Dog tags

Mrs T continues to search through our family archives boxes of random hoarded stuff in search of things for the Talpid's school project on WW2. Today she has dug out my dad's old dog tags. He wore these around his neck from 1941 to 1945, initially during basic training in Canada and then in England. They accompanied him during the landings on the Normandy beaches, then through France and Belgium and finally into Germany.
Tags, first introduced in 1907, were intended to show the identity of a serviceman or woman in case of capture, serious injury, or death. They are stamped with the service number, rank and name of the owner. Religion, RC for Roman Catholic in my father's case, was included so that the appropriate burial service might be provided. The CAN shows that he was a soldier in the Canadian forces.
By 1915 the British Army requirement was to wear two official tags, both made of compressed fibre and carrying identical details. The two tags required stringing in a particular way. An eight-sided green tag with two holes was strung through one hole and hung around the neck. Through the second hole another much shorter cord was strung, which had a round red tag on it. This method allowed the red tag to be retrieved simply by cutting its short string, leaving the green tag still in place on the body. It meant that others subsequently finding a body with only a green tag would know that the death was already being reported. They could use the details on the green tag to prepare a grave marker.