JAMES  PATRICK  "J.P."  BLECKSMITH RATE/RANK 2LT SERVICE BRANCH USMC 6/2003 - 11/2004 SPECIALITY 0302 INFANTRY OFFICER BORN 09/26/1980 PASADENA, CA 2ND LT. JAMES PATRICK "JP" BLECKSMITH, USMC. DIED ON NOVEMBER 11, 2004. KIA/OIF SIGNIFICANT DUTY STATIONS USNA CLASS OF 2003 26TH COMPANY TBS (BASIC SCHOOL), QUANTICO, VA INFANTRY OFFICER COURSE 3RD BATTALTION, 5TH MARINE REGIMENT, 3RD PLATOON INDIA COMPANY OPERATION PHANTOM FURY OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM II SIGNIFICANT AWARDS BRONZE STAR NAVY  PURPLE HEART MARINE CORPS  COMBAT ACTION RIBBON MARINE CORPS  NATIONAL DEFENSE SERVICE MEDAL MARINE CORPS  IRAQ CAMPAIGN MEDAL MARINE CORPS  GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM SERVICE MEDAL MARINE CORPS  SEA SERVICE DEPLOYMENT RIBBON NAVY  MARINE RIFLE MARKSMANSHIP BADGE MARINE CORPS  MARINE PISTOL SHARPSHOOTER BADGE MARINE CORPS 

Picked up out of a random lot of WWII patches. Wish I knew where the eagle was.

1.5" Long with a 1/8" Center Stripe. Belonged to Ltjg. Edgar Hammond.

Thank you, I got very lucky!

Beautiful ribbon. Looks like it is 1 1/2" long like the medal ribbon. Width about 3/4". Trying to scale the picture based on a 1/8" center stripe.   Thank you for showing it.

