Ronnie D. Foster

MEMORIAL DAY 2004
My Missing Dog Tag Is Found

On June 22, 1966, I was issued two metal identification tags, referred to by GIs as dog tags. The tag is rather small, one inch wide and two inches long. The information on mine was:

FOSTER
R. D.
2271549 A (blood type)
USMC M (medium gas mask size)
BAPTIST

From that day on, the dog tags were part of me, as with every other serviceman. In Vietnam we wore one on a chain around our necks and one laced within the strings of a jungle boot. The theory was, if you got your head blown off, you could still be identified, and vice versa.

When I came home in May of 1969 and returned to civilian life, I packed all my military stuff away and stored it in my parents’ attic. Years later I was going through my old sea bag, found one of the dog tags, and started wearing it around my neck again. My luck at the time was not what you would call good so I thought maybe it would be my lucky charm. It had worked before, and by that time the chances of getting my head blown off were a lot less, although not impossible with some of the activities I was involved with. There was only one dog tag on the chain, and I couldn’t remember what had happened to the other one.

Evidently the lucky charm worked and I’m still alive today. On Memorial Day 2004, my wife and I had been visiting some old Marine Corps brothers from my hometown of McKinney, Texas; Bill Bryan, Thomas Holdbrooks, George Mahan, and Gilbert Garza. When we got home from placing flags on their graves, I saw there was a call among my telephone messages from another old Marine buddy from boot camp and Okinawa, Larry ‘Nick’ Nickelson who lives near Tyler, Texas: “RD, it’s Nick. Call me.”

I called and he told me he had read an article in the newspaper about a girl from California who had visited recently Vietnam. While traveling there, she had discovered numerous American GIs’ dog tags for sale in small curio shops around the country. Her name is Stacy Hansen, a firefighter, and she ended up buying every one she found. When she got home, she created a web site called Vietnamdogtags.com, where she listed all the names of those guys. Nick went to the site and started looking through them to see if he recognized anyone. He did. It was Foster, R. D.

I immediately went to the site and saw my name there. “It couldn’t be me,” I thought. It must be somebody else with the same name.

I e-mailed the site and was asked for the information that was on the dog tag. I, being the skeptical sort, reported everything as it was except for one thing; I put Protestant instead of Baptist, just to make sure it was legitimate.

The next day a return e-mail arrived in which she had listed everything, including Baptist, that was on mine. She gave me a phone number to call; ‘As Soon As Possible!’

I called right away and spoke with Stacy. She was as excited as I was and told me she was holding my dog tag in her hand. She said she had found it in a little shop near Chu Lai, about sixty miles south of Da Nang. Just to hear her mention those names brought back a flood of memories and emotions. I got a little choked up, but managed to thank her from the bottom of my heart. I asked if I could send any money to help cover her expenses, but she said no way. She felt as if returning the missing dog tags was her way of doing something for her country.

On June 10, exactly thirty-five years and one month after I had returned home, my long missing dog tag arrived in the mail. I opened the envelope and pulled out the enclosed card, which had a photograph Stacey had taken on the Perfume River during her trip to Vietnam. The dog tag was wrapped in white tissue, but before I unwrapped it I read the note she had written:

I unwrapped the tissue and held the small piece of metal in my hand. It was my dog tag all right, the one issued in 1966. It was tarnished and still had a trace of that ever-so-familiar red dust around the edges. It had a slight crease across it that looked like it had been bent and someone had straightened it out. I was wishing it could talk and tell me where it had been for all those years. I wondered how many times someone had held it in their hand and wondered who Foster, R. D. was, and if he had lived or died. I guess I will never know, but then again, miracles do happen.

Thank you Stacey, you are a great American.

©Copyright May 20, 2005 by Ronnie D. Foster