Obverse
智識青年征軍紀念 - Intellectual Youth Military Enlistment/Recruitment Commemorative
四川 - Sichuan /province of China. It is located in the upper Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) valley in the southwestern part of the country. Sichuan is the second largest of the Chinese provinces/
"In 1944, when the Japanese Ichigo Offensive carved through Nationalist territory, Chiang Kaishek turned in a new direction: voluntary recruitment among educated youth to form an elite force. Although the resulting Youth Army was a modest force of some 100,000 men and it never saw action against the Japanese, it was significant in that it was carried out primarily by civilian agencies, rather than the formal conscription administration. Although militarily marginal during the last months of the war, the Youth Army soldiers embodied the ideal citizen-soldier that the Nationalists had been attempting to create."
"Except for the earliest volunteers in 1943 (who fought in regular units in the Second Burma Campaign), the main volunteer drive took place in the context of Japan’s Ichigo Offensive, but the Youth Army did not see action against the Japanese at all. As the high tide of Ichigo receded, the Youth Army was put into a propaganda role. Its “service” was political, not military: an elite force that showed the Nationalist state could create the modern army of citizen-soldiers that it had dreamt of doingsince Sun Yatsen's days."
Kevin Paul Landdeck (2011) Under the Gun: Nationalist Military Service and Society in Wartime Sichuan, 1938-1945. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
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Reverse stamped with number "50".