FORWARD OPERATING BASE SPEICHER, Iraq — Maybe they should all be the same.
Or perhaps they could all be different to reflect a soldier’s military occupational specialty.
While many soldiers said they thought everyone facing combat should be awarded some type of badge, few could agree on what the Close Combat Badge should look like.
The Army, which recently announced the new badge, has not released information about its design.
“I think the engineer corps, signal, artillery, [military police] should design their own,” said Spc. Garrett Nodell of the 983rd Engineer Battalion. “I want to wear something that reflects engineering.”
Nodell suggested a badge with a hammer or ax.
The background could be baby blue, like that of the traditional Combat Infantryman Badge, said Spc. Stan Eichelberger of 1st Battalion, 33rd Field Artillery Regiment. The CIB shows a musket on a baby blue background with a wreath around it.
“To signal the infantry part of it,” Eichelberger said. “Maybe they could tie all the [MOSs] together in one crest that reflects all the MOSs.”
Staff Sgt. Jason Ohm of the 983rd’s Headquarters Support Company and a veteran of Operation Desert Storm, hadn’t thought about it much because he works as a cook and carpenter and isn’t eligible. He thought if the new badge had a baby blue background like the infantry badge, it would just confuse people.
“Then everybody would just think you were infantry,” Ohm said.
Then he added that one badge should cover all the various specialties if its wearer participated in infantry-style combat.
“One thing across the board,” Ohm said.
Ohm’s unit mate, Spc. Terry Rice, agreed.
“Why change the combat badge; it’s been here all these years,” Rice said. “To me, if you start separating everything from everything else, it doesn’t respect the soldier.
“It should be ‘one Army, one fight.’”
