by MAJ Ryan Crayne
Harding Paper 24-1, September 2024

Butter Bars

I arrived at my new platoon naked—or perhaps worse than naked. In fact, I would rather have been missing my pants than the fabric I was actually divorced from. Up to that moment, I had done everything a 2nd Lieutenant was supposed to have done. I had graduated from my Infantry Officer Basic Course, and I had attended and passed both Airborne and Ranger School, yet I was still missing something. When I joined my platoon of roughly 30 Paratroopers, there were 59 total 82nd Airborne patches on our cumulative uniforms. From the most junior private to my new platoon sergeant, every single Soldier had recently returned from a deployment to Afghanistan; I could read their deployment history plainly in the unit patches proudly displayed on both shoulders of each Army Combat Uniform (ACU). One of my new sergeants, while telling me about their deployment, referenced his dual AA patches. Ironically, he claimed he had an “unbeatable hand” with his “four-of-a-kind Aces,” and then he gestured toward my bare shoulder. The empty pile tape on my right sleeve, where a deployment patch would reside once I had earned one, was a distinct marker of my perceived incompetence stemming from a lack of combat experience. I had not done the job—and until I had, I would be part of a lesser caste.

For me and for many others, the absence of a combat patch has a corresponding effect on confidence. As a junior officer, even though I was technically in charge of this platoon, my validity had yet to be earned.

Army Regulation (AR) 670-1 outlines the wear and appearance of all Army uniforms, including the ACU, which is worn almost daily by most Soldiers. The U.S. Army, more so than any other branch in the DoD, authorizes the wear of several uniform adornments that, among other more formalized and intended outcomes, subtly yet distinctly serve as phantom monuments of competence. The right shoulder sleeve insignia—highlighting former wartime service with what we call a “combat patch”— is one of these monuments. Combat patches, badges, tabs and devices are all hallmarks of esprit de corps, quickly communicating certifications and skill sets—and some hands-on experience of real and serious action.

Sacrifice and Development Take Many Forms

Our purpose and mission as Soldiers is to serve in a capacity that supports and defends our Constitution and contributes to fighting and winning our nation’s wars. With that in mind, shouldn’t doing so and earning a combat patch be acknowledged and celebrated? Shouldn’t Soldiers want to proudly display the fulfillment of their oath in such a way that every other Soldier can see, understand and appreciate what they have done? Perhaps there is merit in what this visual dichotomy acknowledges: Soldiers with combat patches next to Soldiers without combat patches. The sacrifices involved in combat deployments and attending training courses are, without a doubt, worth recognizing—not only in their own right, but because their example spurs on the next generation of Soldiers. Young Soldiers aspire to emulate their distinctive and accomplished leaders; in this imitation, they may even become the next iteration of the competent Soldiers they look up to. This, of course, is predicated on competence correlating with adornments like the combat patch.

The U.S. Army is at an inflection point. Hostile environment deployments that officially warrant the awarding of a combat patch are currently relatively rare among conventional forces. Most Soldiers who have deployed to such environments did so earlier in their careers and are now senior commissioned and noncommissioned officers. Still, a considerable portion of senior Soldiers, through happenstance alone or by virtue of their occupational specialty, may have never deployed to a designated hostile zone. Soldiers today are significantly more likely to “deploy” to various non-hostile locations worldwide, training with our allies and deterring adversaries for nine or more months at a time. Depending on the unit, some Soldiers may have been deployed two or three times to a non-combat zone during their first enlistment. These deterrence and training deployments involve significant sacrifice, undoubtedly developing Soldiers and preparing them for future leadership and potential combat. Yet, the physical manifestation of their sacrifice and development is absent on ACUs.

Yesterday’s Expertise Does Not Guarantee Tomorrow’s Victory

Like the majority of junior Soldiers today, when I was assigned to that first platoon, I did not have a combat patch on my sleeve; I was missing what most of my Soldiers were looking for—something that told them, in a language they would all instantly understand, that I was competent. In my subsequent years as a lieutenant, and still today, I have come up hard against that notion that many Soldiers still espouse: any proficiency or experience acquired through training or non-combat service is irrelevant and inferior when compared to combat service.

