PENDANT

Upper half of a German second world war dog tag. The tag is flat, crescentric and has two holes at the curved edge. There are two tabs of metal protruding from the straight edge, which originally would have attached to the opposing crescentric side. One surface of the tag is stamped with the owners details. It reads "Stamm komp J.E.B. 348". Stamped on the line below is the letter "O" indicating the soldiers bloodgroup, and the number "16", indicating his role number. In full the first line reads: "Stammkompanie Infanterie-Ersatz-Bataillon 348". The metal content of the tag looks like pewter or lead, but is more likely to be some kind of zinc alloy.

Provisional research indicates that the Reserve Infantry Battalion 348 was renamed on the 7^th December 1942, and so this seems to give the latest date by which one of the soldiers was captured. The tag was found close to a prisoner of war camp for German soldiers, which operated from the close of the Second World War in 1945, until circa 1948. Given that the camp near to which the identity tag was found didn't serve as a Prisoner of War camp until after the close of the war in 1945, we can only assume that the soldier was held elsewhere in the interim years.

An image of the tag was sent to the Deutsche Deinststelle, who wrote back to say that the wearer of the Erkennunsmarke reappeared in Germany in 1956. The tag was found near the old POW camp at Wellingore, Lincolnshire, where the owner was presumably located immediately after the war. Another German identity tag and an infantry badge were also found in the same area and are recorded on the PAS database as LIN-75CDB6, and LIN-CE8D25. In 2009 a fragment of the lower half of this tag was discovered. The fragment is recorded as LIN-5479D4.