{"id":16371,"date":"2020-08-06T07:09:22","date_gmt":"2020-08-06T12:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2020\/08\/06\/century-old-challenge-coin-the-american-legions-1927-paris-convention\/"},"modified":"2021-10-04T07:09:41","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T12:09:41","slug":"century-old-challenge-coin-the-american-legions-1927-paris-convention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2020\/08\/06\/century-old-challenge-coin-the-american-legions-1927-paris-convention\/","title":{"rendered":"Century-Old Challenge Coin: The American Legion&#8217;s 1927 Paris Convention"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"youtubomatic-video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zRuet-Cv6ec?controls=1\" width=\"580\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons\/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons\/home<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! <a href=\"http:\/\/shop.bbtv.com\/collections\/forgotten-weapons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/shop.bbtv.com\/collections\/forgotten-weapons<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The American Legion was founded in 1919 as a veterans service organization for soldiers who served in World War One, and they chose the 10th anniversary of America&#8217;s entrance into the war to make a mass pilgrimage back to France. Calling themselves the Second American Expeditionary Force, some 20,000 Legionnaires traveled to Paris in September 1927 for the Legion&#8217;s 8th annual conference. Far more than just formal organization business, it was a chance for veterans to see the battlefields again, meet with their French counterparts, and generally have a really good time. The event was coordinated years in advance, and one small element of it was the minting of commemorative medallions &#8211; aka challenge coins. This example was sent to me by a viewer, who got it from the widow of an American WWI veteran who attended the event.<\/p>\n<p>The American Legion has two very cool pieces or history relating to the 1927 Convention in their digital archive. One is a compilation of 16mm film taken of the event, including festivities on Coney Island prior to embarkation and footage of the transit over. You can see that here:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/dMhc7Xfu-iQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/dMhc7Xfu-iQ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>They have also digitized the original program for the event, which includes a lot of information about the battlefield tourism available and general advice for Americans overseas. You can download it (26MB PDF) here:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.legion.org\/handle\/20.500.12203\/4872\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/archive.legion.org\/handle\/20.500.12203\/4872<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Contact:<br \/>\nForgotten Weapons<br \/>\n6281 N. Oracle #36270<br \/>\nTucson, AZ 85740<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons https:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons\/home Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http:\/\/shop.bbtv.com\/collections\/forgotten-weapons The American Legion was founded in 1919 as a veterans service organization for soldiers who served in World War One, and they chose the 10th anniversary of America&#8217;s entrance into the war to make a mass pilgrimage back to France. Calling themselves the Second American Expeditionary Force, some&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2020\/08\/06\/century-old-challenge-coin-the-american-legions-1927-paris-convention\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Century-Old Challenge Coin: The American Legion&#8217;s 1927 Paris Convention<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":16372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[89,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16408,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16371\/revisions\/16408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}