After what felt like a short 18 months of serving with my experienced platoon as one of the lone Soldiers who had yet to deploy, I transitioned to a new unit. I was assessed and selected to take a platoon in the 75th Ranger Regiment: a unit full of even more experienced and combat-tested Soldiers in Special Operations. From here, I would go on to deploy to Afghanistan more than once and to serve as a ground force commander. But upon returning from my first combat deployment, there was no acknowledgment of this “milestone” I had yearned for. When I, along with the other junior officers, returned home, we simply went to the base PX and picked up another patch to mirror the ones we already wore on our left shoulders. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was expecting something. And yet, I had not achieved preeminence with the addition of this 1-ounce patch of Velcro—even though I had placed this piece of fabric on a pedestal for over half a decade. Once I was wearing it, I realized that my new shoulder patch made me no different from what I had been before; this made me realize in turn that the Soldiers I had met in the past, who sometimes did or did not meet my expectations of battle-borne expertise, were not so different from their slick-sleeved counterparts either.

The patches and badges we wear today signal the experiences and skills we earned in the wars of yesterday—but these ornaments of our aptitude may mean little in the wars of tomorrow. Given the rapid evolution of warfare, the skills and experiences necessary to excel in it are shifting just as quickly. The wars of the past two decades have produced highly specialized tactics based on niche experiences imparted on many Soldiers, but these may not directly translate to future challenges. Senior leaders who dismiss the talents and skills of the next generation, simply because they have not deployed to these past conflicts, may be doing so out of hubris and bias, influenced by their own experiences in specific types of warfare. This over-indexing on the value of previous experiences can lead to the dangerous consequence of preparing our forces for the battles of the past rather than those of the future—a consequence our Army cannot afford.

Recognizing Competence

It is not lost on me as I write this, as I proclaim this unfounded attribution of competence based on the details of our uniforms, that I have also now benefitted from this very practice. I have had the great fortune of being in the right places at the right times to attend many Army schools and to deploy to hostile zones overseas. I am both proud of these accomplishments and grateful for these experiences while also humbly acknowledging the fortune involved. I, too, still sometimes find myself judging a book by its cover, or rather, Soldiers by their thorax flair. But I know now that true expertise is not solely formed by being present in a hostile theater. It is forged daily through rigorous training, diverse operational experiences and continuous professional development. Some of the most competent Soldiers I know have barren shoulders and patchless chests. And I know still others who display competence through their various uniform details, but are all too often deleterious to our profession. No special insignia or patch, obtained or yet to be, is in and of itself a definitive marker of an experienced Soldier. Unfortunately, this reflection has come to me long after I would have benefited from it as a young lieutenant.

While I’m not wholesale recommending a change to AR 670-1, we, as Soldiers—including myself—must challenge how we recognize and attribute competence. Our uniform’s visual signals are often a poor way of assessing expertise and can produce maligned incentives and shortcomings in confidence as Soldiers seek to attain them. The potential conflicts of the future will benefit from our Army’s previous combat experience— but also from novel ideas crafted by those who have never engaged in combat. We must continue to reinforce the idea that expertise and excellence in our profession are obtained through the daily commitment to our Soldiers and the mission. Ultimately, true expertise is not Velcroed on our sleeves but etched in our deeds.

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MAJ Ryan Crayne is a U.S. Army Marketing and Behavioral Economics Officer who has served in leadership and combat roles in the 1st Infantry Division, 75th Ranger Regiment and the 82nd Airborne Division. Ryan holds an MBA from the University of Michigan and has publishing interests centered around recruiting, retention and the Army Profession. MAJ Crayne currently serves as the Director of the Center for Junior Officers, is a LTG (Ret) James M. Dubik Writing Fellow, and is a Senior Instructor in the Simon Center for the Professional Military Ethic at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

The views and opinions of our authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Association of the United States Army. An article selected for publication represents research by the author(s) which, in the opinion of the Association, will contribute to the discussion of a particular defense or national security issue. These articles should not be taken to represent the views of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, the United States government, the Association of the United States Army or its members.