Pathfinder Platoon Unit Bulletins

[bryang]

At the start of my military career, I served in the U.S. Army Reserve with a Pathfinder platoon. The 5th Infantry Platoon (Pathfinder)(Airborne) was a 20-man element (three 6-man Pathfinder Teams, plus Platoon Leader and Platoon Sergeant), based at Fort Meade, MD. I was with them between 1982 and 1986 (then I entered Active Duty).

 

While combing through some of my old items, I came across a handful of unit bulletins we received monthly (alert rosters, training schedules, upcoming team training, rappelling and/or airborne operations, etc)

 

 

My old unit insignia:

[bryang]

My old unit (I'm on the far right, center step with eye glasses):

 

 

 

The unit was disbanded back in the early 1990's when the U.S. Army Reserve and National Guard forces were restructured. Too bad, as I had an excellent time with them, and I learned so much about Soldiering!

[77thPFDR]

Pretty Awesome. I am the unit historian for the Ohio National Guard's PFDR Detachment.

[firefighter]

That is some cool stuff.Thank you for sharing.

[TTB]

The 5th had an assigned strength of 22 personnel: three six-man teams, a platoon commander, a platoon sergeant, and an RTO for each.

 

The scroll patches were initially acquired as a novelty items, and some members wore the orange and black scrolls on black aviator-style jackets purchased from a surplus shop located in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, and worn with civilian clothing. The shoulder sleeve insignia (SSI) worn on fatigues (and later BDUs) was that of the 97th ARCOM with an Airborne tab. (DA policy does not allow for Airborne tabs to be worn over the shoulder sleeve insignia of a non-Airborne command by members of a subordinate Airborne unit, but this was and still is widely practiced, as most personnel are either unaware of this policy or simply ignore it.) Later members of the 5th began to wear the subdued scroll patches over the 97th ARCOM SSI in place of the Airborne tab. This continued until the unit had a full-timer assigned who directed personnel to return to wearing the Airborne tab. (It's the Army, "uniform" means actually having uniformity and complying with AR 670-1, and you can't just make up insignia and wear it on your official uniform, even if you are in an Airborne unit. In any case, the green color of the subdued scrolls was a bad match for the OD color of fatigues and BDUs.)

 

The 5th had previously been active from the early 1960s to 1975 as a Regular Army unit at Fort Rucker, AL, when it was expanded and reflagged as Company C (Pathfinder), 509th Infantry. After members of the USAR 5th learned that the 5th had previously been active and had a wing trimming ("oval") approved by The Institute of Heraldry, it was eventually able to get copies made for its own use. The Fort Rucker unit had been assigned to the US Army Aviation and Training Center and the orange and black of its beret flash and oval matched those of the Center's SSI. The USAR 5th adopted the same oval but for reasons not clear, someone in or above the 5th (it was attached for admin purposes to HQ 11th SFGA) designed an entirely new flash. The old one matched the wing oval but the new one did not.

 

Recall that in the 1970s that initially only the green (SF) and black (ranger) berets were DA-authorized, and the many others (maroon for Airborne, blue for 101st, OD green for the 172d Infantry Brigade in Alaska, etc.) were not, so there was no official, DA-approved flash on file at TIOH. Chief of Staff General Rogers cancelled all of the non-SF and non-ranger headgear in the late 1970s, but his successor, General Meyers, brought back maroon for the Airborne.

 

Side note: After the 101st had to stop wearing blue berets there was a popular rumor within the division that, if it achieved 80% Air Assault-qualification, it could resume wearing the blue berets. This myth was never true but it may have been created to encourage division personnel go to the Air Assault School to earn their wings. At the time attendance at the AA School was rather unpopular and was looked upon by some in the 101st as a form of punishment. For example, if someone screwed up, he could be threatened with being sent to the AAS for a couple of weeks of hard PT, forced marches, lots of yelling, etc. A member of the 5th attended the AAS in 1982 and noted that, when roll call was conducted on the first morning, many personnel were not present and the frustrated NCOIC was heard to exclaim, "Somebody get on the horn to that man's unit to find out where the H*** he is!" Many of those in attendance clearly did not want to be there either. This may have changed since then, but 40 years ago it was a different Army.

 

As one can see in the previously posted photo, the 5th was initially located in an old WW II-era barracks building within the area occupied by HQ 11th SFGA. Today that area has been swept clean, and indeed there is not a WW II-era wooden building to be found anywhere on post. The location was close to the Reece Road entrance off of Route 175 on the northeast side of the post.