Army
The Army's Basic Parachutist Badge is awarded to all military personnel of any service who complete the US Army Basic Airborne Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. It signifies that the soldier is a trained military Parachutist, and is qualified to participate in airborne operations. As of June 2011, the badge and its sew-on equivalent may be worn on the Army Combat Uniform (ACU).
The original Army Parachutist Badge was designed in 1941 by Captain (later Lieutenant General) William P. Yarborough and approved by the Department of the Army in March of that year. The Parachutist Badge replaced the "Parachutist Patch" which had previously worn as a large patch on the side of a Paratrooper's garrison cap. LTG Yarborough also designed the Senior and Master Parachutist Badges and the addition of stars to portray the number of combat jumps. The flash that is worn behind the badge is also a contribution of William P. Yarborough.
Read more about this topic: Parachutist Badge (United States)
Famous quotes containing the word army:
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“The army is always the same. The sun and the moon change. The army knows no seasons.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“It is necessary to turn political crisis into armed crisis by performing violent actions that will force those in power to transform the military situation into a political situation. That will alienate the masses, who, from then on, will revolt against the army and the police and blame them for this state of things.”
—Carlos Marighella (d. 1969)