"Mixing Warlord decals w/ Artizan troopers" Topic

Several months ago, I bought some (plastic) Warlord US Airborne troopers. The figures are fine and I have no complaints, except they are build for late war (Market Garden and after) and I want a Normandy force (507/82). I went ahead and painted them up as is and fought my Nuts! Normandy campaign with them anyway.
But, as is likely the case for many of us, it never quite sat all that well for me. Depending on the time period (especially it ancient armies), I use all kinds of proxies, but for the more modern armies, I like to get the uniforms as accurate as I can.
So as Warlord does not have plastic Normandy US Airborne, I went ahead and got some US Airborne by Artizan. The plan being to change my original Warlord plastics to 507/17th for Operation Varsity and then model the new Artizan guys as 507/82 for Normandy. So I ordered some 82nd Airborne decals from Warlord to go along with my Artizans. I also found a place that did custom decals and got some 17th Airborne shoulder patches.
Well, the problem is the shoulder patches are too big for the Artizan figures. They look fine, but they take up so much room that there isn't space for the rank insignia for anything above E-5, the lower rockers go all the way past the elbow.
Oddly, the unit patch is bigger than the US flag (Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?), so there is plenty of room for the senior NCOs there. I ended up with the not very satisfying method of putting the NCO stripes under the flag, but not under the 82nd insignia.
I haven't done the 17th yet – but I suspect that will be the same. In fact, I used some of the 17th insignia on a set of four 1/35th miniatures – worked out perfectly.
What is it Teddy Roosevelt said? "Do the best you can with what you have right now and play the game…."

I went and looked at their decals just for fun, and yes, the flags are crazy small compared to the shoulder patches. There were some variations in flag sizes, but even the smallest one that I know of (the so called 'cheese cloth one') is not that small. I suppose they figure the insignia has to be big enough to see, but it would still look really odd to me.

Then again, Warlord is the people whose US Decals has MP arm bands of red letters on blue, so I don't think they have put all that much word into it.