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| Willie Wilkins reunited with his lost dog tag |
A war hero was finally reunited with his lost dog tag nearly 70 years after it went missing.
Carol Wilkins leaned to one side of her father's chair and handed him the little red heart shaped box with a cut that revealed its contents, a bent silver dog tag.
"Oh, Dad, look," Wilkins told her 90-year-old father.
Sixty-nine years after losing his nameplate on the battlefields of southern France, Willie Wilkins was reunited with it Wednesday after a transatlantic effort to return the tag. The effort began over a decade ago in a French backyard and ended with a surprise ceremony in Newark City Hall in New Jersey.
“I am happy for the entire family especially because the man sacrificed his life to fight the evil Nazi regime. Wilkins felt close to the dog tag and was probably devastated when he realized that he lost the tag. Luckily, Wilkins was still alive to be able to be reunited with it,” Sherry Jenkins, 35, of Newark, New Jersey told YourJewishNews.com after learning about Wilkins’ dog tag.
In August 1944, Willie Wilkins was an Army corporal fighting in the Allied invasion of southern France. Wilkins was responsible for removing and identifying the bodies of U.S. soldiers killed and having them buried or transported back to the United States.
At some point during the invasion, Willie Wilkins’ silver dog tag came off his neck.
Willie Wilkins returned to Newark and worked on an assembly line.
Willie Wilkins sometimes talk about his war experience, especially when Carol was young, mentioning that he had lost his dog tags.
In a backyard, 4000 miles away from Newark in Istres, France, Anne-Marie Crespo was working around an olive tree in 2001 and found the dog tag.
Eventually, photos of the dog tag went online, and the family of Wilkins spotted the tag. Proper arrangements were made and the dog tag was returned to Wilkins.
