On the 130th Engineer Combat Service ID Badge (CSIB), a gold bar behind three white embattlements represents a lever, fastener, support, or a measuring device, all of which are essential to engineering operations, while the embattlements naturally connote the military aspects of the Engineering work. The design was originally approved as a Shoulder Sleeve Insignia on 23 September 1969 and was adopted for the Brigade’s CSIB when the blue Army Service Uniform was introduced in the first decade of the 2000s.
Scarlet and white are the colors used for Engineer organizations. The bar refers to a lever, support, fastener or a measuring device and other facets of engineering operations, the embattlements denoting the military aspects of the Brigade. Three is the symbol for completeness in numerology.
The 130th Engineer Brigade was originally established as 1303rd Engineer General Service Regiment, and was activated at Camp Ellis, Illinois on 15 July 1943. Though it was created halfway through the war, it participated in six campaigns—the campaigns of Normandy, Northern France, the Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace (more commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge), Central Europe, and the Asian-Pacific theatre. After the war, the Regiment was inactivated while in Japan in 1946.
In 1955, the Regiment’s Headquarters and Headquarters Service Company was redesignated as the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 130th Engineer Aviation Brigade and activated on September 25, with the rest of the Regiment branching off into new lineages at this time. A mere ten months elapsed before the Brigade was inactivated (June 1956); it would not be activated again until 1969 when it was again redesignated, this time in Hanau, Germany under its current title of 130th Engineer Brigade. The Brigade remained stationed in Germany until all its units (except for the 320th Engineer Company, Topographic) were deployed in 1995 to support Operation Joint Endeavor in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Croatia. As part of Task Force Eagle and in support of NATO’s Implementation Force, the Brigade garnered two Army Superior Unit Awards.
The Brigade would repeat its actions in 2003, where it aided in Operation Iraqi Freedom. One of its Battalions (565th Engineer) would build the “birthday bridge”—at 580 meters, the longest bridge to ever be built in combat— over the Tigris river on Saddam Hussein’s birthday on April 28th, 2003. Over the course of the next eleven years, the Brigade would be deployed three times in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and once to Afghanistan to aid Operation Enduring Freedom, earning a total of four Meritorious Unit Commendations for its service and living up to its unit motto "Combat Ready." It returned to its home base at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii in 2014.
Related Items
130th Engineer Brigade Unit Patch (SSI)
130th Engineer Brigade Unit Crest (DUI)