The Ledo Road was well on it's way to completion and would need a symbol.
In April of 1944 a competition to design a Ledo Road shoulder patch was announced by General Pick.
T/4 Robert Smith, a cartographic illustrator assigned to the 20th General Hospital, had samples made for his
design entry.
The design shows the road curving around a mountain in the left foreground.
Further on, the road continues across Burma and disappears into the green hills and into China, represented by
the Chinese sun.
Three red, white and blue stripes are at the top.
Three white stars in the larger red stripe represent the countries involved, China, Burma, and India.
The border is green.
Smith's design won the competition.
At left is one of his samples, the first "prototype" Ledo Road patch.
In the final design adopted for the Ledo Road Shoulder Sleeve Insignia the mountain road in the foreground was dropped,
as was the yellow color.
A portion of the original patch, without the yellow foreground, is shown at right.
This portion, with minor modification, became the final design.
The result was a simplified patch that still conveyed the original design intent depicting the road to China.
An example of the final design is shown at left.
Although approved locally for uniform wear, the insignia was never officially approved by the U.S. Army.
Having been created over two years after construction of the road began, most who were qualified to wear it, never
did, at least not until they were sent home.
Smith himself never saw the final version until after he had been home for several months.
An alternate version of the patch has a large blue stripe with smaller red and white ones.
The reason for the blue, rather than red background, is unexplained.
Also unexplained is the fact that there appear to be more examples of the blue version on the collector's market,
than the originally designed red.
As with all insignia worn in the CBI, there are many theater made variations of the Ledo Road patch.
They come in all types of cloth and even leather.
Interesting variations can be seen on S. Neal Gardner's Ledo Road page.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW
