D Company 1st Battalion 5th Special Forces Group Ghost Recon Color Patch

The flash on the skull's green beret is black edged in white, the flash the 5th Special Forces Group wore from 1961 to 1963 and again from 1985 until the Vietnam-era striped flash came back in 2016. The patch belongs to D Company, 1st Battalion, 5th SFG, stitched as D CO. 1ST BN. 5TH SFG across the top, with GHOST RECON along the bottom. The 5th Group is the Legion, reactivated on 21 September 1961 at Fort Bragg and at home at Fort Campbell, Kentucky since 1988. Its mottos are "De Oppresso Liber" and "Strength and Honor." Its lineage traces to the 1st Special Service Force of World War II.

In Vietnam the group grew from an advisory mission with the ARVN into a main combat force, and its 1967 Mekong Delta campaign put about 400 watercraft to work. Beginning in August 1990, 5th Group elements formed the First Special Operations Task Force, fielding 106 special operations teams for Desert Shield and Desert Storm. On 19 October 2001, ODA 555 and ODA 595 went into Afghanistan, and Capt. Mark D. Nutsch's ODA 595 fought on horseback in the Dari-a-Souf Valley, the story later told in the 2018 film 12 Strong. In Iraq the group deployed across the country as part of CJSOTF-AP during Operation Iraqi Freedom and helped in the capture of Saddam Hussein.

The patch is a 4 inch black circle with a gold merrowed edge and a thin gold ring inside it, split into upper and lower bands. A white skull wearing an olive green beret with the black flash sits at the center, eyes narrowed. Gold lightning bolts strike down on either side, and a gold rifle with a mounted scope lies across the bottom. Nothing here is coded beyond what it says: the beret is Special Forces, and the scoped rifle and the name GHOST RECON point to reconnaissance. This is the color version, in gold, white, olive and black.

A company patch is a morale patch, not a uniform item, and it belongs to the men of one company. GHOST RECON is the name stitched on this one, a recon outfit's name for itself. Behind it stands the Legion's record, from the Mekong Delta in 1967 to the First Special Operations Task Force in 1990 to the horseback teams of October 2001. For a Green Beret who served in D Company, 1st Battalion, that is the lineage he carries, and this patch puts the company's own name on it.

It belongs in a shadow box next to a beret and flash, or on a range bag or the jacket worn to a chapter meeting. It is also a gift for a son or brother who served with the Legion. The patch has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on. D Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Group, in gold on black.