The 82nd Airborne Division took issue with a man wearing an 82nd Airborne hat who was pictured at the Charlottesville protests giving a Ku Klux Klan salute.
"Anyone can purchase that hat," said one message on the division's official Twitter account.
The 82nd Airborne is an Army paratrooper unit that fought in campaigns in World War II against Nazi Germany and jumped into Normandy on D-Day in 1944.
The division released a number of comments in response to the image of the man wearing the Airborne hat, which was posted by Brandon Friedman, a former Barack Obama administration official, according to HuffPost.
One commented asked if the identity of the hat-wearer was known. The 82nd Airborne Twitter account responded with a photo of a Normandy veteran:
The account retweeted a commenter, Eddie Ojeda, who rebuked the hat-wearer, saying the hat is "more than a beret, or hat… it's a way of life."
The site Task and Purpose, which supports American veterans, also commented on Charlottesville with a post that noted the Armed Forces' restrictions against such activity.
"While the U.S. military supports free speech, it certainly doesn't condone joining the neo-Nazi or Ku Klux Klan chapter closest to your base — after all, we did fight and win a terrifying global war to wipe Nazi Germany from the face of the planet," the post said.
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