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Can you ID this VN-made Engineer Patch


rtd_sf_eng
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  • 5 months later...

Best guess is a one for either a company or a platoon who's nickname was The Pioneers, probably a company, either a separate engineer company or a company within a battalion, alot of these small unit patches, most worn as pocket patches, make an appearance, are worn for awhile, then drop off the radar, like say with this one, worn for a year or so, then no more, or in some cases maybe a redesign appears??? which then makes it all the more obscure and hard to research.

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5 hours ago, ocsfollowme said:

Sappers are known as elite combat engineer or pioneer. Could be sapper related too. Or could be a unit called Pioneers. 

 

reference name: https://www.army.mil/article/125876/sappers_engineer_commandos_on_the_front_lines

Since member says it is Vietnam era, we'd have to say it will be a company or platoon sized unit in country, as the term Sapper as an official term, within the 60s army then wasn't used as far as we can tell, don't think it was used since the 19th century right, in example the 1830s-40 Company of Sappers, Miners and Pontoniers. The Sapper Leadership Course, that started in the mid 80s we think, and that SAPPER Tab, that comes out in 2004, The Pioneers nickname, probably more in tune with what a American engineer thought of as a nickname rather than Sappers, which may have had a more european medieval quality to it LOL.

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Does not help with the id of the patch but you might find it interesting that the crossed rifle and pick alludes to the collar badge of the British Army Pioneer Bns of WW1. Of course the British badge has a Short Magazine Lee Enfield not an M16.

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Pioneer is the lowest from of engineer, it is the 12A10 MOS what you come out of AIT with, it is basically a pick and shovel operator you move up from there. I can't imagine an engineer unit calling it self "pioneers" unless they are being sarcastic which could certainly be the case but that would make it more of a moral patch than an actual unit patch.  

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