508th Parachute Infantry Regiment Red Devil Gray Patch

The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment jumped into Normandy at 2:15 a.m. on 6 June 1944, and some of its troopers held Hill 30 above the Merderet River until they broke through to the La Fiere bridgehead on 9 June. The regiment was activated on 20 October 1942 at Camp Blanding, Florida. Lt. Col. Roy E. Lindquist took command at activation and kept it through the end of the war. Its men called themselves the Red Devils, and they had a second name too, Fury from the Sky. Attached to the 82nd Airborne Division, the 508th fought its way from the hedgerows of Normandy to Germany.

The 82nd Airborne Division's Normandy objectives included Sainte-Mere-Eglise and the Merderet crossings at La Fiere and Chef-du-Pont, and the regiment earned the Distinguished Unit Citation for its fight from 6 to 9 June. On 17 September 1944 the 508th jumped again in Operation Market Garden, held the Berg en Dal high ground over the Groesbeek-Nijmegen area and cut Highway K. That December, in the Battle of the Bulge, it screened the withdrawal of roughly 20,000 troops from St. Vith and later joined the assault on Hill 400. Reactivated at Fort Bragg in 1951 as the 508th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, it served in Japan before moving to Fort Campbell. The 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry fought at Hue with the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division after Tet 1968, and in December 1989 the same battalion secured Fort Amador and La Comandancia in Operation Just Cause.

This one is a 3.5 by 3.5 inch round patch on a gray twill field, framed in a black border, with a cut edge and an iron-on backing. The devil is stitched in bright red with black horns, black jump boots and a barbed tail curling up behind him. He drops toward you with a rifle in one fist and the other hand balled up, ready for the landing. Above him a white canopy rides full, its shroud lines running straight down to his back. The Red Devil has been the 508th's mark since the war years, and on this gray ground the red figure carries from across a room.

The 508th paid heavily in Normandy, and the stand on Hill 30 became the story every later generation of the regiment learned first. In Holland and the Ardennes the Red Devils did the hard work of holding ground against German armor. The regiment's battalions carried the number into Vietnam, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan, and in March 2003 the 1st Battalion, 508th was the main effort in the 173rd Airborne Brigade's combat jump at Bashur in northern Iraq. Today the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment serve in the 82nd Airborne Division. For a paratrooper who wore the number, the devil on this patch is a straight line back to Camp Blanding.

Set it in a shadow box beside a pair of jump wings and an 82nd Airborne Division patch, or sew it to the vest worn to a regimental reunion. It also makes a fitting gift for the son or grandson of a 508th trooper who wants a piece of that war to hold in his hand. The Red Devil still looks like he means it.