Combat team won’t get mountain tab - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Combat team won’t get mountain tab

KORENGAL, Afghansitan — The Army vice chief of staff has denied a request to allow the to 4th Infantry Division's 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team to add a mountain tab to the unit's uniform sleeve.

In a March 9 memo to the unit commander, Gen. Peter Chiarelli praised the unit’s “tremendous and incredibly courageous service ... under some of the most arduous conditions and difficult, mountainous terrain.” But Chiarelli then said there is no equitable way to approve the mountain tab since it is not an individual skill tab or a unit award.

The soldiers were disappointed.

“If you went strictly by merit,” said Lt. Derek Knapp, a platoon leader in the Korengal Valley, “if there was any unit or brigade that has earned it, it would be us. But it’s a division identifier, not a skill tab. I could understand why units that came before us would be upset at not getting it. Yet I can't think of any duty more fitting a mountain tab than performing all your missions in the mountains of Afghanistan.”

The request came from Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of RC-East in Afghanistan and the 82nd Airborne Division, according to an Army spokesman. Since it came from a division commander it was sent to Chiarelli for review.

The spokesman said the request was denied because the mountain tab is not a qualification tab like Ranger, Special Forces or Sapper tabs that are qualification badges soldiers earn, like airborne wings, by graduating from a specific school.

The mountain tab was first authorized in 1944 when the 10th Infantry Division became the 10th Mountain Division.

Were they approved, 4th IBCT would have joined only the 10th Mountain Division and the National Guard's 3rd Battalion, the 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Mountain) and 172nd Infantry Regiment, who run the Mountain Warfare School at Jericho, Vt., as bearers of the mountain tab in the Army.