Adding This to "Things I Didn't Know About the Military"

[Marauder06]

I was looking through the biographies of some of my co-workers, and one of the SF guys here listed the "Ram's Head Device." I never heard of that before and assumed it was a foreign award.


Nope.

The Ram's Head Device is a military special skill badge of the U.S. Army National Guard. The Ram's Head Device is awarded to any soldier after completion of the U.S. Army Mountain Warfare School (AMWS), based at the Ethan Allen Firing Range in Jericho, Vermont. The badge is authorized for wear on the uniform of Vermont National Guard soldiers[1][2][3] and those Army National Guard units belonging to the 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Mountain) from other states

Ram's Head Device - Wikipedia

 

[Cookie_]

I was looking through the biographies of some of my co-workers, and one of the SF guys here listed the "Ram's Head Device." I never heard of that before and assumed it was a foreign award.


Nope.





Ram's Head Device - Wikipedia

View attachment 38597

View attachment 38596

This is probably tied with the air assualt badge for second most common skill badge (after airborne) in my unit. It's easily the most common school support kids can get after airborne, because the skills are MOS immaterial and actually utilized when we train in the Rockies.

Never knew it was only authorized for wear with specific units though; reminds me of the Manchu belt buckle.

 

[Grunt]

My Army brothers had many patches to wear. I was seriously jealous.

All I could wear was one:

Tacola Crayons - Patch

 

[Kraut783]

when I first got in, you use to see the South Vietnam jump wings on BDU's above the name tag. Not sure when it became out of regs.

 

[Florida173]

I was looking through the biographies of some of my co-workers, and one of the SF guys here listed the "Ram's Head Device." I never heard of that before and assumed it was a foreign award.


Nope.





Ram's Head Device - Wikipedia

View attachment 38597

View attachment 38596

I'm a big fan of those guys. They would come and do MTTs for cold-weather and mountaineering training to Italy occasionally. We'd head up to the Southern European Alps for training prior to a quick pump in Kosovo. We actually jumped in and stayed up in the mountains the whole time with Ahkio sleds and a couple SUSVs. Good times. Snow shoes suck

 

[ThunderHorse]

So when I was at the 'ol Institute we were allowed to wear badges from warfare schools on our duty uniform. I used to see these all the time...and of course no one got to wear them when they commissioned.

 

[Devildoc]

I'd never seen that either, that's very cool.

Speaking of badges, I noticed on a picture of one of the articles on the homepage of this website the SF guys in formation, the guy in front has a Navy ESW device. You don't see that very much, either.

 

[Kaldak]

I'd never seen that either, that's very cool.

Speaking of badges, I noticed on a picture of one of the articles on the homepage of this website the SF guys in formation, the guy in front has a Navy ESW device. You don't see that very much, either.

I saw that too Doc. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

 

[Intel Nerd]

I saw these all of the time at Drum. The Vermont ARNG 86th IBCT (Mountain) is the only unit other than 10th Mountain authorized the Mountain tab. On a regular basis they do longer drills at Fort Drum and would wear it. Of note, if you were in Vermont, you may wear it since it's a State award, similar to the Governor's Twenty (the ARNG version of the President's Hundred marksmanship long tab).

I always tried going while at Fort Drum, but the command there preferred to send people to UPL, UMO, HAZMAT, Air Load Planner, or literally anything else that wasn't fun or rewarding or useful in a Mountain unit except* to support staff.

I wish the badge would become approved at the Compo 1 level.

Edit: Accidentally wrote expect instead of except

 

[JedisonsDad]

Military has a lot of cool things that are authorized but not. Air Commando hat comes to mind. AFI used to say anyone in an AFSOC Operations Unit could wear one, now it just says can be worn for specified heritage events when authorized by a commander for a specific date and time.