Fleet Marine Force Corpsman 8404 NEC Patch

8404 is not a Marine Corps MOS at all, it is a Navy Enlisted Classification, the code for a hospital corpsman trained as a Field Medical Service Technician. Putting it on a Marine MOS patch, between MARINE CORPS and SEMPER FIDELIS, is exactly how the Marines treat the men and women who hold it. The 8404 corpsman is a sailor on paper and a member of the unit everywhere else. He trains with Marines, deploys with Marines and answers to the name Doc. This patch gives him the same red and black layout Marines use for their own specialty patches.

Field medical training for duty with Marines goes back to April 8, 1943, when the Medical Field Service School was activated at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. After North Korean troops crossed the 38th Parallel in 1950, the school was reactivated on October 1, 1950, and a West Coast school stood up at Camp Del Mar on Camp Pendleton, where the first class was 80 Hospital Corpsmen recalled to active duty from Marine Corps Reserve units. The West Coast course became a Marine Corps Formal School on April 12, 1963. In 2007 the East Coast school was renamed Field Medical Training Battalion East, and its West Coast twin is Field Medical Training Battalion West. The Field Medical Service Technician Course taught at both is the course that turns a corpsman into an 8404.

The patch is 4.5 inches wide and 3.25 inches tall, cut in the familiar shape of a Marine MOS patch with a red merrowed border. MARINE CORPS runs across a black band at the top and FMF CORPSMAN across a black band at the bottom, both in white letters. The red center panel, outlined in white, carries a large white 84 on the left and 04 on the right. Between them sits the eagle, globe and anchor in gold, white and silver, with SEMPER FIDELIS stitched in white serif letters below. It is the same layout used on MOS patches for riflemen and crew chiefs, with a corpsman's number in it.

The Navy Hospital Corps was established on June 17, 1898, and from the islands of the Pacific to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, corpsmen have gone ashore with the Marine rifle companies. Marines will tell you plainly that some of them came home because Doc got to them first. That kind of trust is not given by rank or rate. It is built on patrols, field exercises and long nights in the same holes. The 8404 code is how the Navy writes it down, and SEMPER FIDELIS is how the Marines say it.

Frame it in a shadow box with your FMF device, your Hospital Corps rating badge and a photo of the platoon you patched up, or sew it on the vest you wear to Marine reunions. It also makes a good gift for a corpsman graduating from Field Medical Training Battalion. The backing is iron-on, and it can be sewn on for a permanent hold. Four digits, and every Marine knows what they mean.