Munda - The Dog Tag
Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 4:44 pm
To carry on from the previous story, I was walking around with our guide when I noticed he had a WW2 dog tag around his neck. When we'd finished our tour I asked him about the dog tag. He said that lots of guys have them - they find them when digging their gardens. I said that I would be interested in buying one, so my guide ended up selling me the one from around his neck - obviously no emotional attachment to it. I had a bit of a talk with him about telling people to mark the spot where they have found the dog tag, and that it would be worth a lot more to them (they understood the tourism implication) if they could show somewhere where they exactly found the dog tag (our guide said that they even found bones sometimes).
To cut a long story short, I got home to Australia and jumped on the Internet. I found a genealogy society in the county of the next of kin address on the dog tag. I contacted Mark who ran the site and he got back to me within an hour that the owner of the dog tag had since moved to a town in Florida. I looked up one of the Florida online phone books and found reference to the dog tag owner, and a relative - with address. I then found a county building application with the dog tag owners name on it, with his corresponding address. By this time Mark had rung up the dog tag owner and talked to his daughter, with whom he lived. The dog tag owner is 93, and still very much alive in Florida, and was very excited to here about his dog tag. I'll be sending it this week. The power of the Internet - find a dog tag in Munda and track down it's owner within 24 hours.
To cut a long story short, I got home to Australia and jumped on the Internet. I found a genealogy society in the county of the next of kin address on the dog tag. I contacted Mark who ran the site and he got back to me within an hour that the owner of the dog tag had since moved to a town in Florida. I looked up one of the Florida online phone books and found reference to the dog tag owner, and a relative - with address. I then found a county building application with the dog tag owners name on it, with his corresponding address. By this time Mark had rung up the dog tag owner and talked to his daughter, with whom he lived. The dog tag owner is 93, and still very much alive in Florida, and was very excited to here about his dog tag. I'll be sending it this week. The power of the Internet - find a dog tag in Munda and track down it's owner within 24 hours.