In agreement with the letter below, I know this is off topic, but so many
families still have MIA's in their lives or never got anything back that
belonged to their loved ones from that turbulent era. I hope that the
listmoms will understand that this letter is to help find the families and
to give them some peace.
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Sorry to be off topic, but in order to help spread the word about these
found dog tags, I am passing this information along...a couple of young
business men who found American soldiers' dog tags for sale in Hoh Chi Min
City--their efforts to return the tags to families, etc. The news story
is below and the web site URL is:
www.founddogtags.com
===============
After 30 years, dog tags of Marine killed in Vietnam returned to
mother Thr, July 5, 2001 00:00:00
The Associated PressORLANDO, Fla. -- The mother of a Marine killed in
Vietnam
received his dog tags in an Independence Day ceremony after two Florida
businessmen found them for sale in a back-alley market in Ho Chi Minh
City.Rob Stiff and Jim Gain were so sickened at the discovery of Lance Cpl.
Allan George Decker's tags that they returned to Vietnam in May to buy them
and hundreds of others. Upon returning to America, they began trying to
reunite soldiers and their families with the lost tags.On Wednesday, the men
gave Decker's mother the tags at the Orlando cemetery where he was buried
after his death in 1968."I just hope that other families can find the kind
of
peace that I have felt today," Ruth Decker said. "The Lord had his hand in
this from the beginning."Servicemen usually wore the tags -- silver discs
that listed a soldier's name, military identification number and blood type
-- around their necks, but in the field many put them in their boots so they
wouldn't jingle.Stiff and Gain weren't looking for war mementos when they
traveled to Vietnam in January. They wanted to check the commercial climate
for possible business ventures. But in a market not frequented by tourists,
they found the dog tags dangling from a string."It was really eerie and we
were disgusted," said Stiff, 27.Despite their revulsion, they left the tags
there. But back home in America, they couldn't escape the memory."People
asked, "What if they're fake?' " Stiff said. "Well, our question
was, "What
if they're real?'"In May, they returned to Vietnam to buy all the American
dog tags they could find. It took days to scour Ho Chi Minh City and sort
through thousands of tags -- some printed in Vietnamese, others destroyed or
illegible -- and returned home with about 640.The total cost of the tags was
$180. They sometimes paid less than 14 cents each.Stiff and Gain transcribed
what was printed on each the best they could, then complied a database of
names and ID numbers to list on their Web site:
www.founddogtags.com A
dozen tags matched names listed on the black granite Vietnam Veterans
Memorial in Washington, D.C.One of the first names they uncovered was
Decker's. With the help of Rep. Ric Keller, an Orlando Republican, and the
Defense Department
they tracked Ruth Decker to her home in Punta Gorda and called her June
21."She was so full of joy," Stiff said.