Did you know that the military employs professional embroiders? Within the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, two embroiders, Embroidery Digitizer Machine Operator Cindy Chong and Sewing Machine Operator Nancy Chhim, designed and produced the flag for the Army's new Western Hemisphere Command in just two weeks.
The Western Hemisphere Command unifies several previous commands, including U.S. Army Forces Command, U.S. Army North, and U.S. Army South, into one entity.
Chhim and Chong coordinated closely with the Institute of Heraldry to finalize the design of the flag. "The coordination is important in order to turn this around in two weeks," explained Adam Walstrum, who supervises the flag room at DLA. "It's definitely a big part of the support we provide that we're right at the source, so we can work with [The Institute of Heraldry] and get the approval to manufacture pretty quickly."
Component command flags such as this are not mass-produced, making each a unique piece of handcrafted art. The design of this particular flag follows military conventions of displaying the command insignia and scroll with the name of the command on it.
"It's nice to be a part of something brand new like this, being a tiny part of this reorganization effort for the Army," Chong said in a Department of Defense press release. "Design-wise, there's something appealing about the simplicity of the eagle head on the globe, which is emphasizing the Army joining together for this one command."