593rd Sustainment Brigade Patch

Count the parts of this patch and they add up to the unit number: two spears crossed over a third make an X on an I, the Roman numeral IX, and nine plus three spears plus five stars gives 593. That is how the 593rd Sustainment Brigade put its number on the sleeve without stitching a single digit. The brigade's motto is Rest Assured, and it is a fair summary of the job. Sustainment units move the fuel, ammunition, parts and food that keep everyone else in the fight. Soldiers who wore this patch know how much work sits behind a line like that.

The 593rd was first activated at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, and its unit crest still carries green magnolia leaves for that start. It was organized as the 593rd Sustainment Brigade on 1 May 2007, and this shoulder sleeve insignia was approved for the brigade effective 16 April 2008. The five stars stand for five campaigns: World War II, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Somalia and Operation Iraqi Freedom. For more than thirty years the unit's home was Fort Lewis, Washington, now Joint Base Lewis-McChord. On 27 August 2013 it was redesignated the 593rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command.

The patch is 1.75 inches wide by 2.75 inches tall, a dark blue rectangle arced at the top and bottom and finished with a white merrowed edge. Five white stars run in an arc across the top. Under them sits a white outline of Mount Rainier, the mountain every soldier at Fort Lewis saw on a clear day. At the base, three spears with scarlet points and buff shafts stand one upright and two crossed. Buff and scarlet are the traditional colors of Army support, and the three spears also stand for Ordnance, Quartermaster and Transportation, the three logistics branches the brigade supports.

Sustainment work rarely makes the headlines, and the soldiers in it would tell you that is fine. Convoys still have to roll, and supply points still have to be stocked before the first round goes downrange. The 593rd's unit crest also carries a Philippine sunburst for the Philippine Presidential Unit Citation and a scarlet chevron for the Meritorious Unit Commendation. Five campaigns, from World War II to Iraq, are on this patch. Every one of them ran on logistics.

It is a sew-on patch, so it stitches flat to a jacket, a vest or a backpack and stays there. It also fits a shadow box next to a deployment photo from Iraq and a set of orders for JBLM. It makes a good gift for a soldier who served with the 593rd or a family member who wants to understand what that unit did. Five stars, a mountain and three spears, stitched in blue, white and red.