Army Engineers Sapper Tab Red Patch

The Army authorized the Sapper Tab for permanent wear on June 28, 2004, nineteen years after the first 18 students finished the Sapper Leader Course. Before that date a graduate carried the course in his records and his reputation, not on his sleeve. The word itself is older than the Army. In the 17th century French engineers dug saps, covered trenches that crept toward an enemy wall, and the men who dug them were called sappers. American engineers have been building, breaching and clearing the way since the Revolution, and the tab finally put a name over that work.

The Sapper Leader Course runs 28 days at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and out in the Mark Twain National Forest. Its validation class ran in May 1985, and it became a fully accredited TRADOC course in 2004, the same year the tab arrived. Soldiers attend alongside Marines and students from the other services. The course is built in two parts, general subjects and patrolling, and in 2024 just under half of the students who started it graduated. The U.S. Army Engineer School, founded in 1866, has also hosted the Best Sapper Competition at Fort Leonard Wood since 2005, about 50 miles in 50 hours of tactical and technical tasks.

This tab is a 2.5 by 1 inch arc of red twill with a red stitched border and SAPPER in white block capitals. Red and white are the Corps of Engineers branch colors, the same pairing an engineer company carries on its guidon. It has a cut edge trimmed close to the border and an iron-on backing, and it can also be sewn on. One word, no device, no motto. It is shaped like any Army skill tab, made to ride in an arc above a unit patch.

Sappers are the engineers who go forward with the maneuver units. They clear routes, breach obstacles, handle demolitions and fight as infantry when the mission calls for it. The engineer motto is Essayons, "Let us try," and the sapper is usually the one sent to try it first. The tab means 28 days of patrols, demolitions and short nights, finished. Combat engineers who served long before 2004 know the tradition did not start with a piece of cloth, and they wear this one just as proudly.

It fits a shadow box next to an engineer castle and a Sapper Leader Course certificate, or the shoulder of a range jacket. Pair it with the patch of the engineer battalion where you learned the trade. For a son or daughter who just graduated the course, it is a small gift that says you know what it took. The red and white say the rest.