Marine 2nd Lt. James P. Blecksmith, 24, San Marino; Killed by Sniper By Wendy Thermos Nov. 28, 2004 12 AM PT   TIMES STAFF WRITER James P. Blecksmith was only 24 when he died. But by age 16, he already was displaying the quiet altruism that made him a natural as a Marine Corps officer, family members said. “He led by example. He lived his life the way he talked about his life,” his sister, Christina, 27, said at the family home in San Marino. The second lieutenant, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was killed by sniper fire Nov. 11 in Fallouja, Iraq. ADVERTISEMENT Blecksmith, who went by the nickname J.P., was a gifted athlete at Flintridge Preparatory School, family members said. His brother, Alex, 25, recalled being on the same track team when he was a senior and J.P. was a sophomore. “During league prelims, I failed to qualify and he did. I was really upset with my poor showing,” his brother said. “He told my dad he would give up his spot in the league relay so I could run for him.” As it happened, another relay spot opened up and both boys got to run. From that race, J.P. went on to become league champion in the 400-meter relay. “He was 16 years old, and it was not about his ego or his glory,” his brother said. “It just shocked me that he was willing to give up his place. That was the first time I realized he was not just my brother, he was my best friend.” Blecksmith’s sister said such humility epitomized his personality. “It’s the way J.P. was,” she said. “He was a leader. He fought alongside his Marines. He didn’t expect them to do anything he wouldn’t do.” The Department of Defense told the family that Blecksmith, a platoon leader, was clearing houses of possible insurgents when he was killed. The events were still being pieced together, his sister said, but two of Blecksmith’s men reportedly were wounded and, after getting them to safety, he was shot while rechecking the house. ADVERTISEMENT “He was on the roof -- apparently they start with the roof and work their way down,” his sister said. “He was shot in the shoulder. The bullet missed his flak jacket but a bone fragment pierced his heart. He died instantly.” Friendly and outgoing, Blecksmith was known as a “big man on campus” in high school, said his brother, who estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 people attended the Marine’s funeral Nov. 20. Blecksmith loved to travel. He took spring break trips with schoolmates to Italy, Spain and Greece. One year, he went to Costa Rica to help build a school and do other community projects. Blecksmith was heavily recruited by Pac-10 schools because of his talent as a football quarterback, family members said. But his heart was set on going to the Naval Academy and becoming a Marine, like his father. “We have a long line of Marines in our family, and it embodied what he believed,” his sister said. At the academy in Annapolis, Md., he played wide receiver on the football team before graduating as a commissioned officer in 2003. Blecksmith left for Iraq on Sept. 10 as a member of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton. “He wanted to be in Iraq. He had a job to do, and he was doing it 100%,” his sister said. He called home, wrote letters or e-mailed the family at least once a week. His last conversation with his sister and other family members took place a few days before his death. “He was definitely kind of reflective,” his sister said. “He was worried about his men. He always said he just wanted to be the best leader for his men, and he wanted them to do a good job. He wanted his men to come home safely. And now they will come home safely.” In addition to his brother and sister, Blecksmith is survived by his parents, Edward and Pamela. He was buried at San Gabriel Cemetery. ARCHIVES           Not long ago, Ed Blecksmith found himself — physically and emotionally — in a sprawling cemetery, though not the one just past San Marino’s city limits where his youngest son and first wife rest. On a French bluff overlooking hallowed Omaha Beach, Blecksmith stood among the graves of Allied soldiers killed during World War II’s invasion of Normandy. Weeks later, and without hesitation, the Vietnam War veteran and ex-Marine can tell you how many crosses and Stars of David are in the Normandy American Cemetery: 9,437. Above: 2nd Lt. J.P. Blecksmith (center) commands his platoon in Iraq. At right: just a few of the 9,437 grave markers at the Normandy American cemetery. Get the number right, Ed implores, because each soldier’s D-Day sacrifice should be counted individually. Each one of them matters to someone. Scanning the 9,437 grave sites, Blecksmith thought, I know how each of your families felt. In the 10 years that passed since his youngest child, J.P., was killed in action by a sniper in Fallujah, Iraq, Ed has tried everything to keep his son’s memory alive: granted interviews to documentary filmmakers and cable news networks, shepherded a foundation in J.P.’s name, and spoken with psychic mediums in an attempt to channel messages to his son. But legacies are built on more than sharing messages; they’re strengthened