The Army Reserve’s famed 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Regiment, won’t have to fall in line on an Army headquarters order linking it to a Schofield Barracks unit — which would have required it to wear the 25th Infantry Division shoulder patch.

Last March, the Department of the Army announced an “associated units” pilot program pairing Army Reserve and National Guard units with active-duty counterparts to make up for fewer soldiers in a time of leaner budgets.

As part of that association, paired units around the country have been conducting so-called “patch-over” ceremonies, adopting the larger unit’s identifying left shoulder patch as a sign of unity.

Highly visible unit patches such as the 101st Airborne Division’s “Screaming Eagle,” or the 1st Infantry Division’s “Big Red One,” often carry significant pride and history.

The Hawaii-based 100th-442nd was to be paired with the 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team at Schofield, requiring it to trade in its patch for the 25th Division’s “Tropic Lightning” insignia.

Successor to the units that produced a host of World War II Medal of Honor heroes, including the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, the 100th-442nd was loath to give up its historic shoulder patch. A campaign to reverse the Army headquarters decision apparently was successful.

“The 100-442nd will not be associated with” the 3rd Brigade at Schofield, Lt. Col. Rob Phillips, a 25th Division spokesman, said in an email. “However, they will keep an informal relationship, and where possible, train together. As of right now, there hasn’t been another unit selected to associate with 3BCT.”

In May, the 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans Club ran a story in its newsletter asking for help as part of a campaign to keep the liberty torch patch. A month before that, U.S. Rep. Mark Takai of Hawaii, who is now deceased, wrote to the Army asking that the 100th be allowed to continue wearing its old patch.

It’s not particularly clear why the Army made the decision not to go through with the pairing of the 100th-442nd and Schofield’s 3rd Brigade. U.S. Army Pacific headquarters at Fort Shafter could not be reached for comment.

Retired Maj. Gen. Robert G.F. Lee, a onetime 100th Battalion commander and later an influential state adjutant general as head of the Hawaii National Guard, said it’s his understanding that the 100th will revert back to its historic ties with the Hawaii Army National Guard’s 29th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.

Those ties included an association during a 1968 Vietnam War call-up, and two deployments to Iraq and Kuwait. Lee noted that the arrangement “worked for 50 years” between the two geographically-close Army commands.

“It’s really all about keeping the reserve component soldiers from Hawaii and the Pacific together,” he said.

Lee pointed to associate units created between the Hawaii Air National Guard and active Air Force in Hawaii that require cooperation — but under separate and distinct unit designations.

“There’s an example where you have a chance to expand the history and the heraldry and the contribution by both active and the reserve component forces,” Lee said.

Lee said he likes the Army’s decision to use associated units, but something may have been “lost in translation” when the Army “kind of went the other way and said, no, you are going to (associate with another unit) and do the patch change and all that kind of stuff.”

THE Army picked 27 units across the country for the multi-year associated units pilot program, including another Schofield pairing. The 1st Battalion, 151st Infantry Regiment of the Indiana National Guard is associated with Schofield’s 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team.

On Oct. 15, more than 500 Indiana National Guardsmen patched over to Hawaii’s 25th Division patch at Camp Atterbury in Indiana.

Across the country, some strong feelings have been generated about the unit identity changes.

Randy Brown, a 20-year veteran of the Iowa Army National Guard, wrote in Foreign Policy last month that “regular Army types don’t often understand” that citizen soldiers are rooted in the history, geography and community of a place, and argued that the associating units should keep their home patch.

“Communities have symbols, like sports team logos and state flags,” Brown said. “So it’s natural that National Guard units, and their respective symbols, come to represent the ideals and aspirations of the places from which they come.”

Lee said the Indiana battalion can maintain better ties with Schofield because it is part of a larger brigade that can pull from a larger supply of citizen soldiers for training and deployments.

The 100th-442nd, meanwhile, with more than 400 soldiers, has no higher brigade, and is in fact the last infantry battalion in the Army Reserve.

The 2nd Brigade at Schofield said previously that it would bring some Indiana soldiers out to Hawaii for training, including jungle operations, and is in regular contact with the mainland unit.