2003, and Operation Inherent Resolve in 2015.

The patch measures 2.5 inches wide by 3.75 inches tall, a shield with a squared top and a rounded base, with a cut edge trimmed close to a light blue border. A winged black panther dives head first across a gray field, red jaws open and claws out, over light blue diagonal stripes. Four red parachutes drift down beside him, and the 505th made four combat jumps in the Second World War. PANTHERS runs across the top in black, and 505 sits in heavy black numerals at the base. It has an iron-on backing and can be sewn on as well.

The 505th was Gavin's regiment, and every paratrooper who came through it afterward heard about Gela and Sainte-Mere-Eglise early. It carries two Presidential Unit Citations from 1944 alone. The 1st and 2nd Battalions, 505th Infantry, still serve with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Whether a trooper jumped into Normandy, deployed to Vietnam in 1968 or served at Bragg in the years since, the panther and the 505 belong to all of them.

Put it in a shadow box with your jump wings and an 82nd Airborne patch, or on the vest you wear to a 505th reunion. It also makes a good gift for a grandson whose grandfather jumped with the Panthers. Small, sharp and all airborne.