Greetings:
A message is circulating around the mailing lists about a site on the
Internet where, supposedly, US dog tags found in Viet Nam can be returned
to the owner or his family.
Please consider this message OFF TOPIC for this list (if you subscribe to
more than one list that I admin, I apologize for the duplication).
I am skeptical about the site. Dog tags are not "lost" as easily as you
might think. The only normal ways for it to happen are for them to be taken
from a POW by his captors, or for them to be pulled from the abandoned
corpse of an American serviceman whose comrades were unable to recover him.
The Army (the branch of service I was in) considered that a terrible thing,
and the Marines simply would not tolerate it under any but the most
horrendous of circumstances.
Maybe the people with the dog tags are legitimate. I have seen the site,
and there is no appeal for money or advertising. But it is still possible
they are *not* legit, even if they are charging *nothing whatever*. At the
very least they have paid (what to a Vietnamese would be) a significant
amount of money for a few pieces of metal that could be forged with
extraordinary ease. Any way you look at it, someone on one side of the
Pacific or the other is trading on human misery.
All I'm saying is, I'm very uncomfortable with this whole thing. Be
careful! Those whose loved ones became Missing in Action in Southeast Asia,
especially, can be vulnerable to scams that offer even the forlorn hope of
getting a *scrap* of information about what happened. There are all sorts
of people willing to try to take advantage of that vulnerability. Don't
carelessly give out personal information in order to get one of these dog tags.
In any event, discussion of this matter is OFF TOPIC for the lists I admin.
If you would like to comment, please do so to me *PRIVATELY*
Darrell A. Martin
list admin, *and*
former SGT 228 S&S Co DS, 277 S&S Bn
USARV 2 Jan 70 - 23 Apr 71
LIST admin for VTGEN, VTCALEDO, VTLAMOIL, VTORANGE, VTWINDSO, MANORFOL,
F.ELCH, F.ORBUSH, G.ARDNER, H.ARTWELL, H.ULBERT, L.AMSON, L.OWER,
N.ELSON, R.OUSSEAU, R.USSEAU -- darrellm(a)sprynet.com