The Sino-American Cooperation Organization (SACO), also known as the Sino-American Special Technical Cooperative Organization, was established in 1943 as a joint Nationalist/American operation headed up in tandem by the chief of Chiang Kai-Shek's secret police and the commander of the U.S. Navy's intelligence outfit in China. Much of their activity related to intelligence gathering and aiding their Chinese counterparts (weather forecasting and spotting incoming Japanese air raids in particular were a pretty serious boon to CBI operations), but there were also a limited number of U.S. Navy amphibious scouts and raiders for direct action and clandestine reconnaissance and mapping of the Chinese coast in anticipation of a possible amphibious landing. Assigned the codename of "Amphibious Roger" and known as the "Roger Group", many of these men got hung up in Calcutta due to inter-service conflicts (the U.S. Army controlled movement into China and quarreled with Naval Group China over control and coordination of intelligence operations in China), several did manage to get in and execute their missions. The insignia measures 2 1/2 inches wide and 3 1/2 inches long, embroidered on a patch of tan twill cloth, with the text "ROGER" over a scene of an arm emerging from a burning pit holding a flagpole topped with a skull, bearing a flag of a snake armed with a cutlass coiled around a skull, with lightning radiating from the flag. Included copies of correspondence between a prior owner and a former SACO/Roger member named Gene Terres, who notes himself as among the men of "Roger II", one of the Roger units that was held up in India. His narrative notes that while some of Roger II did make it into China via the Stilwell Road, he was not among them. Provenance: The Putnam Green/Sycamore Collection