Field Artillery Crossed Cannons Patch

The Army fixed scarlet as the artillery's color and the crossed cannon as its device in the regulations of the early 1830s, and every Redleg since has worn some version of these two guns. The design has outlasted smoothbores, rifled guns, towed howitzers and rocket launchers. It still shows a pair of nineteenth-century field pieces, muzzle to breech, crossed at the middle. That is the point of it. The guns change and the branch stays.

On 17 November 1775 the Continental Congress unanimously elected Henry Knox Colonel of the Regiment of Artillery, and the regiment entered service on 1 January 1776. The Redleg name comes from the Mexican War, when Ringgold's Battery and Duncan's Battery wore scarlet stripes down their trouser legs, a practice that carried through the Civil War. Field artillery earned the title King of Battle, and in World War I and World War II it was the single highest casualty-producing weapon on the battlefield. The branch's home is Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where the Field Artillery School trains its cannoneers, fire direction men and forward observers. Saint Barbara is the branch's patron.

This patch is the crossed cannons alone, with no background, 4 inches wide by 2.5 inches tall. The guns are stitched in golden orange thread with a dark brown outline. You can pick out the banded muzzles, the knobbed cascabels at the breech, and a stitched ring on each barrel where the trunnions sit. The cut edge follows the outline of both guns, so it lays flat on a uniform or a vest like branch brass. The back is iron-on.

Artillerymen measure their work in rounds delivered on time and on target for someone they will never see. A gun section that can lay, load and fire under pressure is a tight crew, and the people who did it remember their chiefs and their numbers years later. The fire direction center and the forward observer make the same team on a bigger scale. The infantry and armor learned to trust that when they called, the rounds would come. That trust is the real tradition behind the crossed cannons.

Put it on a jacket or a vest for a battery reunion, or in a shadow box with unit crests and a Saint Barbara medal. It is also a good gift for a son or daughter heading to Fort Sill, or a grandfather who served on the guns. Simple gold cannons, recognized across the Army.