Unofficial badges of the United States military

The term may still be used, however, to denote badges that were proposed for creation but never actually distributed as well as the badges that individuals continue to place in personal award displays, wear on civilian clothing, or occasionally wear on their uniform at the risk of reprimand.

In some cases, these were made by simply pinning a piece of branch insignia on top of a CIB and repainting the blue field in the appropriate branch color, but others involved making a badge and replacing the rifle of the CIB with crossed cannons (on a red background), a tank (on a green background, which is not the Armor color of yellow, but was during World War Two) or crossed sabers (on a yellow background).

Occasionally, if a unit commander saw fit to allow the badges for wear, soldiers may have worn them on their dress uniforms for special events, reviews, inspections, or dinners.

The CRR would therefore provide an official award that fulfilled the role of the unofficial branch-specific badges.

The CCB would recognize specific armor, cavalry, field artillery and combat engineer soldiers who served in units purposefully reorganized to routinely conduct infantry-unique close combat missions and were personally present and under fire while conducting those types of missions.

Recorded instances of the unofficial combat badges actually being worn are rare, but the following comes from the memoir of a Korean War veteran: At one meal in the mess hall, a young fellow was eating at the same table as I.

The medal looked similar to a Combat Infantryman Badge, the difference being that the background was red and the weapon an artillery gun barrel.