No I don't believe I have (well at least not in recent history). However I made a great lasagna bolognese the other night. Molto buona! I remember my grandma exclaiming, Mangia, mangia, mangia. The dining room table was always filled with a multitude of plates and a bottle of homemade red wine. Ah, quelli erano i giorni ... or something to that effect. BTW, I love to cook. New recipes always welcomed.

Wow, you know a lot of phrases in Italian and you also know how to use them! Fantastic

Grazie!

Another reply...

 

Marion....Nope, still have my original ones from 1944. One of my "prize" possessions.

 

God bless, JIM Zuidema

YES, I WAS. MY ORIGINAL TAGS WERE TAKEN WHEN I WAS TAKEN PRISONER BY THE GERMANS....NOT ONLY MY TAGS BUT ALSO MY UNIFORM, BOOTS AND

HELMET, ALL BUT MY UNDERWEAR....WHEN I GOT OUT, THEY WASN'T SURE WHO

I WAS BUT THE US TOOK ME BACK ANYWAYS AND RE-ISSUED EVERYTHING

AFTER ABOUT A 3 MONTH WAIT. BILL

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Caveats: NONE

Ms. Chard,

My purview is mostly limited to identifying the lineage and honors of individual Quartermaster units from administrative documents. I'm afraid I don't have a lot of resources here at the Center of Military History to answer your question about the reissuance of dog tags during World War II. I recommend that you contact the U.S. Army Quartermaster Foundation and Museum at Fort Lee, Virginia, as they handle a much wider variety of topics related to Quartermaster history. The Quartermaster Museum may be contacted at leeeqmmuseum@conus.army.mil or 804-734-4203.

However, below is some limited information which may partially answer your questions.

War Department Circular 60 of 2 March 1942 dictated that stainless steel should be used in the production of identification tags, as the monel metal which had previously been used was too scarce. It also implies that many tags were being reissued due to loss of or damage to the original tags, as it reads, in Section VII:

"4. Issues of tags have exceeded the estimated requirements upon which procurement has been based. While the exact reason for this variance is not known, it is believed to be due, at least in part, to thoughtlessness on the part of both officers and enlisted men, resulting from the expendable nature of the item and its relatively insignificant cost. Identification tags, while a minor item insofar as the actual quantity of metal in each tag is concerned, require great amounts of metal when procured in quantities for issue to all personnel of the Army.

5. In view of the above, it is directed that each officer and enlisted man personally exercise the greatest possible care to prevent the necessity for replacement of the identification tags in his possession."

War Department Circular 223 of 3 June 1944, Section V, reads:

"V. TAG.--1. Prior to July 1943, Army Regulations prescribed that identification tags have inscribed thereon the name and address of the individual to be notified in case of an emergency. Paragraph 85b, AR 600-35, 31 March 1944, no longer requires that such inscription appear on identification tags. It has come to the attention of the War Department that serviceable identification tags inscribed with the names and addresses of emergency addressees are being replaced by tags not so inscribed.

2. Metals from which identification tags are fabricated are of a critical nature and must be conserved to the fullest extent.

3. Identification tags in the possession of military personnel will not be replaced for either of the following reasons:

a. Because of a change in name or address of the individual to be notified in emergencies, inscribed on identification tags; or

b. Because change in Army Regulations has eliminated the former requirement that identification tags bear the name and address of the individual to be notified in emergencies."

A short article on the history of dog tags appeared in the December 1988 issue of the Quartermaster Professional Bulletin. An online version can be found at

http://www.qmfound.com/short_history_of_identification_tags.htm.

You may also wish to note that pages 221, 228, and 336 of the The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Germany (William F. Ross and Charles S. Romanus, 2004) indicate that each soldier had two identification tags handing on a necklace.

See http://www.archive.org/stream/quartermastercor00ross#page/n3/mode/2up. War Department Circular 151 of 12 December 1940 (attached to this e-mail as a .PDF document) provided for the issuance of two tags per Army soldier, and Circular 262 of 19 December 1941 (also attached) details how the two tags were to be worn.

War Department Pamphlet 29-2 of 15 May 1944 (and possibly earlier versions) stated that, "Records of tetanus immunizations including when applicable the first stimulating dose of tetanus toxoid, and blood type will be embossed on the identification tags." It was possible that tags were reissued to individuals to reflect any new tetanus vaccinations.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Fargey

POC for Support/Sustainment, Quartermaster, Military Intelligence, Information Operations, Chaplain, and JAG units, Force Structure and Unit History Branch, U.S. Army Center of Military History

wd-cir-151-1940.pdf

wd-cir-262-1941.pdf

Thanks Kathleen. This answered a lot of questions, and I'm sure my readers will find it very interesting.

Hi Marion,

I do not have personal knowledge of this. It was told to me many years ago by a friend of mine who was in a different outfit. Early in 1943 the army came up with a bright idea. They were sending troops to England and getting ready for the invasions of Sicily and Italy. They wanted to insure that if a Jewish soldier were captured the Germans would not know he was Jewish by looking at his dog tags. So they issued a bunch of dog tags to Jewish soldiers where they had changed the letter H (for Hebrew) to an over-sized letter P. It may have been a great idea but it went over like a lead balloon. The men felt offended, complained and gave them back their dog tags. After which the letter H was reinstated.

Hope this is of some help to you.

Love

Dave

Both answers are really interesting! But if U.S. Army replaced all the dogtag for anti-tetanus, then here we should find thousands of it I think...

However I think that in addition to accidental loss, there could be hundreds of reasons for replacing the dogtag and here we saw only a small part.

Ah, who knew we'd get so many answers to our question? This is what forums are ALL ABOUT!