761st Tank Battalion Patch

The 761st Tank Battalion went into combat on 7 November 1944 and stayed in action for 183 days. They were the Black Panthers, an African American tank battalion activated on 1 April 1942 at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. Their first fight came in eastern France, attached to the 26th Infantry Division in Lieutenant General George S. Patton's Third Army. Before it, Patton told them they were the first Black tankers ever to fight in the American Army. The men took their nickname from the panther on their shield and carried the motto stitched under it through four major campaigns in six countries.

The battalion learned its trade on M5 Stuart light tanks at Camp Claiborne, then moved to Camp Hood, Texas, and took on M4 Sherman medium tanks with the 75 mm gun. First Lieutenant Jackie Robinson was one of its officers in training, until his arrest at Camp Hood for refusing to move to the back of a bus led to his transfer and a court-martial that acquitted him. The 761st crossed to Britain in September 1944 and came ashore at Omaha Beach on 10 October. During the Battle of the Bulge it was rushed toward Bastogne, and in early January 1945 it helped take the Belgian village of Tillet, losing nine of the eleven tanks it sent in. It went on to help breach the Siegfried Line ahead of the 4th Armored Division, and in the last days of the war its tanks reached Steyr, Austria, on the Enns River, where they met the Soviet Red Army.

The patch is a shield 3 inches wide and 3.5 inches tall, cut edge, trimmed tight to its black outline. The top of the shield steps in at each shoulder, and the face is plain white. On it sits a black panther's head turned to the left, ears laid back, mouth open and white fangs bared, worked in solid black with only a few white lines for the eye, ear and jaw. A gray and white scroll curls out from behind the base of the shield, lettered COME OUT FIGHTING in heavy black capitals. Black, white and gray are the only colors on it, and the panther carries the whole design.

The 761st fought for 183 straight days in an Army that still kept Black and white soldiers in separate units. Its men earned Silver Stars and hundreds of Purple Hearts. Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers of Company A refused evacuation after he was wounded in November 1944 and kept fighting until he was killed, and he received the Medal of Honor posthumously in 1997. The battalion's Presidential Unit Citation was awarded by President Jimmy Carter on 24 January 1978. After inactivating in Germany in 1946, the 761st was brought back at Fort Knox in 1947 as an integrated unit.

Frame it in a shadow box with the photo of a father or grandfather who rode a Sherman with the Black Panthers, or sew it on the vest you wear to armor reunions. It also sits well beside 26th Infantry Division and 4th Armored Division patches in a Third Army collection. The backing is iron-on, and it can be sewn on for a permanent hold. Come out fighting.