U.S. Service Flag - One Blue Star, WWI.
This small red and white wool flag is a U.S. Service Flag used to indicate family members who are serving in the US Armed Forces. This example indicates that a family member was serving in the United States military during WWI. Service Flags were and still are an official flag of the US Government, whose use and display, although widespread and largely arbitrary, were actually controlled by the Secretary of the Army (now the Secretary of Defense), who was tasked with overseeing their design, construction and manufacture.
Service Flags like this one were generally used to bolster morale on the home front. They were finished with a heading and grommets for outdoor display on poles or suspension from fixed lines. If a member of the family was killed, the star that was representative of the loved one would be changed to gold.
Introduced in WWI, these flags have never completely gone out of style and could be widely seen during WWII. They were also used to a lesser degree during the Korean War. The unpopularity of the War in Vietnam saw the nadir of the use of this kind of flag. The tradition has since been revived during the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, the Global War on Terror and more recently, the Overseas Contingency Operation.
Provenance: Acquired by purchase at an Internet Auction.
ZFC Collectible Flag
Sources:
Service flag, Wikipedia, 30 April 2012, from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_flag
Service Flag (U.S.), Flags of the World, 30 April 2012, from: http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us%5Esvc.html
War on Terror, Wikipedia, 30 April 2012, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror
Image Credits:
Zaricor Flag Collection
