Cold War Veteran Patch 1945-1991

The two dates stitched along the bottom of this patch, September 2, 1945 and December 26, 1991, are the same span the Department of Defense uses for the Cold War Recognition Certificate. Congress authorized that certificate in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998, and it is presented by the Secretary of Defense, with the Army running the program as executive agent. The first date is the day Japan signed the instrument of surrender aboard USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay. The second is the day the Soviet Union formally ceased to exist. Forty-six years of standing watch fit between those two lines of thread.

The standoff took shape over Berlin, where the Soviet blockade of June 1948 to May 1949 was answered by the Western airlift that kept the city's western sectors supplied from the air. On August 13, 1961, East Germany strung the first barbed wire across the city, and the Berlin Wall stood for the next 28 years. In 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis brought Washington and Moscow to the edge of nuclear war. Through all of it the duty went on in places most Americans never saw: missile fields, radar sites, submarine patrols and the long border that split Germany. The Wall came down in November 1989, and a little over two years later the Soviet Union was gone.

The patch is round, 4 inches across, with a red merrowed border around a black outer ring. COLD WAR VETERAN arches across the top in white block letters, and the dates run around the bottom. In the center a bald eagle and a brown bear face off beak to fangs against a light blue sky, the old shorthand for the United States and Russia. Below them the field splits down the middle, the Stars and Stripes on the left and the red Soviet flag with its gold hammer, sickle and star on the right. A white rifle stands on each side of the ring, an M16-style rifle with its carry handle on the American side and a rifle with the curved magazine of an AK-47 on the Soviet side.

For most of those years there was no front line to point at, and success was measured by the war that never started. Readiness was the job, and it was done the same way day after day by alert crews, watch standers, maintainers and analysts so the other side never saw an opening. Many who served in the period also went to Korea and Vietnam, the hot edges of the same long contest. Congress created the recognition certificate because that kind of service deserved its own acknowledgment. This patch puts the same dates on something you can hold.

Put it on the jacket you wear to reunions, or in a shadow box next to your recognition certificate, your dog tags and a photo from Germany, a missile site or a ship. It also makes a good gift for a father or grandfather who did his years on the line and seldom talks about them. The backing is iron-on, and it can be sewn on for a permanent hold. The dates say the rest.