Charles Riffel says it’s not a big deal.

The medals Riffel picked up in Korea as an Army machine gunner toward the end of the war were just normal medals one receives after serving a tour in a combat zone, he says.

There is one medal, however, that he cherishes more than the others.

Riffel earned an Army Combat Infantryman’s Badge, which is awarded to soldiers who fought in active ground combat while part of an infantry unit. The badge was among the hardware Riffel lost since returning stateside from Korea more than 60 years ago.

This week, though, new versions of the same medals he received in 1953 will be handed to him at a small ceremony at Hayden City Hall.

Sen. Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho, will be there at 2 p.m. Oct. 3 to give Riffel his medals, something the former soldier did not expect.

Riffel, who volunteered for service in 1952 as a Kansas teenager before being sent to Korea several months before the 1953 ceasefire, was stationed with a line unit outside Seoul. He became a squad leader and eventually was promoted to sergeant.

After 14 months overseas, he was sent to Fort Carson, Colo., and, eventually, after his enlistment was completed, Riffel hitchhiked back home to Kansas. He followed his parents to Newport, Wash., where he worked as a hospital maintenance foreman for 40 years.

He was divorced, remarried and moved from Oldtown to Blanchard before settling in Hayden, where he serves as a member of the city’s veterans commission and belongs to VFW Post 889 and American Legion Post 14.

The medals aren’t a big thing. It’s been a long time, after all, Riffel says, but he considered them occasionally over the decades.

“A lot happened. I moved around, I think the medals and my dog tags stayed with my ex-wife,” he said.

Riffel, 88, realized the chance of seeing the medals again was pretty slim when he contacted Sen. Risch’s office to ask if there was a possibility he might have them replaced.

“They said the senator would come up and present them to me personally,” Riffel said.

Riffel was taken aback.

“They are pretty mundane,” he said. “There is no Purple Heart, or Silver Star” — medals awarded to combat wounded or for valor.

His hardware includes a Korean Service Medal, United Nations Medal, National Defense Medal, Good Conduct Medal and the Combat Infantryman’s Badge.

“They aren’t unusual,” he said.

Except that the combat infantryman’s badge tells of the time an artillery round landed on a bunker he shared with some of his squad. And the sniper fire he endured, and his time spent on the .30-caliber along the perimeter if his unit’s outpost.

“Nobody got hurt,” he said when the shell landed square making a tremendous noise. “But we all ran around deaf and dumb from all the dust and dirt,” looking for wounded or dead comrades.

His three months at the front weren’t heroic, he said.

“I was scared half to death,” he said.

“We were getting shot at by snipers, but we were never involved in any big firefights,” Riffel said.

He was commended for his job and earned the stripes of platoon sergeant somewhere at the foot of a mountain they called Baldy.

“I can’t tell you where exactly that was,” he said. “It’s been 65 years.”

And then he came home, and went to work, and remembered his months in Asia occasionally and wondered about his lost combat infantryman’s badge, a slim device worn above the ribbons over the left breast pocket of service members. It is a silver badge, consisting of a rectangular bar, 3 inches wide, with a vintage 1795 Springfield Arsenal Musket lying on an infantry-blue field surrounded by an elliptic oak-leaf wreath.

The wreath symbolizes steadfast character, strength, and loyalty.

Riffel would like his back.

“It means something to me,” he said.

And Thursday, he will again lay his hand on the slim silver and enameled medal, and thank the senator for returning it.

“It’s not a big deal, but it’s important to me,” he said.