14,000 WWII Dog Tags Found Buried in a Field

By | April 19, 2017

Just two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland and the official beginning of the Second World War, the United Kingdom was one of the first countries to declare war on Germany.

As one of the major military forces in the world, the UK remained in the war until the end. It was one of the countries to successfully defend its territory against German aggression, but at the expense of approximately 400,000 British who lost their lives in the war. The victims will never be forgotten, and this recent discovery touched people around the globe as it brought back memories of the soldiers involved in the war.

The dog tags, found by Dan Mackay, were never actually delivered to the soldiers fighting on the battlefronts. During the war, dog tags were made out of asbestos fiber, metal tags were only introduced after 1960. Mackay believes that the UK Army at some point wanted to exchange the old dog tags with the metal ones, but put the plan on hold due to the war.

The dog tags were found near the factory (now closed) that produced them and were probably buried by workers as a way to get rid of unnecessary inventory. Mackay is now busy tracing the relatives of the soldiers. He has so far managed to locate eight of them and reunite them with the memorabilia of their beloved.

As the Telegraph reported, there are dog tags belonging to decorated soldiers, men who were published in military magazines and soldiers who were taken prisoners during the war.

Mackay has requested help from organizations such as the British Legion, various military magazines, and historians, but has been rejected. He received help via the Forces War Records website, which helped him connect to Frederick Henry Bills, a surviving veteran of World War II.

Mackay encourages anybody that has any kind of connection or information about the names on the dog tags to contact him via the Extreme Relic Hunters Facebook page.