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thedrifter
04-11-08, 05:32 AM
Dog tag returned to Salem man after 40 years
By Mary Pickels
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, April 11, 2008

Vincent Kemerer remembers heading into battle five days after landing in Vietnam. It was January 1968. He had graduated from Norwin High School eight months earlier.

His draft number was coming up, so he signed up with the Marines and shipped out with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. Their first mission was to rescue eight Green Berets who were holed up in a mess hall in Hue City.

"You want to talk about scared," he said. "I was 19 years old. We lost over half our company getting in, either wounded or killed. It was not a pretty sight."

The soldiers had been issued their dog tags during boot camp and were expected to wear them 24/7.

"You were not allowed in the field without them," Kemerer said.

The metal tags were taped together to avoid enemy detection by moonlight or the clanking sound they made.

Somehow, Kemerer lost his original set of dog tags.

"We were crawling in mud, getting shot at," he said Thursday. "I didn't realize they were missing. I wasn't worrying about looking for dog tags. We were just worried about getting the hell out of there."

So when he received a letter last week from a New Jersey veteran, telling him he thought he had one of the tags, Kemerer was in shock.

"I didn't know what to think," the Salem man said. "I waited a day to call. I wanted to get my head straight."

Kemerer, 59, works as a laborer with Ventana USA, a window and fencing company in Penn Township. Sitting in a company conference room yesterday, he said the return of the single tag brought back a lot of memories.

"It's my identity," he said. "It tells you basically everything about me."

The tiny silver tag, darkened with time and ragged around the edges, still bears a readable imprint of name, service number, blood type and religion.

Two New Jersey men -- Gene Lillie, an accountant from Washington Township, and Jim Six, a reporter in Gloucester County -- acquired the tags from Ray Milligan, a veteran who had traveled to Vietnam in 1993 on a medical aid mission. Six, a former member of the Pennsylvania National Guard, was angry when he learned the tags were being sold on the street, and gave Milligan $100 to purchase all he could.

"They were being sold for pennies," Six said.

Milligan brought home more than 500 tags.

A database built slowly over the years resulted in a few hits, Lillie said. Then a Boy Scout approached Lillie, a former Marine and an assistant Scout leader, with an offer to try to locate the owners as his Eagle project.

The Veterans Affairs office in Philadelphia agreed to contact veterans for the Scout, and Lillie and Six have managed to return tags to 31 veterans.

"These guys are calling me right back," Lillie said. "Ninety percent are crying on the phone."

Lillie said he's convinced the tags are authentic. Some have Vietnam's clay soil embedded in them; others have rust or blood stains. It would be next to impossible for hundreds of tags to be duplicated without missing some information or misspelling a name, he believes.

"Losing your dog tags is worse than having your rifle jam in the field," Lillie said.

In a soldier's eyes, he said, "Dog tags will get me back to my family. They're the ticket that gets me home."

Marcus Wilson, public affairs specialist with Veterans Affairs in Washington, said he is aware of numerous efforts to return dog tags to their owners.

"There are some people who do this as a goodwill gesture," Wilson said.

The tags that replaced Kemerer's originals are in a dresser drawer, he said.

But the old one, now dangling from the chain that held the replacements, will go around his neck.

"I'm wearing it for a good luck charm," Kemerer said. "... It found me after 40 years."



Mary Pickels can be reached at mpickels@tribweb.com or 724-836-5401.

Ellie