ODA 5th Special Forces Group Iraqi Freedom Patch

In the predawn hours of March 20, 2003, Special Forces A-teams from the 5th Special Forces Group were already inside Iraq, sent across ahead of the main assault to put eyes on the ground. That is the war this patch remembers. The 5th Group formed the core of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-West, and its Operational Detachments-Alpha did the work the ODA name on this listing points to. The patch reads 5th SPECIAL FORCES GROUP OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM across the top. Across the bottom it reads ELITE OF THE PROFESSIONALS.

The 5th Group had been back in the U.S. Central Command area since January 2003, the entire group deployed. When the fighting started its teams ran the full range of Special Forces missions, from hunting ballistic missile threats in the Western Desert to unconventional warfare in southern and central Iraq. Follow-on ODAs seized the abandoned Iraqi airfield at Wadi al Khirr. By early May 2003, CJSOTF-West and the northern task force, CJSOTF-North, were folded into CJSOTF-Arabian Peninsula. The group stayed in the fight through Operation Iraqi Freedom, supporting Iraqi and coalition forces until Operation New Dawn ended in 2011.

The patch is a black disc with a white ring and a black merrowed border. A green date palm rises from the center with a white numeral 5 stitched on its trunk. Crossed arrows sit behind a gray skull, the Special Forces branch symbol, which traces back to the Indian Scouts and the First Special Service Force. A brown-handled fighting knife with a long curved blade lies across them. A heap of gray skulls fills the base of the tree, and the whole thing reads like a team patch made for the men who were there.

The 5th Special Forces Group was activated on September 21, 1961, at Fort Bragg, and today it calls Fort Campbell, Kentucky home. Its motto is the Special Forces motto, De Oppresso Liber, to free the oppressed. Desert work has been its business for decades, and 2003 put that to the test from the first night. The ODAs that went in early in 2003 carried that motto into Iraq. This patch puts their group, their war and their line on one disc.

It measures 4 inches round with a merrowed edge and an iron-on backing, and it can also be sewn on. Put it in a shadow box with your beret flash and OIF photos, or on the jacket or range bag you carry to the team reunion. It also makes a solid gift for a Green Beret who went in early in 2003. Some patches you buy for the design, and some you buy because you were there.