on receiving them, too. When Ed placed a rose on the cemetery’s statue depicting a soldier ascending to heaven, the father wept for his son, and for those J.P. left behind when he died 10 years ago Tuesday — on Veterans Day. “The unsung victims are the families of the fallen,” Ed said. “It’s a burden you bear for your entire life. You’re never the same. … A piece of your heart is gone forever.” To understand a decade of pain for Ed and others who loved J.P., you have to go back to where they lost him: on a dirty rooftop in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq in 2004. It’s where Marine Corps 2nd Lt. James P. Blecksmith stood before he fell, directing the India Company of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, to clear the district’s buildings of insurgents. The Flintridge Prep and Naval Academy graduate never saw the shooter who killed him. As a bullet entered his left shoulder and ricocheted through his heart, J.P. reportedly said, “I’m hit,” before falling to his knees. By the time help arrived moments later, one of San Marino’s favorite sons was gone at age 24. In the months and weeks leading up to J.P.’s death, his parents and two siblings admitted harboring dark beliefs that he would never come home. The sense of angst overwhelmed J.P.’s parents, Ed and Pam, and his older siblings, Christina and Alex. “When I’d drive home from work, I’d dread coming around the corner and seeing a [military] car parked there,” said Ed. On Nov. 11, 2004, following a Marine Corps dinner party, Ed breathed a sigh of relief when he found no strange car parked in front of his home. But inside, Blecksmith found a teary-eyed Pam speaking with a Marine Corps captain and war officer. The military men delivering the tragic news had parked their vehicle a few houses up the street. J.P. Blecksmith in his dress blues. (Photo courtesy Blecksmith family) An estimated 2,000 mourners crowded into San Gabriel’s Church of Our Saviour and surrounding buildings for a hero’s funeral nine days later. By the end of a four-hour-long receiving line, wet makeup from grieving embracers caked the shoulder of Alex’s suit jacket. In the days leading up to and following J.P.’s burial at San Gabriel Cemetery, the Blecksmiths hosted hundreds of San Marino well-wishers, who arrived with meals, beer and memories. But when the visitations slowed, the Blecksmith family struggled to cope with a new sense of normalcy. In December, Ed and Pam were invited to San Francisco as the guests of honor for the Emerald Bowl college football game, featuring J.P.’s alma mater, the Naval Academy. Before the game, Pam said to Ed, “I don’t know if I can go on living without J.P.” Ed reassured her, but two months later, doctors diagnosed Pam with stage 4 colon cancer. Within three years, Pam was gone, too, and the family laid her to rest next to J.P. Around his hometown, the name is unavoidable. Thanks to the J.P. Blecksmith Leadership Foundation, the soldier’s name is on a plaque in Lacy Park, a banner for the July 4 charitable 5K run, a Marine Corps building in Pasadena, a graduate program for veterans at USC and a scholarship at Flintridge Prep. However, a legacy isn’t about what’s to come, but what’s been left behind for others. The memories of the manner in which J.P. lived — full-throttle, seeking adventure and honor — have changed his older brother and sister after his death. Alex, 35, who grew up as the cautious and careful Blecksmith boy, hiked the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim last April and aims to scale Mexico’s tallest mountain in February. Christina McGovern, now a mother of three, began running long distances to have quiet time to think about — and talk to — J.P. The training culminated in an emotional Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., in 2005, where the only thing tougher than making it to the finish line was finding the finish line, as tears filled her eyes. “When I run, I run for him, because he can’t anymore,” said Christina, who said she doesn’t mind if onlookers think she’s batty when she’s talking to J.P. as she runs alone. “Every time I wanted to quit, I knew he was there.” Ed, now 71, won’t be climbing mountains or running marathons to honor a son who he said would have become a Marine Corps general or CEO of a big corporation. Instead, the father tried to learn from his own mistakes through the lesson of losing J.P. In Vietnam in the fall of 1967, Ed lost 14 men in combat as a second lieutenant, and said he was callous in reporting the deaths to the soldiers’ families. “I had no idea what the families back home were going through,” said Ed, who has remarried and lives in Utah with his wife, Jane. “When J.P. was killed, I talked to two families of Marines I had lost and apologized for not making a greater effort to communicate back in the 1960s.” When Ed needed more than memories — such as that of the young, military-minded J.P. dressing in his father’s fatigues and combat boots and digging a foxhole in an abandoned lot — he looked further for a connection to J.P. He found symmetry between J.P. and legendary Gen. George