General
- Nickname: Wildcat Division.
- Slogan: Wildcats Never Quit.
- Shoulder patch: A black wildcat on a black bordered olive drab disk.
The first division unit patch ever used by the Army was for the 81st Infantry Division. This unit trained at Fort Jackson, S.C., near Wildcat Creek. They created patches so they could identify each other quickly in combat. When the Wildcats went overseas in August 1918 to join the Allied Expeditionary Force in France, they wore this unusual, and then unauthorized, patch. Other units protested the shoulder patch idea and the dispute finally came to the attention of General John J. Pershing. General Pershing, however, approved the Wildcat Trademark and the esprit de corps of the division and suggested the other army divisions adopt patches. "History of the 81st United States Army Reserve Command 1917–1975" prepared by 317th Military History Detachment.
Read more about this topic: 81st Infantry Division (United States)
Famous quotes containing the word general:
“Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“We have seen over and over that white male historians in general have tended to dismiss any history they didn’t themselves write, on the grounds that it is unserious, unscholarly, a fad, too “political,” “merely” oral and thus unreliable.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“In the drawing room [of the Queen’s palace] hung a Venus and Cupid by Michaelangelo, in which, instead of a bit of drapery, the painter has placed Cupid’s foot between Venus’s thighs. Queen Caroline asked General Guise, an old connoisseur, if it was not a very fine piece? He replied “Madam, the painter was a fool, for he has placed the foot where the hand should be.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)