The Air Force Base Honor Guard Badge

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The Base Honor Guard (BHG) Badge, known as the “Cookie” is a device that only Active Duty, Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard Airmen wear when they are assigned to a BHG. Not even retirees can wear it unless they are actively working with a BHG.

I went through two weeks of honor guard training many years ago (1990) when I was stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, AZ. I then spent about fourteen of my twenty years of Active Duty on several BHGs around the globe and even attended Air Force Honor Guard training in Washington DC in 2002. I had to meet certain criteria for award of my BHG Cookie as all Airmen have to. In a personal way, the Cookie is “my” badge and all Airmen who have gone through the training and qualified can call it “my badge” as well.

BHG PictureThe picture at right is of a Spangdahlem Air Base (Germany) Honor Guard presenting the colors at St. Mihiel WWI American Military Cemetery in France in 2010, five years after I retired. I am the NCT and my friends and colleagues are with me. We are all wearing our uniform accouterments (which color bearers no longer wear) including our Cookies. You can see them on our left breast pockets of our blouses. I actually trained the two guards and knew they were qualified to wear their BHG Cookies.

What does BHG training entail so that a graduate of the training is then awarded and authorized to wear the Cookie? The training last at least 40 hours and consists of:

  1. What we call Standing Manual
  2. Colors
  3. Firing party
  4. Pall Bearers (including 2- and 6-man* Flag Fold) *”man” means position.

There are also small bases in the Air Force, mostly overseas, that are not authorized a BHG, but have what is called a Base Color Guard that is aligned under a BHG (the Spangdahlem BHG has at least one BCC at a location in Belgium). A BCC, is a small unit that is not authorized to wear the complete BHG uniform, but a variation of the standard AF uniform with the BHG aiguillette and Cookie. Any Airman assigned to either of these two units, who has gone through the training and qualified, may then wear the BHG Cookie on their BHG or BCC uniform. When they are assigned to the BHG, but not on rotation and are in blues, they may also wear the Cookie. When not assigned to a BHG, an Airman may not wear the Cookie- which is why I do not wear mine.

JROTC cadets wearing BHG CookieWhat is quite troubling to me is seeing Air Force Junior ROTC cadets wearing “my” badge. This is absolutely inexcusable with some equating it to Stolen Valor. I don’t know if I would go that far, but I have a very stern opinion about the wear of my badge by high school cadets.

Click here to see that I have dealt with this before and the picture at left, above, is what started it. The team finally realized after much discussion back and forth that they had absolutely no authority whatsoever to wear the Cookie.

Cadet BHG Cookie - CopyThe cadet at right chose to block another cadet on Instagram who was trying to communicate to her that the Cookie that she has on her uniform is not authorized for cadets to wear. Many cadets, possibly out of arrogance, do not want to listen to anyone who says that what they are doing could possibly be wrong.

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