I just finished watching The Blue Angels documentary (2024). Great film. It made me think about doing this blog here. Guess I got inspired. I thought I would make a blog detailing my earned challenge coin collection, just to document my service. I'll be updating this over time I just found I did not have an actual Fairchild AFB coin and found one and just purchased it. When it arrives, I'll add it in.
On challenge coins, they've been around for a long time. When I was in the service they weren't giving them out like they do now. I never saw one challenge coin the entire time I was in the service or after. They were far more selective and closely held. The history of challenge coins in the United States military is unclear, but some say they originated during World War I. I think every service person deserves one for what they have earned, so I prefer how it is today.
What is a Challenge Coin?
"Challenge coins are small, medallion-like tokens, often adorned with the emblem or insignia of the presenting organization. Challenge coins serve as a symbol of membership, belonging, and camaraderie, forging a strong bond among those who possess them. Additionally, they are used to acknowledge an individual's achievements, dedication, or exemplary service, and serve as a tangible reminder of the appreciation and respect of their peers and superiors.
"Receiving a challenge coin is a great honor, as it signifies that the recipient has played a special role, making a significant impact on their peers and the organization as a whole."
This blog will be around, should my adult kids ever want to know what the deal is with the challenge coins on my home office desk. They know what they are in general, but not so much the story behind each one details or its history which I've included below. I didn't get too much into things, it's just a brief. I've written more in detail about specifics in many other places.
I joined the US Air Force at 20 years of age, and was in Service from 1975-1982. My last two years being inactive and completed while I was attending Western Washington University, finishing up my degree in psychology. My degree concentrated in phenomenology (if you want to know more read M. Merleau-Ponty's book, Phenomenology of Perception which we had to read at university), with a minor in creative writing for play, screen, and team script writing.
Most of the guys in our flight of 50 were 18 or 19. They called me the "old guy". I could never figure that out because there was a guy who was 24 and had left his high school teaching career to teach in the USAF.
But I was the "old guy". But that wasn't my worst nickname. When I got to my main base at Fairchild AFB, they hadn't had a new guy in a long time. The shop chief, a TSgt. Pettina (Technical Sergeant) started calling me "Jeep". It took a while to realize it was a term of affection. They all started calling me that. I asked one day why, what's with the "Jeep" crap. Pete said, "You know what a jeep is. A utility vehicle. You get all the grunt work here So you're the Jeep."
Good grief. It wasn't until we got a few more new guys about 18 months later they dropped the name. Especially once I became the parachute chop supervisor under Pete. Drag chute tower above the back parachute shop is seen on the top right of photo below.
That was in the "back shop" of the building that was (inside 4 connected gigantic WWII airplane hangers) where the 40' parachute packing tables were and the room with the B-52 drag chute packing table, the B-52 pick up room, and the tall drag chute drying tower with the giant warm air blowers.
You never wanted to dry B-52 drag chutes even when they were drenched from weather, because once dry the nylon got fluffy making them very hard to get into their deployment bag. and the static charge they would give off, hurt!
Looking up inside the drag chute drying tower with one chute hanging up, a nylon 48' yellow split-ribbon B-52 drag chute:
The other thing I can mention about this base was standing within feet of nuclear weapons or being in a B-52 fully loaded with nukes while guarded by armed Security police in a secured Alert Facility area where you could actually get shot by stepping over the wrong line.
There was a large foot-wide diamond-shaped yellow line all the way around uploaded B-52's with armed SPs monitoring it and a tower with armed guards watching everything and some SPs walking around with guard dogs Fun place But great food in the alert facility building and tv and games for the air crew on standby, with trailers next to the uploaded planes in standby mode. Three bombers and a tanker get already ready to taking off within minutes, before an enemy missle would take us out.
So we get the planes in the air, and then run into the massive bunker system beneath the base before the nukes hit. Or melt while you were trying to get other planes quickly into the air before they hit (more likely). Even IF we made it into the bunkers in time, designed to handle everyone on base, our families (my wife at the time lived in our house 15 miles away near downtown Spokane) simply wouldn't make it.
I ended my Air Force service as a Staff Sergeant (SSgt).
As I figure it I have 14. In order of service, this is what they are. Before I get to that I'd like to mention that attended and worked at my first air show in 1968. It was at Paine Field north of Seattle, Washington where Boeing flies its manufactured planes from. The USAF Thunderbirds Demonstration Squadron was there.
As Civil Air Patrol cadets we were tasked with helping to wrangle the public. Parking cars, helping citizens find things and at one point, forming a barrier line between the public and the Thunderbird jets being refuled. I got to talk with one of the Thunderbird's pilots while I was guarding the jets being refuled. Something I described in more detail the other day in a blog.
This is the only photo I have from that day of the pilot I was talking to:
I was in Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary of the USAF in 1968-69. I was a Flight Comnander for most of it in our Tacoma Squadron, then got promoted to Squadron 1st Sgt. I had my first small plane flight piloted by a former CAP cadet in a T-34 trainer where you sit behind the pilot, with a sliding canopy for ingress and egress (entering and exiting the plane.
I flew my first plane in 1969 and performed a 2 point landing at Tacoma International Airport by the Narrows Bridge. The pilot who owned the plane said for that airport I had landed as good as most adult pilots could expect.
While in CAP myself and some cadets, in uniforms as required for an Air Force even, got to take an incentive flight on a C-141 Starlifter cargo ject out of McChord AFB (not a joint base then yet with Ft. Lewis Army Training Base). My uncle also worked as a civilian at that base so I got to see him that day.
The first flight I ever took was in 1958 when we took a train from Tacoma, Washington to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After a few days with family, we then boarded a commercial flight from there to New York City during a storm that scared the hell out of my mother and sister. I was having the time of my life until I saw that my older sister was scared because she could tell our mother was scared. We then flew from NYC to Madrid, Spain. We returned to "Philly" that same year, then returned to Tacoma in 1960.
That all being explained I can start with my USAF challenge coins.
The first is for being in the CAP.
Civil Air Patrol's motto is:
Semper Vigilans
The second is from that incentive flight as a CAP cadet in an auxiliary of the USAF. Between the air show I was at once at McChord as a kid, my uncle retiring as a civilian there. His family as my mom's sister's husband and my cousin, and my mom's mom, Granma lived a few houses from one another, just down the road from the runway at McChord I used to play on the roadside in front of my Grandmother's house and I would watch the jets take off down the road.
So I'm claiming this coin for McChord AFB - Military Airlift Command (MAC) even though I was a CAP Cadet, a kid in 8th grade. But one who did some very adult things in search and rescue and 1st responder training for locating downed small civilian aircraft:
I entered the USAF as Law Enforcement, Vietnam Era, delayed enlistment, waiting 9 months for my slot to open for basic training. At the AFEES station in Seattle, Washington I had to take an oath with a bunch of other inductees:
During that training, I was canceled due to having flat feet and changed to parachute rigger as I'd been skydiving before the military.
Training was at Lackland AFB/BMTS in San Antonio, Texas:
This is really interesting. Thanks for taking the time to share. ~Frost
ReplyDeleteSure, thanks!
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