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Recent BDU find


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I picked this up recently and thought I'd post it because I had a question about it. Also, although I figured out which specific unit it is, I thought others might try guessing what it is, where the vet was, etc., for the heck of it. What do you think?

 

Left SSI (not shown) is the Bloody Bucket.

 

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Very salty 207th Military Intelligence Brigade BDU.

 

Guessing late 1980's dated?

 

Yes, the 207th MI Bde as the combat patch.. It's dated '92. There are some other clues.

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Looks like a Desert Storm vet.

 

Yes, Desert Storm. What originally caught my eye is that the 207th MI Brigade was not airborne, although the SSI has an airborne tab...

 

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Yes, Desert Storm. What originally caught my eye is that the 207th MI Brigade was not airborne, although the SSI has an airborne tab...

 

 

Noticed that too.But was thinking maybe hit was a detachment or something like that, that was A/B. Obviously he's not A/B qualified.

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Anyway - when I originally saw this, the CIB as well as the airborne tab over the SSI intrigued me; on a hunch I suspected F Company, 51st Infantry, a LRS detachment. Sure enough, it was, as I found the vet's name online as an F/51 Desert Storm veteran from Pennsylvania (hence the Bloody Bucket).

 

The only thing is - as pointed out, there are no airborne wings on the coat. Apparently it wasn't mandatory circa 1990 for LRS, but the guy was a Staff Sergeant at the time. Perhaps he chose not wear them(?) I also saw reference to him possibly serving with the 2d Ranger Bn.

 

Thoughts?

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I can shed a little light on this. I was an MI guy (96B, All Source Intel Analyst) assigned to 1st Armored Division in VII corps in Southern Germany from 1987-1989.

In about 1988 the Army decided to reinstate the concept of the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols from the Vietnam war (LRRPs) The concept at that time was called LRSU, Long Range Surveillance Units. The LRSU would be drawn from the ranks of volunteers from the elite infantry units and the idea was that they were a reconniassance asset for the commander to use to get "real time" intelligence from an asset on the ground. Because these were intelligence units, the idea was that they would be assigned to the Military Intelligence (MI) brigade at Corps level, and to the MI battalion at Division level. The Corps would get a LRS Company (LRSC) and the Division would get a LRS Detachment (LRSD), about a platoon sized unit.

 

All of the units were supposed to be capable of being deployed by parachute, and thus were designated "airborne" which meant that they would wear the airborne tab above their regular unit patch.

 

Now, shortly after this decision was made, some of the units expressed concern that they did not have the personnel, the aircraft or the expertise to keep all the LRS units on jump status (because that would mean they would have to have full time support from parachute riggers, and the ability to access aircraft and drop zones for proficiency training.) Furthermore, it was felt that in Europe, with the Soviets having a pretty formidable Air Force and Air Defense capability, the likelihood that any LRS units in Europe would be deployed by parachute in case of a WWIII scenario was pretty remote (remember the Cold War was still going on and all of our contingency plans were based on assumptions that we'd be fighting the Soviets and Eastern European armies in Europe) It was thought that the LRS units would be "stay behinds" that would dig in and remain in place when the Commie Hordes poured across the Inter-German border as the conventional units retreated, and so no airborne deployments were likely.

 

So even though the volunteers for the LRS units were all supposed to be airborne qualified and in theory, able to deploy by parachute, the decision was made that some the units based in Germany would not be on jump status. This would save a lot of money for training. We had a LRS-D that was part of the 501st MI BN and while most of them were airborne qualified, they were not on jump status. The Corps-level asset, however, being close to an airfield, was kept on jump status and thus rated the "airborne" tab above the 207th MI Bde patch.

 

So, to sum up, my guess is that the coat you have belonged to a soldier who was assigned to the LRS-C of the 207th MI Brigade which was based near Stuttgart, Germany (when I was at 1AD we actually did a liason visit to one of the battalions of the 207th, the 1st MI Bn [Aerial Exploitation.]) It's possible that the soldier was airborne qualified and chose not to wear his wings (not likely - though I would ask if you checked the pocket flap since sometimes wings were sewn on there.) Another possibility is that as the unit ramped up for duty in Desert Shield, they started pulling in people who were not airborne qualified just because they needed the bodies to fill the slots in the unit. That was not an uncommon practice, especially for a unit going to war.

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  • 1 month later...

Oh, one more thing about the 207th MI Brigade SSI. Many MI units had the elements of a key, a dagger, and a lightning bolt incorporated into their SSIs and DUIs.

 

In the Military Intelligence community, the joke was that this was because "A Lightning Fast Stab in the Back is the Key to success." :D

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