82nd Airborne Division OD Subdued Patch

The double A was on the sleeve twenty-four years before the parachute was. The 82nd Division picked up its "All American" name at Camp Gordon, Georgia, in April 1918, after a naming contest seized on the fact that its draftees came from every state in the Union, and the men stitched the two A's inside a circle on a square and wore it to France. The AIRBORNE tab was not authorized until August 31, 1942, two weeks after the division was reorganized as the Army's first airborne division. So this patch is two eras stacked on top of each other, a First World War division patch under a Second World War tab. This is the subdued version, olive drab and black, the one that went on the fatigue sleeve instead of the dress uniform.

The 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment made the division's first combat jump into Sicily on July 9, 1943, the first regimental-size parachute assault in U.S. Army history, and the 504th followed into the Salerno beachhead that September. On June 6, 1944, the 505th, 507th and 508th jumped into Normandy behind Utah Beach and the 325th Glider Infantry came in by Waco glider the next morning. At Nijmegen on September 20, 1944, during Operation Market Garden, the 504th crossed the Waal in canvas assault boats under fire to take the bridge from the far bank. The division held the northern shoulder of the Bulge through the winter, pushed to the Elbe in the spring, and pulled occupation duty in Berlin, where its honor guard so impressed General Patton that he called the 82nd "America's Guard of Honor." Since the war the division has stood its watch at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, under XVIII Airborne Corps, and that is where the alert calls have come: the Dominican Republic in 1965, Vietnam with the 3rd Brigade in 1968, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, Saudi Arabia in August 1990. The Panama jump onto Torrijos-Tocumen airfield on December 20, 1989 was the division's first combat jump since Holland.

This is the subdued shoulder sleeve insignia, the field version of the red, white and blue patch. The square is olive drab, the circle inside it is black, and the two A's sit back to back in olive drab inside that circle, the same monogram the division has worn since 1918. The AIRBORNE tab arches over the top in black lettering on olive drab and is joined to the square as one piece, with the gap between them cut away, so it goes on the sleeve as a single patch instead of two. A thin olive drab border traces the whole outline, tab and square together. It measures about 2.12 inches wide and 3 inches tall, tab included, with a cut edge. On the OG-107s of the Vietnam years and the woodland BDUs after them, this is what the All American patch looked like from across the motor pool.

Being in the 82nd has always meant being on the clock. The division keeps a brigade on alert to be wheels up within hours of the call, and that readiness is why it has gone in first to so many places since 1965. Anyone who has worn the AA knows the rhythm: the alert, the pack shed, Green Ramp at Pope, the night jump onto Sicily Drop Zone, the long ruck back. "All the Way" is the answer to every command in the division and the motto on its colors. In August 2021 the division's paratroopers held the airfield at Kabul through the evacuation, and the last American soldier to step onto the last C-17 was its commanding general.

In a shadow box this subdued AA sits well beside the full-color 82nd Airborne Division patch and a set of jump wings, the field patch and the dress patch side by side. It also belongs on a range bag or the sleeve of an old field jacket, where it looked right in the first place. It comes with an iron-on backing by default, or pick the hook backing option to mount it on a loop panel. Either way it is the same patch the division has worn into the field for sixty years.