Introduction

Buchholz: I can just give you an overview of what these are and what their whole tradition is within the military. So they're called challenge coins, and there's no 100% true story of how they came to be. But the one that I was told was during World War Two, this guy got separated from its unit, and when he finally got back to his unit, they didn't believe him. They're like, there's no way you're part of our unit. You look like a German, and him and his buddies in a squad all had a similar coin. And so he's like, No, I am. And he presented the coin, and then someone was like, Smith has that coin, and it validated it, and it just kind of spread from there. And over my eight years, I've collected quite a few, and the general rule of thumb is, you do not buy them. You are presented them. If you buy them, then it loses all significance and all meeting. And so all of these, except one, I did buy one because, I can get to that story. But all of them have been presented to me. 

Brockway: You got a lot here too. That's awesome. And then what just which service were you in again?

Buchholz: I was in the Navy, navy, nice. And then in the Navy I was a corpsman, which is just fancy title for medic.

Commanding Officer Coin

Brockway: Or challenge coins, I guess. So what's like? That sounds like it's almost a game of some sort, I guess. What is you want to walk me through that?

Buchholz: Yeah, the challenge going back to presenting your coin to prove that you were, but over time, it's turned into kind of a drinking game. So with it, if you go to, like a American Legion VFW, any of those old timey veteran bars, you can get challenged. And the first rule is you have to have a coin. If you don't have a coin, you owe everyone that has a coin around. Then if everyone does have a coin, you look to see the rank on it, and then the highest rank is the one that wins. And then you just go down the list, so if you beat everyone, you don't have to worry about getting the drink. But then whoever has the lowest rank owes the round.

Operation Tomodachi Coin

Brockway: All right. So do you want to tell me about this one right here? 

Buchholz: Yeah, so that one was given to all of us that on our deployment, we were training with the Japanese they don't have a military. They have a defense force, and that's from the treaty after World War Two and yada yada yada. I don't know all the politics behind it, but yeah, they're a defense force. But we ended up training with Japanese forces, and we were on Camp Fuji, which is at the base of Mount Fuji, and it was a lot of just hike here, dig a hole, sit in it. It's been three days hike over here now, dig a hole, sit in it. And it was a two weeklong exercise that we did. And at the end, we all got back to base, and we're like, well, we have nothing else to do. We can't go out in town because one, we don't speak Japanese, and two, we don't want to leave. We're tired. But we have, we do have things on bases called the enlisted Club, which is a bar for enlisted people. And so, of course, we all got done for two weeks of training, and like, we deserve a beer. So pretty much the entire battalion, which is 1200 people ended up drinking that night. And with that many people with high testosterone level strength, there's always a mining but for us, it turned into a huge brawl, and we fought each other, which is, I think, the funniest part of this story. We fought each other. It was not a good time. We ended up causing like, $10,000 worth of damage. Lights were busted, windows were broken, fire extinguishers were ripped off the wall and it was not a fun time. And, I mean, it was a fun time, the repercussions were not worth it, but me, being part of the Medical Group, we ended up going into the clinic, and we had to staple dudes heads stitches, ice packs, the whole nine yards. Yeah, it was, it was wild. And then they got this coin from your time, and it was a fan, or, yeah, it was immediately after the two week exercise, the Japanese guys were like, super grateful, and they came out and gave us all these coins.

Top Gun Coin

Buchholz: Fallon, Nevada is the home of Top Gun. Like, that's where the actual school is, and that's where they did a lot of the filming. And, with that, this coin is from the, we call it the Goat Locker, which is in the Navy. E7s, E8s, and E9s are all Chief. We have Chief, Senior Chief, and Master Chief. And, there's a tradition that they're always been called Goats because Goats were on the ship, and they're stubborn, and all this other stuff. But, this is their association coin. And, When I was getting out of the Navy, I helped the Chiefs a lot with medical readiness, immunizations, making sure everything was good, and I worked with them a lot. And so they presented me this coin on my last day, and it's just, in my opinion, it's up there for one of my favorites, because we have the GOAT with the mask, and the Top Gun Maverick because we were there when they filmed it.

Brockway: That's so cool! Did you get to meet anyone on the set or how was it like filming there?

Buchholz: I met quite a bit of the crew the film crew because they we shared a gym with them or they just had gym access And they were all super cool. I was a week late from meeting Tom Cruise Oh, Tom Cruise went around to all the different spots on base and took pictures with people and shook hands That's so cool. And from what I heard he was a really cool guy.

South Korean Pin 

Buchholz: So, this one I was gifted to by a South Korean Marine, A ROK Marine Republic and we cross-trained with them when we were on deployment, and it was right before the Winter Olympics super cold, miserable. They were like, why are we here? And it was just misery loves company kind of situation. And so, I gave them one of my patches that I had on my uniform, and he gave me that, which goes in their berets. 

USS Carolina Coin

Buchholz: The USS North Carolina, so this is also from a Navy ball, the 241st Navy ball, and we actually hosted this on the USS North Carolina. Oh, that's cool. Because it's harbored in Wilmington, and it fought in World War ii. It's historic, it's super cool. And they allowed us to host our ball on the ship, which was super cool. I think, yeah, it was commissioned in April 1941, and then it was decommissioned in 1947. So, it's very much a floating museum at this point, but it was super cool.

