An original US Army Coat, Desert Camouflage Pattern, Combat, from the Global War on Terror years, in the three color desert print, insignia’d to a sergeant of the 69th Air Defense Artillery Brigade. Large Regular. Nylon and cotton blend, made on contract SP0100-97-D-C811 by UNICOR at Manchester, Kentucky.

The left shoulder carries the desert subdued shoulder sleeve insignia of the 69th Air Defense Artillery Brigade. It is a clever piece of heraldry once you know how to read it. The two curved shapes are comets with trails, standing for the flight paths and speed of missiles, and the way they are set against one another spells out the number 69. The two discs at their centers are cannonballs, a nod to the brigade’s Coast Artillery origins, and the whole arrangement is positioned to suggest a defensive posture.

That lineage runs back to 17 May 1918, when the unit was organized in the Regular Army at Fort Worden, Washington as the 69th Artillery, Coast Artillery Corps. It fought the Pacific war as the 69th Antiaircraft Artillery Group, went to Germany in 1960, and by 1983 was headquartered at Giebelstadt Army Airfield outside Wuerzburg. In Desert Storm the brigade put roughly a thousand soldiers, four Patriot firing batteries and two Hawk batteries into the field under VII Corps, covering the high and medium altitude airspace over the ground campaign. It went to Israel in 1998 for Operation Shining Presence.

Which places this coat in the right window. Through the Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom years the 69th was still a USAREUR brigade out of Wuerzburg, and elements deployed to locations around the Gulf in support of coalition operations before the brigade uncased its colors at Fort Hood, Texas on 16 September 2008. Air defense in that war was unglamorous and constant. Patriot crews sat on alert over ports, airfields, headquarters and staging areas, guarding against the theater ballistic missiles that Saddam’s regime had fired at Israel and Saudi Arabia a decade earlier. Nobody wrote books about them. They were the reason the buildup was never interrupted.

The rest of the insignia fills in the man. Desert subdued sergeant chevrons on both collar points, the rank of the team and section chiefs who actually ran a Patriot crew. A U.S. ARMY tape above the left pocket. On the right shoulder a full color reversed field flag with a gold border, the style widely worn on DCUs in the early war years. The field is reversed on purpose, the union to the front, so the flag reads as streaming behind a man moving toward the enemy rather than retreating. Above the right pocket, loose threads and stitch marks show where his name tape was removed.

The label is worth a look on its own. UNICOR is the trade name of Federal Prison Industries, a government corporation created by executive order in December 1934, running a Clothing and Textiles segment ever since and holding mandatory source status that puts it first in line for federal purchases. Much of the American soldier’s uniform in this war was cut and sewn inside federal correctional institutions. This one came out of Manchester, Kentucky, on a 1997 contract.

The three color pattern itself was drawn at Natick Laboratories in the mid 1980s and approved by the Infantry School in October 1990, replacing the six color chocolate chip print that had been tested on rocky ground and proved wrong for the open desert. The Army had it in service by 1992, wore it through Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, began phasing it out in mid 2005 and had it fully gone by early 2008 in favor of the ACU.

CONDITION AND DETAILS

Size Large Regular per the contract label
Fits height 67 to 71 inches (5 ft 7 in to 5 ft 11 in)
Fits chest 41 to 45 inches
NSN 8415-01-327-5313, NATO size 7080/0414
Contract SP0100-97-D-C811, UNICOR, Manchester, Kentucky
Nylon and cotton blend, sound throughout, evenly faded from wear and laundering
Fraying to both cuff plackets, heavier at one point
Loose threads and stitch marks above the right pocket where the name tape was removed
69th Air Defense Artillery Brigade insignia present and firmly sewn on the left shoulder
Reversed field flag present and firmly sewn on the right shoulder
Sergeant collar insignia present and secure on both points
U.S. ARMY tape present and secure
All four pockets and flaps intact, all buttons present
Contract label and size label both present and fully legible
Hand inked inventory number 4850 on the size label
No holes, tears or repairs noted

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