Service Flag Graphics

2009-10-11 My brother has served three deployments in Iraq since this whole thing kicked off- twice for a year each, and the last time for fifteen months. Thankfully he was never injured, although as a crew chief for a Medevac company, he saw more than his fair share of injured people- both US and allied military personnel, and Iraqi locals who happened to be injured, usually by the same IEDs which had been planted to try and kill our guys.

He's currently at home, here in the USA. Shortly after changing units, he was driving down a highway, and an IDIOT who was talking on her cell phone instead of watching the road, made a left turn across the highway without looking. He didn't have time to react, and even though he had slammed on the brakes, he ended up colliding with her. The other driver was at fault, and her insurance has already given him a check to replace his truck (which was totalled.) However, it messed up his back and left him permanently off flight status- which means he's no longer able to fly missions with the aircraft he maintains.

It's rather ironic how one IDIOT talking on a cell phone while driving is more dangerous than three years in the middle of an active war zone...

I have prepared the following graphic images of Service Flags. Anyone is free to use them on any web site or other publication to show their pride in family members who are in the military service.

The tradition of flying the Service Flag started informally back in World War I, and was later formalized during World War II. The flags were, unfortunately, not popular during the Vietnam War, but a lot of people started showing them again during Desert Storm.

www.serviceflags.com sells the actual flags which you can hang in your front window, and they have more information about the history of the flags.

Each star on the flag represents a service member. A Blue Star represents a soldier, sailor, or airman who is currently in the service. A Gold Star is placed over the blue star in the event that the service member dies in the service. For flags with multiple stars, any Gold Stars must be placed above any Blue Stars.

The files are here for anybody who wants to use them. All I ask is that you not link to the images on my server- please download the images you need (they're small, the largest is less than 10K) and host them on the server where you have your web pages. For copyright purposes, these flag images are explicitly placed in the public domain.

The images are available in two sizes. The large ones are 576x1089 pixels, and the small ones are 80x151 pixels (which you see on this web page.) All images are PNG files with 24-bit color.

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576x1089 80x151	576x1089 80x151	576x1089 80x151	576x1089 80x151	576x1089 80x151	576x1089 80x151

You may also download ZIP archives of all large images, all small images, or all of the images.