By now, a lot of people have heard of Air Force challenge coins.  If you have not you will soon as both the Air Force coin and the Army challenge coins are going through an explosive growth.  Part of this is, of course, because of the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan but also because the tradition has been growing in the US military for almost 100 years.  The irony is that the Air Force challenge coins came bout around 30+ years before there was an Air Force.

The whole start of the Air Force coins started back in WWI.  At that time many of the sons of wealthy industrialist left college to serve their country by being fly boys.  These Harvard and Yale drop outs were like the astronauts of their time.

One of these young men, attached to the 48th Intelligence squadron, had coins stamped for all the boys in his unit.  As for his, he carried it around in a little leather sachet around his neck.  At the time he had no way of knowing how lucky that would turn out to be.  As luck would have it, our young fly boy was shot down and captured.  He was soon picked up by Germans and sent to a POW camp.  There he was striped of almost everything, including his papers.  He did, luckily, get to keep his sachet.

In due time he managed to escape and proceeded to the western lines.  After a harrowing crossing of the dreaded no-man’s-land, he was picked up by a French patrol who though that this young man with no papers was a spy and sent him to be executed.  What saved his life was he was able to provide the coin of the 48th and that saved his life.

That event started the tradition of the Air Force challenge coin.  Not only are the made for the Air Force but there are Army challenge coins as well, each representing a unit.  There are now 100’s of units with them and they are collectibles.  One collector in the DC area has over 300 on display.  These little tokens have not only grown important to the troops but serve as little reminders to the families they have had to leave behind.