Thailand — Cobra Gold '13

Exercise Cobra Gold 2013 (Combined/Joint Task Force, Thailand) — U.S. contingent led by U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific with 31st MEU and III MEF elements · USMC · 2013

Locally embroidered in Thailand, this morale patch sets an American eagle, globe and anchor device against the red-white-blue bars of the Thai national flag — the visual handshake of a fifty-year alliance. Cobra Gold 2013, the 32nd iteration of the Asia-Pacific's largest multinational exercise, opened at Chiang Mai on 11 February and drew some 13,000 personnel from seven full participants — the United States, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore — while twenty more nations sent observers, Burma among them for the first time. Marines of the 31st MEU and U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific worked alongside Royal Thai Marines and Army units through an amphibious assault demonstration in Chonburi on 14 February, small-boat and helicopter raids, noncombatant evacuation drills and jungle warfare instruction, closing on 21 February with a combined-arms live-fire exercise at Ban Dan Lan Hoi in Sukhothai province. Patches like this were seldom official issue: they were run off in Thai shops during the deployment and traded hand to hand between allied troops, a Cobra Gold custom that survives to the present day.