A Short History of Blood Chits: Greetings From the Lost, Seeking Help Today, At War looks at the use of blood chits, a little-known and partially classified American military system designed to help lost or stranded service members find their way to safety. In the simplest sense, a blood chit is a prepared message, written in local languages, that a lost service member can present to most anyone who might help. It offers a rough description of the predicament - "I am not from here and would like to get back to where I belong" - along with both a request for aid and the promise of a reward for assistance. The chits are carried by many air crews, particularly fixed-wing air crews, and by other service members deemed to be at what the military calls "high risk of isolation." A current variant of a blood chit in American military use is shown in part in the photographs at the top of the post. Translated, it reads in full as follows: I am an American and do not speak your language. I will not harm you! I bear no malice toward your people. My friend, please provide me food, shelter, water and necessary medical attention. Also, please provide safe passage to the nearest friendly forces of any country supporting the Americans and their allies. You will be rewarded for assisting me when you present this number to American authorities. That was the text of a blood chit carried by pilots and weapon systems officers during flights this year from a nuclear aircraft carrier in the North Arabian Sea over Pakistan to southern Afghanistan and back. The reference to the number is to the serial numbers printed on each chit. They are designed to prevent false claims from draining attention and resources. Before air crews depart, each crew member is issued a chit and each associated serial number is recorded. This way, if the service member later is missing and someone contacts the United States and says that they have found him or her, the serial number provides a means to verify the claim's legitimacy. (The Navy agreed to allow At War to take photographs of a chit as long as the serial numbers were not shown or described in detail. The chits are considered controlled documents, in part to protect this numbering system.) Now have a fuller view, below. As you can see, blood chits are not really chits, in the sense of being small. They are large, fold-out papers containing the same message translated in several languages and dialects. They are designed this way because aircraft can routinely pass over several culturally and linguistically distinct regions, countries or provinces on a single flight. Printing the text in every possible language where a service member could end up on the ground is impractical; it would take a small book. So the military has prepared multiple editions of the chits, each for use in different parts of the world. The version issued to air crews in the North Arabian Sea contained a label noting that it is for use in or near the Horn of Africa and southwestern and central Asia. It includes translations of the same script in Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azeri, three dialects each of Dari and Farsi, French, German, Georgian, Gikuyu, Hausa, Hebrew, Italian, Kurdish Sorani, Kurmanji, Luri, Pashto, Portuguese, Russian, Sindi, Somali, Swahili, Tajik, Tigrinya, Turkish, Urdu and Uzbek. So where did this idea come from, and how has it worked? Via the United States Air Force, At War asked the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which manages the blood chit program. Among the written answers received were these: Blood chits were first used in a systematic way by the British Army in 1842 in the mountains of Afghanistan. Their success led to further usage during World War I and continues to this day. The U.S. military began their own blood-chit program in the China theater of operations with the American Volunteer Group (AVG) in 1941-42 under General Claire Chennault. This program quickly grew throughout the U.S. military and was in use throughout all theaters of operation with much success. Blood chit usage by the U.S. military in World War II was in the tens of thousands. They were issued only to aircrew members. Payments ranged from $50 to approximately $250 depending upon the theater. The blood chit program continued through the Korean and Vietnam wars. During the Korean War, approximately 42 payments were made for the safe return of U.S. fliers. During one six-month period of the Vietnam War we have found reference to 13 payments being made. Exact numbers of blood chits used are not available as almost all records concerning blood chit usage from these wars were destroyed shortly after cessation of hostilities. After the Vietnam War the program was disestablished and then re-established for Desert Storm and has been in continuous use ever since. The program has been expanded beyond aircrew so that all U.S. military members deemed High Risk of Isolation are to be issued blood chits after receiving required training in their use. Blood chits are controlled items and are issued and tracked very closely. So what role do the chits play today in helping service members find their way home? How much money does the United States now offer or pay for aiding a downed air crew? How many American service members - aviators, Special Operations troops, officers assigned to remote duties in small teams - have been saved this way in recent decades? The answers are not clear, as the response below shows. Blood chit usage is now classified. History has shown that once any of our enemies who became knowledgeable of the successful return of an American with the assistance of an indigenous person (s) resulted in the torture and death of the helpers. In some cases the death of their entire family and even an entire village resulted in this information becoming open source. Therefore all information on their usage and payments has become classified since the re-establishment of the program. Prior to this classification change the last blood chit claim and payment was made in 1993. In 1991 a Korean who immigrated to Houston approached the Air Force at Randolph A.F.B., San Antonio, with a story about he and his father and other family members taking in seven crew members from a downed B-29 and returning them safely to U.S. control. The North Koreans found out about the aid provided by the family shortly after their recovery, then tortured and killed most of the family, the son being one of the few survivors in the village. As the DoD Office of Primary Responsibility, once the J.P.R.A. heard of this unfortunate joint personnel recovery action (under its prior name of Joint Services Survival, Evasion, Recovery and Escape Agency), it made a payment of $100,000 for the Korean families" part in saving the lives of the crew members. Relatively few service members carry blood chits. They might be common in fixed-wing cockpits on long flights, but you won't see them on a typical infantry patrol, where a unit will likely stay together from start to finish. And as the above statement from the military indicates, the use of the blood chits in America's recent wars has largely been kept from public view. The stated reason has been to protect people who aid downed pilots or other lost service members. This is a rationale few people would argue with, from either the standpoint of bringing service members home or protecting civilians who help them. But this kind of classification, under the law, eventually expires. Declassification may, with the passage of decades, bring cases to light. One day, historians or other researchers, if they know where to look, could stand to find a rich line of inquiry into this program, both to assess its effectiveness and its costs, and to tease out what could be rich and dramatic stories of modern war, and the perils therein for all sides. Follow C.J. Chivers on Facebook, on Twitter at @cjchivers or on his personal blog, cjchivers.com, where many posts from At War are supplemented with more photographs and further information.