Situation:

I'm at Fort Lewis TDY and I'm working with Reservists supporting ROTC training. From day 1 there has been an E7 wearing a 171st Infantry Brigade patch as his FWTS-SSI. I've questioned the legitimacy of the patch from day 1 because for the first few days he wore it upside down until an Active Duty E7 I was speaking to about it corrected him on it. Curious about the unit's history I researched them online and I saw that they are only given Campaign credit for WW1 and WW2. Vietnam and I would've fallen for it but he's not that old to have been in WW2. They were active from 1963-1972 in Alaska. I don't think they were deployed to a combat zone in that time. Now they are at Fort Jackson supporting IET. He is from a Reserve Training Unit and he told an E2 he was assigned to them at Fort Jackson. The E2 then asked him if he was in Iraq and he turned his head and didn't answer. I'm gonna confront him the next training day and bring it to the attention of his chain of command if it is still suspicious.

Any input? Was the unit deployed and I'm just not seeing it online? Are they sending Drill Sergeants from the unit to train Iraqis or the ANA and they would wear this patch? Any help is appreciated.

171st patch iv very similar to the 172nd patch. If I were to give this person thebenefit of the doubt id say he probably mistook the two. But if he were deployedor attached to the 172nd youd think he would know which way was up. Sounds really fishy.

You are an LT, pull his records.

He said it was the 171st out of South Carolina. This is the same unit that had an E4 wearing the circle ISAF patch as his FWTS-SSI.

Weird stuff like this happens with reserve types. I remember being at SRE last month with the CalGuard. I saw a trooper in the chow hall wearing the 40th IBCT patch on his right sleeve. I know for a fact my current brigade hasn't been deployed to an area that would earn anyone an SSI-FWTS. And yet there it was.

Reservists in general are do-do's when it comes to uniforms......

Do you remember when the reserves used to wear their (active duty affiliation) patch on their class a's. They'ld have their normal reserve patch on their left sleeve, and on their right side, above their unit citations they would haqve an active duty division patch there. It was seriously retarded looking.

Ive never heard of that. That sounds retarded as hell.

I hadn't seen it since the 80's. Made the a's look like something out of the AF.

I will tell you something I do see a lot of though. Marine patches worn as SSI-FWTS on ACUs. I know these guys are proud of their prior service, but it seems to me the reason they wear it is because they dont want the Army folks to think they are cherries while everyone else is walking around with combat patches and CIBs.

lol yeah....

Lame on their part....

If it were me, I'd wait for the Class A inspection to "show off".

Yea I've seen a lot of weird things being around these guys. I'm going to confront him and take care of it from there.

I don't like seeing Marine patches on an Army uniform, being worn by people who were never in the Marine Corps. I've seen 1MEF patches quite a bit the past few days. Also, the guys wearing a Marine patch from when they were in the Marine Corps are wrong.

Yeah, you can wear a CAR on the Army class As.

quote:

Originally posted by runfuret:
I will tell you something I do see a lot of though. Marine patches worn as SSI-FWTS on ACUs. I know these guys are proud of their prior service, but it seems to me the reason they wear it is because they dont want the Army folks to think they are cherries while everyone else is walking around with combat patches and CIBs.

I've seen an awful lot of active duty types wearing Marine patches too, say a couple a few weeks ago in fact.

the 1st MARDIV patch as an SSI-FWTS is authorized...but for like 3 mos during OIF I.

The latest 670-1 has info on it.

Wannabe's...lol

From the Ft. Jackson web site:
On 16 march 2007, the 171st Infantry Brigade was reactivated at Fort Jackson, South Carolina with the mission to support training resulting in the transformation of Civilians into American Soldiers.

Campaign participation Credit:

World War I
Streamer without inscription

World War II
Central Europe

source:
171st Bde History

I currently work at Ft. Jackson and we do send quite a few Soldiers on WIAS taskings but there should be no reason that anyone should wear the 171st as an SSI-FWTS. Anyone that gets deployed from here should be wearing the SSI-FWTS of the unit they were assigned to on their deployment orders or the lowest level unit they were attached to as an augmentee.



-JS

quote:

Originally posted by jmazz:
Situation:

I'm at Fort Lewis TDY and I'm working with Reservists supporting ROTC training. From day 1 there has been an E7 wearing a 171st Infantry Brigade patch as his FWTS-SSI. I've questioned the legitimacy of the patch from day 1 because for the first few days he wore it upside down until an Active Duty E7 I was speaking to about it corrected him on it

Sounds like something a 1SG (yours/his) should look into...

quote:

Originally posted by Jedi_Soljah:

I currently work at Ft. Jackson and we do send quite a few Soldiers on WIAS taskings but there should be no reason that anyone should wear the 171st as an SSI-FWTS. Anyone that gets deployed from here should be wearing the SSI-FWTS of the unit they were assigned to on their deployment orders or the lowest level unit they were attached to as an augmentee.

That's what I was saying. That he would wear the unit he's assigned to not the 171st. My LTC said the same thing and he tasked me with questioning the SFC. We're going to take it from there.

I can't wait to hear the reason...who knows maybe its legit.

[/QUOTE]

That's what I was saying. That he would wear the unit he's assigned to not the 171st. My LTC said the same thing and he tasked me with questioning the SFC. We're going to take it from there.[/QUOTE]

Why didn't the LTC ask him himself? Did he want to see if the SFC's answer varied, depending on who was asking the question?