An eBay seller out of Malaysia has surface with some red and white and khaki and red strips that are modern, over-seas manufacture. Here’s one:

That he titled “IMPERIAL YUMA COUNCIL STRIP RARE”. Its a buyer beware world on eBay. I still liken it to the wild, wild west. Ebay has limited ability to police this so know your seller!!!!

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Got a question in that comes up from time to time. Is the patch in the following picture a red and white council strip?

The answer in this specific case is no. Here’s why. The convention is that if the city exists and the strip does not say “Council” or some variation then it is a community strip. There was a Kit Carson Council headquartered in Albuquerque, NM that changed to Great Southwest Area in 1976. But there are also two “Kit Carson” cities in the U.S.. One is in Colorado and one is in California.

As with any rule, there are a few exceptions but it is hard to think of them. For a long time, the “GREENWICH” half strip has been associated with Greenwich Council and probably is from there but there are other Greenwich cities so it really should be considered a community strip. The “BOSTON” half strip is considered to be a council strip as there is not another Boston other than in Masachusetts.

P.S. Thanks to Roger Schustereit for bringing this to my attention.

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A red and white air base strip surfaced that I was not familiar with from Morocco. It was the youth military base strip for the person selling it so I asked him if he could share his remembrances from Scouting in Transatlantic Council in the 1950s.

Here’s what he had to say:

Roy,

My dad served in the US Navy in WWII, but he went to Morocco in 1951 as a civilian working for the contractors building the air bases.  In 1953 when the bases were completed, he went to work for the Air Force as a DOD civilian.

My first experience in scouting was as a French cub scout.  We lived in Marrakech at the time, and did not have access to the American scout program at the air base which was about twenty miles away.

I was a French cub scout from 1952 to 1953.  In joined the Boy Scouts of America in 1956 when we moved on-base (Nouasseur AFB).  Prior to that we lived on the local economy as we were not entitled to on-base housing as civilians.  That changed in 1956 due to increasing violence between the French and Moroccans (sounds familiar, doesn’t it).  Shortly thereafter, France, which had governed Morocco as a protectorate since 1912, granted it independance.

Then we moved to another air base where we had on-base housing.  I was a member of Troop 182, Nouasseur AFB, Morocco, from 1956 to 1959.  I think there were five US Boy Scout troops in Morocco, at four Air Force Bases and a Navy Base.  We had a summer camporee each year at Sidi Slimane AFB, which had a large wooded area, unlike the other bases, which were pretty arid and devoid of vegetation.  Scouts from the various troops selected for OA membership were tapped out at the annual camporee at Sidi Slimane AFB and completed their ordeal that night and the following day.  Once tapped out, we were allowed to get one raw egg and two matches, and we were then taken into the woods to spend the night alone.  The next day we had service projects to complete, but were not allowed to talk.  Probably not much different than now…? (Editor’s note – it is still very similar.)

The air bases that I can remember were Ben Geurir AFB, near Marrackech; Nouasseur AFB near Casablanca; Sidi Slimane AFB at Sidi Slimane; and an USAF installation at Rabat, the capital.  There was also a US Navy base at Port Lyautey.  I don’t know if there were troop rockers for the other bases that preceded the TAC red&white CSP for Morocco.

In 1959, our family moved to Ludwigsburg, Germany, where I joined Troop 63.  I earned my Eagle rank there, and I have a Eagle certificate signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.  In Germany, we did a lot of joint activities with the German Boy Scouts, especially camping.  The German scouts were really into Indian lore.  They camped in large teepees which could accommodate a patrol size group, and did their cooking in homemade cookware over a fire in the center of the teepee.  We traded patches, knives, and belt buckles with each other.

I worked the summer of 1960 on the staff at Camp Freedom in Dautphe, Germany.  Camp Freedom was operated by the Transatlantic Council, and scouts from all over Europe, Africa, and the Middle East attended camp there for two weeks.  Part of our staff duties were to conduct the OA Brotherhood ceremonies for Ordeal members from all the troops in attendance each two week segment.  We had a lot of fun doing these ceremonies, and a lot of the German neighbors would attend.  Many Germans were big fans of anything to do with Indians.  We had Indians costumes for the ceremonies, and Camp Freedom was a great place for Order of the Arrow activities.  I have some old photographs if you are interested.  I graduated from Stuttgart American HS in 1961 and returned to the States for college, and was inactive in scouting for several years.

I worked as an assistant scoutmaster, scoutmaster, and troop committee member  in Virginia during the 70’s and early 80’s, but I haven’t been active since then, other than contributing to the local council through the United Fund.   One nice memory was receiving a letter in the late 70’s from one of the boys in a troop where I had been an assistant scoutmaster a couple years earlier, thanking me for inspiring him to earn his Eagle rank.  He is a career Secret Service agent now.

Scouting was one of the few activities we had available, especially in Morocco, and it was a major part of my life then.  I most remember sleeping under the desert skies.  With virtually no light pollution and seldom a cloud, the night skies seem to be the most brilliant I remember seeing anywhere.   Before star-gazing, we always had a rousing game of night-time capture the flag.

Ed Morris

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We recently have had several conversations started by different collectors asking where have the ‘odd-color’ state strips gone? First, the frequency of the calls, basically out of the blue, make us realize that this is a more common collecting theme than we realized. As we got into it, there is some real challenge in this area and it isn’t getting any easier.

