Today as I was driving to work, I saw a guy with an unusual license plate. The plates were California, but the license number was “1ID x FA”. The ‘x’ wasn’t the letter x at all, but what looked like 2 cigarettes in an ‘x’ shape as depicted in the link.
On the left side of the plate, that weird horse coat of arms was there. The frame of the license plate said “Veteran”
Looks like the 11th Cav unit patch.
Maybe those are swords, not cigarettes.
1st infantry division (the big red one) field artillery? Iirc horse symbolisms are often attached to mechanized/armored cav units but I’m no expert on such things.
The logo does not match any of the major unit patches for 1st ID artillery in wikipedia that I can find, but it could be one of dozens of sub units.
My guess would be 1st Infantry division Field Artillery, and the “crossed cigarettes” are probably crossed old-time muzzle loading cannons.
No, they are swords.
It’s the 11th Armored Cavalry regiment according to the Institute of Heraldry which is under the Secretary of the Army.
Bri2k
I’m pretty sure the guy was actually a veteran of the 1st Infantry Division’s 25th Tobacconist Battalion – the “Lucky Strikes.”
Another vote for 11th ACR. Wish I could able to use those here in TX.
as commanded by General Chesterfeild
(really? mixing up Feild Artillery and crossed cannons, to guess by your paintshop drawing, with a Cavalry coat of arms?)
I’m thinking either the liscence plate was a woosh, or the OP was.
That is definitely the 11th ACR (Armored Calvary Regiment. The symbol on the bottom is the crossed cannons of the US ARMY Field Artillery Branch.
On the wiki page, it describes the 11th ACR primarily acted as the OPFOR at National Training Center, but I didn’t see any Field Artillery units attached to the Regiment. Although they may have restructured before shipping out to Afghanistan.
This is not an unusual designation for an Army unit. Sometimes different smaller size units become “attached” to a different larger unit for combat procedures. For example, I was (in the nomenclature of the license plate example) assigned to “2ID x 1/37 FA”. (The 1/37 FA Battalion was attached to the 2nd Infantry Division, so that became our parent unit. Further extending the attachment, my team was under the 2ID, attached to 1/33 Tank Battalion (Bravo Co.), but primarily answered to HHD 1/37 FA Battalion. Though ultimately, the Division commander took priority when any issue came up. Just make sure everything goes through your chain of command.
(I guess if you want to break it down in the proper heirarchy, it would go “B/1/33 AR - HHD 1/37 FA BN - 2 INF DIV.” But nobody says it like that.)
It’s not that tough to understand if you see it on an organizational chart. It sounds very confusing when you talk it through. (I’m not going to create an org chart, so don’t ask.)
(Hijack for Personal boast: When my unit went to the NTC, we totally pulled a surprise attack against the OPFOR one time and kicked their butts across the (simulated) combat field. The OPFOR usually lost very few battles, as they are at Ft. Irwin on their home turf, and they’d been doing this for years, so they knew all the secret terrain spots on the different “combat fields”. We got mucho praise from our command, while the OPFOR took the next day off for “disciplinary re-training”. So we had a free day off as well. It felt pretty good.) (/end hijack)
