Idaho Veteran Reunited with Dog Tags Found in Arkansas
(KLIX) – An Idaho man has been reunited with the dog tags he originally received during the Korean War.
According to Arkansas’s KFSM, a real estate developer named Lloyd Sumpter found three dog tags while renovating a building in the Historic District of Fort Chaffee. He discovered that one of the tags belonged to Korean War veteran Ollie Shields and he eventually shipped them to his home in Idaho Falls.
Shields told the news station that he remembers having the tags when he was stationed at Fort Chaffee in the early ‘50s.
It probably won’t be the last time that lost dog tags are found. It seems to happen every now and then.
In February 2018 a Colorado family was contacted by a man saying tags of a veteran were found 21 years previous and the man who found them wanted now to return them to the family, according to a July 20, 2018 report by the Associated Press.
Farther from home, more than 14,000 dog tags of World War II soldiers were found in 2017 buried beside an anti-aircraft battery close to London, The Telegraph reported on April 11 of that year.
Dogs tags serve as identification for military servicemen and women and are a type of medal of honor for returning soldiers. For those who don’t make it home, the tags help ID the soldiers killed in action.