Some background

From 1952 to 1978 Scout uniforms used either red and white council strips (RWS) to denote location or a similarly colored one-line community strip with a separate small state strip underneath. These are the ones most well known by current collectors because we remember having these as boys. From 1929 to 1952 though the same style of strips existed but they were embroidered on cloth to match the uniform. Thus there were khaki and red strips (KRS) for Boy Scouts. We do even identify a Scout version that matches the pre-WW2 tan khaki uniforms as opposed to the green khaki post-WW2. These are called tan and red strips (TRS) for those who make the distinction.

Blue and yellow strips (BYS) were used for Cub Scouts. Green and brown strips (GBS) for Explorers. There were also strips to match the two types of Sea Scout uniforms – white and blue strips (WBS, the background color is always listed first) and blue and white strips (BWS) which were often felt. The hardest and rarest of all are the blue and blue strips (BBS) for Air Scout uniforms. Just think of the inventory challenge around these? Obviously this had to be the reason for the change to a single style, RWS, in a color that did not match the uniform.

On with current conversations

Well one of the collectors we talked to was pointing out a recent acquisition that he had made. He told us that previously none of the major collections had it and was thus listed as unconfirmed. It was the KY. (Kentucky) strip in Air Scout blue. It had been in Bob Cylkowski’s collection for, I am going to say, two decades at least. It surfaced at auction and this collector won it at $700.

The second call, actually the same day, was a collector who is again trying to put a collection together for all of the states and all of the colors. This collector has been collecting for nearly forty (40) years. He said this is the third time he has worked to collect these and it has gotten significantly harder. He said you used to see these at TORs or you could write folks and find them in their dupes. Not any more.

… and current ruminations

In our office Destry and I got to talking about these different contacts and raised the question – is there any community that has all seven colors? At first we could not think of one. I have a collection from Battle Creek, Michigan that has five of the seven. They certainly could have a white and blue and a blue and blue but I have not seen them.

In checking with collector Bruce Shelley, he said that all colors exist for Baltimore so there is at least one city but he went on to say that he is not aware of anyone who has all seven. Also, there are a couple of New York borroughs that have all seven but not all of the borroughs.

All states exist in red and white and there is a red and white “T.H.” for Territory of Hawaii. There is rumored to be a ‘T.A.’ for Territory of Alaska. There is also a KRS TA but I am not sure if there is a KRS TH.

We believe that all states exist in GBS and BYS but even some of these are still unconfirmed. Recently a WYO BYS surfaced on eBay and went for a significant amount of money. In the KRS, NEV. and S.C. are a couple of the hardest as well as the territories.

Now on to the Sea Scout colors. Actually, these were used later than the others and I think went into the late 1950s and maybe even 1960s. Even so, they do not exist for all states. A major collection might have 8 to 10. An extremely advanced collection might have 15 different. Both colors are considered equally rare although I would say the white ones are slightly harder.

That leaves the Air Scout blues. These are the hardest. Having three different would be a major collection. There may be at most 15 different. These could bring, when they surface, $300 – $1,200 a piece. I have had a MICH. and sold it to a friend thinking I’d replace it and never have. Live and learn.

They are fun. There are new discoveries or ‘re-discoveries’ in this area of collecting. It can be started very easily and in expensively with the red and whites and then advance to the early, ‘odd-colors’, for continued challenge.

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Blake Keasey, author of the ISCA red and white strip column, is in town today. We got to comparing our air base collections and came up with the following results. Including non-red and white, there are a few khaki and red and blue and blue strips, we confirmed 186 strips. Blake probably has the largest collection with 160 strips. There were about a half dozen strips that are on the list of strips that neither of us could confirm. How they were reported in Art Hyman’s early work, we’re not sure. They may be out there though and that would put it up to 192. We are also still finding un-reported strips so the real total could be over 200. This is easily twice as many as all of the other military base strips.

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I’ve been collecting this area for years, sort of as a tie in to my CSPs and then later just as a stand-alone collection. Its a great area in that it is relatively limited, easy to start but has lots of challenge to finish.

For two reasons actually no one has completed the collection.

First, some of these were of extremely limited issue. A full order was a dozen patches. One could order as few as a ‘half-order’ or 6 patches. These orders got placed and were used by Council professionals or council-wide positions only. Others were used only by jamboree troops. One of the toughest was for Orange Empire’s contingent of 12 to the 1971 World Jamboree!

Second, we don’t yet know of what all exists. There are no records. The catalogers (right now lead by Dr. Blake Keasey) are reporting new finds every quarter in the ISCA journal. He and predecessors Art Hyman and Rob Kuts have been at it for years and we’re still making new discoveries. Just last month two new full size RWS were discovered: a ‘GTR CLEVELAND/C’ and ‘ALEXANDER HAMILTON/C’ with small council. That puts the known count of full-size (CSP-size) RWS at around 810 items.

Bruce Raver runs a nice web site that one should check out if you’re interested in this area. It is called RWS World.

This is a very legimate area of the hobby although 2003 this was ‘violated’ with the private issuance of some fake RWS. They are hard to tell but the lettering is off and the white thread, polyester based, has a pink tint to it due to the red base material.

Learn more and enjoy.

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