Cyber Jeff Coin

Brockway: Right. Well, I guess, do you want to share that one?

Buchholz: Yeah. So the biggest joke that we have in the military across the board, they've updated it now, but it was called cybersecurity. And it was a yearly training. Every fiscal year you had to sit down and do these computer trainings. And that one specifically was cybersecurity. It was how to identify a phishing email. What do you do if someone steals your government issued phone? And the thing was, the options are just funny. There's three super wrong answers and one that you know is the right one. And for us, everyone would just click the option You go tackle and beat up the guy that stole your phone. Obviously it's wrong, but it was a joke. And this guy, Jeff, is the guy that led you through the training and he's super computerized. And it was just a joke of a time and it was something we just had to do. And so when we found these, it became our official joke coins, and we handed them out to a bunch of people. So this was me and two of my buddies. We paid too much money for these and turned it into a joke that was really expensive and just handed them to all of our buddies in our higher ups when we were in Fallon.

Marine Corps League Coin

Buchholz: So the Marine Corps League is essentially the American Legion. But specifically Marine Corps and Corpsmen, because as Corpsmen we're attached to 'em and they pretty much adopted us. And the Marine Corps League is nationwide and it helps out. Toys for Tots is ran by them and a whole bunch of other things. And the National Vice Commandant, the number two man in the entire nation, ironically enough, was my neighbor. And when I told him I was enlisting, he was super excited. He was super happy. He gave me a hard time for not being a Marine, but when I told him I was going to be a corpsman, he's like, okay, that's acceptable. And when I was stationed down in North Carolina on Camp Lejeune, he went out there for a conference and I met up with him and he gave me his coin and it was just super cool. It was full circle, small town kid from the cornfield of Colorado, meeting the number two man in charge of this great organization.

Ralph Coin

Buchholz: Yeah, so Ralphie here, the JEA is all E four and below in the Navy are considered junior enlisted. And with that you make your little organization in each command and it's kind of, I don't want to say student council, but it's pretty much student council. It's if we have gripes as junior enlisted, we can take it up the chain of command and inform them of things that's going on. And I was the president of the one out in Fallon and part of it was we designed a coin and Ralphie is what we ended up with.

Brockway: Heck yeah. How'd you, is there a reason for Ralphie, or was just random?

Buchholz: For me. This was during Covid and so the memes rolled around with Ralphie, with the mask Hang. I'm essential. And so that was kind of the spark of it. And then we didn't say we're essential, but instead we went with the catchphrase, we're helping.

Vetrans Center Coin

Buchholz: So this one you said is the veteran Center one? So, UW has a great veteran center and from my understanding, it's actually the benchmark for a lot of other ones across the nation on other campuses. Marty Martinez, who's the director of it, is awesome. He's always has his ear to the ground, knows the pulse of the students, and understands the struggle. It is from transitioning from such a structured rigged lifestyle to having the freedom of a college student. And so, the vet center has these points too, and I got this one from helping out with the veteran saddle up, which is saddle up, but veteran specific, and we tweak things and make it more accommodating for them. This one isn't the new one. It doesn't have Space Force on it. They have 'em, and it cracks me up that they were super quick on the chain, on the Space Force.

Brockway: So what was it like doing saddle up with the veteran program? 

Buchholz: So being on the side that actually is helping run it compared to being a student. I think Marty does a really good job of tailoring it to the veterans instead of doing all the things that a traditional college student does, which for lack of better terms, the kumbaya circles that tell us you're feeling circles. These guys are 23 plus years old, they don't want to do it. Now, there might come a time where they will do it, but not that initial change. So giving 'em a space where they can complain about X, Y, Z element, NOP, or they're not going to get in trouble or judged or reported or anything that they might be fearing. So it's extremely beneficial.

"Self-Pity"

Brockway: What made you want to switch? Because an English major now. So what kind of sparked you to leave this medical sort of thing? 

Buchholz: Well, the thing that cemented it was Covid never Will Work Medicine again, but the seed that got planted was on deployment. We were in Korea. It was super boring. We had no internet access, no Wi-Fi, and we were just twiddling our thumbs with nothing to do. So, our chaplain, who's essentially the preacher of our unit or our priest, X, Y, Z, whatever you want to call 'em, came in and was like, hey, my church sent us this box of books that they donated. So, we have nothing else to do. If you want to read, they're available. So just out of pure boredom, I started digging through the box and I found a book of poetry by DH Lawrence. Never heard of this dude. I was like, oh, poetry. Let's see what this is about. And I started reading it and one poem just caught my attention, and I still have it memorized. It's super short poem. I never saw a wild thing, sorry for itself. A small bird will drop dead frozen from a bow without ever feeling sorry for itself. That just stuck with me. Self-pity. All these guys, boohoo, I'm tired, we're all tired. But it just stuck with me, and I kept that book, and I kept reading it and my Marines came, and they were like, hey, what are you reading? I was like, poetry. And they're like, oh, you're a nerd. I was like, no, listen to this. And I taught Marines poetry, and I feel if I can teach Marines poetry, I can teach high schoolers.