Doctor searches for dog tags’ owners
Dr. Albert Repicci was visiting a popular Vietnamese tourist site this fall when he saw a box filled with items that he couldn’t believe were being sold as tourist trinkets.
For $1 each, tourists could purchase as a souvenir a “dog tag” of a United States soldier who served in Vietnam. The items were being sold at the Cu Chi Tunnel, an underground labyrinth near Ho Chi Minn City that served as a subterranean dwelling for Vietnamese soldiers during the war and is now a tourist attraction.
Dog tags are metal medallions worn by soldiers in the United States military that are printed with pertinent information about the owner, such as name, government issue serial number and blood type. While a dog tag’s information is used for everyday identification purposes, they are also used to identify a soldier who has been killed.
Orthodontist Albert Repicci holds the three dog tags which he purchased as souvenirs during a recent medical/volunteer trip to Vietnam.
Repicci, a Greenwich-based orthodontist, was visiting the country as part of a program called Medical Ministries International, an organization that sends medical professionals to villages and towns around the world where medical care is limited. He spent a week in Cambodia before traveling to Vietnam to spend a week visiting villages to perform dental work – mostly pulling teeth, he said.
He said he didn’t know what to think when he discovered the dog tags. At first he said he wondered if they were authentic, and if they were, how they wound up in a box outside the Cu Chi Tunnels to be sold to tourists. He wondered if the soldiers who had worn them had lost them, had died wearing them, or were missing in action.
“It was just too personal an effect for them to be sitting there as tourist items,” he said. “It amazed me that artifacts like that were still floating around out there, which made me suspicious of their authenticity.”
Finally, he decided to purchase three of the dog tags