A very cool personal item here. This lighter was manufactured by Crest Craft (of Japan, as clearly marked on the bottom) and sold as a souvenir to US troops. It features the insignia of the US Army 53rd Signal Battalion, which is now the 53rd Space Operations Squadron. The insignia is most likely Vietnam era manufacture, but it could possibly be from immediately after WWII. Shows honest wear from use. Internals seem to have been replaced with authentic Zippo parts! Kind of a nice upgrade.
 
The lineage of the 53rd Space Operations Squadron traces back to the United States Army's need for more specialized signal units following World War I. The 53rd Signal Battalion was constituted on Oct. 18, 1927. Activated June 1, 1941 at Camp Bowie, Texas, the Battalion began its long and storied campaign history to include France, Italy, and Tunisia during World War II.  
 
The unit proved critical to the success of the II Corps' operations by providing multichannel FM radio relay, running hundreds of miles of spiral-four field cable, and providing invaluable signals intelligence functionalities during the Liberation of Rome. 
 
Inactivated Sept. 20, 1945, in Italy and reactivated Sept. 21, 1954, the unit entered into a dozen operations during the Vietnam War, most notably the Tet Counteroffensive.