82nd Airborne Division Urgent Fury Grenada Patch

The Rangers jumped onto Point Salines at 0530 on 25 October 1983, and by 1400 that afternoon the first 82nd Airborne Division battalions were landing on the same runway. Designated Task Force 121, the division's job was to take the airfield over from the Rangers and push out from there. Within days the southern end of Grenada was secure and the American students were out. For many paratroopers who joined after Vietnam, Urgent Fury was their first real operation. This patch is for the All Americans who went.

The division went in under Major General Edward Trobaugh. Its 2nd Brigade task force brought the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, and the 3rd Brigade task force followed with battalions of the 505th and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments, backed by the 319th and 320th Field Artillery and the division's combat aviation battalions. On the morning of 26 October Cuban forces ambushed a 325th patrol near Calliste, killing two paratroopers, among them Captain Michael F. Ritz, commander of Company B. That afternoon the 2nd Ranger Battalion air-assaulted the Grand Anse campus and flew out 233 American students. The whole operation ran under Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf III and Joint Task Force 120, with the 22nd Marine Amphibious Unit taking Pearls Airport, and it closed on 2 November 1983.

This patch is 3.5 inches wide by 4 inches tall, a black disc with a GRENADA tab built into the bottom, all finished in a gold merrowed border. 82D AIRBORNE DIVISION arcs across the top in white, written the way the Army abbreviates Eighty-Second, with VETERAN beneath it. In the center the AA of the All American division sits on its red square under a blue AIRBORNE tab, with PARATROOPER stitched small below the tab. Three sets of jump wings surround it, a plain set across the bottom of the AA and one on each side topped with a star. URGENT FURY sits below in white block letters, and the back is iron-on.

Grenada was short, and it was not easy. The final US count was 19 killed and 116 wounded, and the 325th lost men on its first full day on the island. The paratroopers who went in were mostly young soldiers of the post-Vietnam Army, and they were fighting Cuban and Grenadian forces on short notice in hilly, unfamiliar country. They held the airfield, cleared the ground around it and got the students home. VETERAN stitched under the division name is the word that matters on this one.

It belongs in a shadow box next to a 1983 photo from Point Salines, or on the vest worn to an 82nd Airborne Division Association reunion. It is also a good gift for a father or uncle who went to Grenada with the All Americans. Press it on with an iron or stitch it down. Urgent Fury, October 1983, Airborne all the way.