Blog Post #12

                After looking through many pictures on various databases, it made me wonder what all the symbols and badges on the Pershing Rifles uniforms stood for so I decided to do my final research blog over the various insignia of the Pershing Rifles.  First off, the official colors of the Pershing Rifles are blue and white.  These two colors have great significance and each stand for different characters.  The color blue stands for loyalty, devotion, friendship, and truth to the Pershing Rifles while the color white stands for purity, cleanliness of life and rectitude of conduct.  Moving on to the insignia on the uniforms; depending on your ranking you will have different symbols on your uniform.  The first insignia is called “The Crest” or the “Coat of Arms.”  This pin consists of a shield, rifle and torch.   I have attached a picture to the bottom of this post so that you can see what this symbol looks like.  This is the official “logo” of the Pershing Rifles.  The next insignia is “The Rank Shields,” it is simply a blue shield with crossed rifles with the letters P and R on the sides.  The officers in the Pershing rifles get to wear these.  The rank of the officer can be found about the crossed rifles.  All members of the Pershing Rifles also get “The Membership Shoulder Cord.”  This is a very prestigious cord because of how difficult it is to get into this organization.  The cord symbolizes honor, and is also worn on the left shoulder.  These cords were worn from the very beginning when the first company of the Pershing Rifles was created at the University of Nebraska.  The cord was blue and white until the 1950s, then it changed to purple in white.  There is no evidence on this change of colors but experts do believe that in World War II there was a short in blue dye so they changed it to purple.  The last insignia I will go over in this post is “The Membership Ribbon.”  This also is worn by all active members of the organization.  This ribbon means that the member will display good conduct at all times. There are six stripes on this ribbon, each stripe standing for something different.  They stand for: devotion, true heart, readiness, leadership, proficiency, and scholarship.  I thought that finding this information would be very helpful in the rest of my research project.

Work Cited 

“P/R Symbolism.” Pershing Rifle History. 2014. Web. 16 October 2014.

Pershing Rifles @MIT: C12 (ABN).  History of the Nationals P/R.  Digital Archive.  16 October 2014.