COMZ Europe Patch

From 1951 until France asked the Americans to leave in 1967, the Army's supply line to its troops in West Germany ran across France, and the Communications Zone ran it from Orleans. The arrangement came out of the Berlin Blockade, when planners wanted lines of communication that did not depend on the North German ports. A US-French agreement was signed in Paris in November 1950, and the first ships docked at Bordeaux that same month. The command took the depots, ports and roads between the Atlantic and the Rhine. For the soldiers assigned there, France was the posting, and COMZ was the outfit.

The headquarters was designated EUCOM Communications Zone on 15 July 1951 at Coligny Caserne in Orleans. On 1 August 1952 it became USAREUR Communications Zone. Its Base Section sat at La Rochelle and its Advance Section at Verdun, and by 1958 the command managed depots and ports across both France and Germany. When France set a deadline of 1 April 1967 for allied forces to be out, the command carried out Operation FRELOC and moved its operations into Germany. Com Z was discontinued in April 1969 and replaced by Theater Army Support Command, Europe.

The patch is a pointed shield, 2.25 by 3 inches with a cut edge and a white satin border. The field splits down the middle, royal blue on the left and red on the right. A white arrow climbs from the point of the shield toward the top, broad at the bottom and sharp at the tip. A white fleur-de-lis sits on each side of it, one on the blue and one on the red. Blue, white and red with the lily of France, worn by an American command on French ground, it needs no lettering to say where it served.

Logistics soldiers rarely get the credit, and COMZ was logistics on a scale few commands ever matched. Truck drivers, depot clerks, port crews, signalmen and engineers kept the Army in Germany supplied through the hardest years of the Cold War. Plenty of them remember Orleans, Verdun or La Rochelle better than any base stateside. Operation FRELOC moved an entire supply system out of a country in a matter of months. The men who did that work knew it mattered.

It belongs in a shadow box beside a Seventh Army or USAREUR patch, or on the jacket of a man who spent his Army years in France. It is also a good gift for a son or daughter who grew up hearing stories about the base in Orleans. A small shield for a big job.