Patton: Both were San Marino natives who were baptized at Church of Our Saviour, and J.P. was killed on Patton’s birthday. More recently, Ed has reported feeling his son’s presence in his home on more than one occasion and sought out a psychic medium to communicate with him, which he said helps the grieving process. “I don’t run around with a foil hat on my head, but the bottom line is that I miss him terribly. I don’t want to get mystical, but I think he’s my guardian angel now,” said Ed, who thinks of J.P. when he reads his favorite poem, A.E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young.” “He’s frozen in time. He’ll never get old. He’ll never fail.” Beyond the Blecksmiths, the memory of J.P. is perpetuated by his best friends. His senior photo is on Peter Twist’s refrigerator in Philadelphia, and Twist still owns letters the pals traded back and forth when the Blecksmith family moved to Seattle for five years in the late 1980s. J.P. died on Twist’s 24th birthday, and Twist said his annual birthday calls from old friends eventually turn into J.P. story swaps. Those stories also get shared at a local annual Christmas party, according to friend Robert McKinley, who invites the Blecksmith clan to his family’s holiday party each year. Another high school buddy, Ross Fippinger, said J.P.’s tale has value for the next generation. “Young people need to know the story about J.P. so they can take a step back and realize how good they have it because of the sacrifices men and women like J.P. have made for our country,” Fippinger said. “J.P. brings a special bond to the San Marino community. We all have a piece of him and are proud we came from the same place as him.” And, far from San Marino, in airports all over the nation, close friend and frequent traveler Alex Christian approaches uniformed military members to thank them and pray for them. “I think deep down it made me feel like I was somehow talking to J.P. through all of them, which I know may sound silly to some, but in some ways it helped give me closure,” said the Dallas resident, a new father who lamented that his child wouldn’t know J.P. The soldier’s sister, Christina, knows the feeling. She’s moving on — she doesn’t leave an extra place setting at the table for him like some might, she said — but Christina is still disheartened that her daughters won’t meet her hero. “My brother is part of me, part of me they’ll never know, and I want my daughters to know that they had this amazing uncle,” said Christina. “When I think about how I want my girls to grow up, I want them to have his drive and passion for life, and to have the courage to stand up for what they believe in. “For me, that is his legacy: something I feel like I need to teach my children.” Alex Blecksmith said his younger brother committed to two things: country and fun. Standing 6 feet, 4 inches and weighing 230 pounds, J.P. owned the chiseled physique and a megawatt grin tailor-made for a casting agent looking for an American hero for a Hollywood film. He played the part, too: According to Ed, the former high school star quarterback selflessly switched to wide receiver at Navy without complaint, and never received a demerit in Annapolis. Alex Blecksmith, who lives in Pasadena, said all the good things about J.P. have been crystalized in his mind. Unfortunately, the current state of Iraq is also clear to the Blecksmith family, which reopened their emotional wounds before they had healed. Following J.P.’s death, the family always sought comfort knowing his sacrifice occurred during an initially successful — if divisive — military engagement in western Iraq. Any semblance of that justification is gone today. When Islamic State of Iraq militants took back Fallujah, Christina began to wonder if her brother had died in vain, and Ed and Alex’s blood boiled during telephone calls with each other. “It was a punch to the gut,” Alex said. “You see news reports that ISIS is marching all over Iraq … but when they take back the city where J.P. was killed, you think, ‘What was the point?’” The retaking of Fallujah wouldn’t be the final time the family was confronted with heartache related to J.P.’s loss: In June, Flintridge Prep alum Scott Studenmund — who called J.P. his inspiration to join the armed forces — was killed in action in Afghanistan. Two months later, Ed sat with Studenmund’s mother, Jaynie, and tried to support her in the way people in San Marino had comforted him a decade ago. Ten years after his son’s death, Ed Blecksmith visited the Normandy American Cemetery, the final resting spot for fallen soldiers from the D-Day engagement. But his mind was far from World War II when he placed a rose on the Statue of the Soldier Ascending to Heaven (pictured at right). Despite it all, the meaning of a military sacrifice like J.P.’s extends beyond the overseas operation. One example: a West Point grad is walking from Seattle to Baltimore for the Dec. 13 Army-Navy football game, dedicating each kilometer to a different fallen soldier. The final two kilometers will honor former Army quarterback Chase Prasnicki and Navy wide receiver J.P. Blecksmith. More than 2,300 miles away from his hometown, the march into M&T Bank Stadium next month is yet another reminder of a man who won’t be forgotten. “His legacy isn’t just that he was killed making the ultimate sacrifice,” said Christina. “It was everything he did in the 24 years before he deployed…and talking about him keeps him alive.” Originally published for the San Marino Outlook Newspaper on Nov. 6, 2014. Charlie Peters can be contacted on Twitter or by email at [email protected]. Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.       From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia James Patrick Blecksmith Nickname(s)J. P. BornSeptember 26, 1980 Pasadena, California DiedNovember 11, 2004 (aged 24) Fallujah, Iraq AllegianceUnited States of America Service/branchUnited States Marine Corps Years of serviceApril 2003 – November 2004 Rank2nd Lieutenant Unit3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division Battles/warsIraq War *Operation Phantom Fury *Operation Iraqi Freedom II AwardsBronze Star Purple Heart James Patrick Blecksmith (September 26, 1980 – November 11, 2004) was an American military officer who was the first officer killed in Operation Phantom Fury during Operation Iraqi Freedom II. Biography[edit] Blecksmith was born in Pasadena, California, September 26, 1980. He attended Valentine School, in San Marino, through 2nd grade, before his family moved to Seattle, Washington in 1989. After two years, the family returned to Southern California and Blecksmith enrolled at the Flintridge Preparatory School where he graduated in 1999. Upon graduation from high school, Blecksmith entered the United States Naval Academy in June 1999.[1] Blecksmith's father, Edward, had served in the Marines in Vietnam.[2] United States Naval Academy[edit] Although heavily recruited, Blecksmith saw limited action on the field for the Naval Academy. He matched the prototype of the 21st-century quarterback, 6-3, 216 with a rocket arm; but Navy ran a triple option offense, where the quarterback was more of a runner than a passer.[2] As a back-up quarterback, he completed 3 of his 4 passes, returned 2 kickoffs and caught a pass as a wide receiver during the Army–Navy Game in 2001.[3] Military career[edit] After graduating from the Naval Academy in May 2003, Blecksmith accepted a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. Death[edit] On March 31, 2004, Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah ambushed a convoy containing four American private military contractors from Blackwater USA, who were conducting delivery for food caterers ESS.[4] The contractors were dragged from their cars, beaten, and set on fire. Their burned corpses were then dragged through the streets before being hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates.[5] Photographs of the event were released to news agencies worldwide, causing outrage in the United States, and prompting the announcement of a campaign to reestablish American control over the city.[6] This led to an unsuccessful US operation to recapture control of the city in Operation Vigilant Resolve, and then a successful recapture operation in the city in November 2004, called Operation Phantom Fury in English and Operation Al Fajr in Arabic. Blecksmith's India Company was the first to enter the city and start the house-to-house search operation in the Jolan District. On November 11, Blecksmith died from small arms fire while leading the third platoon in the clearing of these buildings. The bullet entered his left shoulder and was deflected down to his heart. Operation Phantom Fury resulted in the reputed death of over 1,350 insurgent fighters. Approximately 95 American Marines were killed, and more than 1,000 were wounded. Legacy[edit]     On Veterans Day, November 11, 2006, two years to the day after Blecksmith's family heard he'd been killed in action in Iraq, the Marines renamed Pasadena's Marine Corps Reserve Center in his memory.[7] The San Marino Tribune announced that proceeds from their annual 5K Run & Walk, scheduled for Monday, July 4, will benefit the J.P. Blecksmith Leadership Foundation at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada.[8] On April 20, 2005 James Patrick Blecksmith was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for his courage and bravery.[9] In a season 4 episode of NCIS, actor Mark Harmon wears a J.P. Blecksmith memorial t-shirt in the episode "In The Dark." In the September 29, 2009 episode of NCIS "Reunion", Mark Harmon (Gibbs) wears a J.P. Blecksmith memorial t-shirt in an early scene. References

Here's the WW2 AF 533rd Bombardment Squadron on leather I just did for a veteran's relative, enjoy :) 

I have seen this Top Bar used on Boston American Legion Convention Medals from around 1939 - The keyhole that I have seen on YD Association Convention Medals was for a lapel button to be attached and worn after the convention.   Bill

Dave, if you ever get the ID to this one, please let me know what it is too, thanks :)  Johnny 

Correct me if I am wrong but he is not wearing any wings in the picture either. Seems odd to me.