Armor and Armored Cavalry Tank and Crossed Sabers Patch

The tank on this patch is an M26 Pershing seen head-on, and it has ridden on top of two cavalry sabers since the Army authorized the Armor branch device in February 1951. Before that, tankers of the Armored Force wore a left side view of the Mark VIII tank. The new device set the heavy tank of the day over the weapon of the horse cavalry. Nobody who wears it needs that explained. Tankers and armored cavalry troopers have carried the same tank and sabers on their collars for more than seventy years.

The Armored Force was created on July 10, 1940, under Brigadier General Adna R. Chaffee Jr., and it took in the tank units of the infantry and the cavalry. Its roots run back to the U.S. Tank Corps of 1918, which was disbanded in 1921 when its tanks went back to those two arms. The tank and sabers device came out of the Army Reorganization Act of 1950, and the branch color is yellow, the same yellow the cavalry wore. For decades the Armor Center and School sat at Fort Knox, Kentucky, until they moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 2010. Armor calls itself the Combat Arm of Decision, and its patron is St. George.

The patch measures 4 by 2 inches with a cut edge that follows the outline of the tank and the sabers, so there is no background at all. Everything is stitched in copper-tan thread with a dark brown outline. The turret rises in the center with a round cupola on top, and two pairs of dark brown stripes mark the fronts of the tracks. The saber blades cross behind the hull and reach out to the corners, while the curved guards and grips hang below the tracks like a pair of handlebars. It has an iron-on backing and can be sewn on if you want it to stay put for good.

The M26 itself fought in Korea in 1950, the same years this device was being drawn up. The tank on the collar never changed after that, even as M48 Pattons, M60s and M1 Abrams came and went in the motor pools. A tanker who crewed an M60 in Germany and a cav scout who rode an M3 Bradley in the desert wear exactly the same brass. That is the point of it. Armor and cavalry are one branch, and the sabers say where it came from.

Sew it on the vest you wear to your squadron reunion, or put it in a shadow box with your spurs and your old unit crest. It also makes a good gift for a son or grandson who just reported to his first tank company. One tank, two sabers, no words needed.