published on July 30, 2024 in Quick Update

A WWI dog tag was found on the ground. Facebook helped reunite it with the veterans family.

This all started a few weeks ago, when a man walked into the police station in Randolph, Mass., Officer Kevin Aldred said. The man told authorities that he wanted to return a dog tag that he had found on the ground.

“And my partner was on the desk,” Aldred said. “He was actually speaking with him at the window, and he said, ‘Yeah we’ll get a hold of the animal control officer.’ And gentleman was like, ‘no I don’t think you understand, I think it’s a military dog tag.'”

This dog tag was different. You can see it above: round, like a coin, and clearly much older. The banged-up tag had a name stamped on it: Joseph E. Hughes. It also read:

PVT.
M.G. CO.
101ST INF.
U.S.A.

Aldred turned to Google and found some older dog tags — pre-World War II — that were similar to what the man turned in at the station. It’s not like that online search yielded immediate results, but Aldred didn’t stop digging. He kept looking for the owner — via social media, and, eventually, through a police contact in another community — all in an effort to return the lost tag to a veteran’s family.

“This is a historical artifact and should not be in a lost-and-found bin with a bunch of broken cellphones and lost house keys,” Aldred said.

Aldred contacted the Fort Devens Museum, a civilian-run organization in Massachusetts. The museum poked around and a few hours later emailed Aldred a photograph of Hughes, as well as a card that contained personal information. Aldred said he thought about exploring genealogy websites to try to find out more, but … well, those cost money, you know?

That’s when Aldred and his partner decided to post about the lost tag on Facebook. There had to be someone out there involved in genealogy and history, who would be able to help, right? Aldred posted the photo of Hughes, as well the information card. And, he said, Facebook users immediately took notice. In fact, later that night, a woman contacted the department and spoke with Aldred’s lieutenant.

The woman emailed Aldred information that she had unearthed: who Hughes’s parents were; where he was born; where he lived in Brookline, Mass.; how he married after the war and became a father of three. What’s more: The woman had traced Hughes’s son and found that he had married as well. Through his wife’s obituary, the woman discovered the names of their children.

“I think it goes to show that while sometimes social media can kind of be annoying,” Aldred said, “it’s also really powerful, too, at times.”

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One of the children listed in the obituary was Joseph M. Hughes, a retired firefighter living in Walpole, Mass. Aldred tried to reach out to the family but didn’t have any luck. So he touched base with a police officer in the community, who he knew from a training course. And that Walpole officer told Aldred that not only did he know Joseph Hughes, he also worked with him years ago.

The Walpole officer stopped by the man’s house, and Hughes contacted police in Randolph, ending the search. That is how the dog tag made it back to a veteran’s family, which previously didn’t know much about his military service.

The Patriot Ledger reported that a man walking his dog down a local street initially found the tag, prompting the search.

“Some fella walking his dog in just happened to see it, and he took the time to go into the police station,” Joseph M. Hughes, the grandson, told the newspaper. “It brings to life information I can share with my daughter. The lineage carries on. It makes you feel good.”

Here’s the Patriot Ledger, with more:

Hughes’ grandfather, Joseph E. Hughes, went off to fight in France in 1917 but that was about all anyone of his grandchildren knew about it when they would visit his home off Faxon Road in Quincy.

“He’d be sitting in the kitchen watching the Red Sox. If you ran in front of the TV, he let out a roar. Very rarely did he speak to you,” said Hughes.

Aldred said he felt it was important to keep pushing with the search because though the dog tag was more than just a regular, everyday lost object. It was, he said, a “very personal item.” Besides, Aldred noted that if this were his grandfather’s tag, he’d want it in his possession, or with his family, or somewhere else safe.

“I’ve always been interested in history, especially U.S. history, military history,” Aldred said. “And the item itself … it’s just a piece of aluminum, but there’s so much more to the story about the war, and the person, and all of his experiences. Like I said, it was an extremely personal item that he took with him every single day, and he had on him 24 hours a day for how many years. Even though it’s a small item and it may seem insignificant, there’s much more to it other than the physical tag.”

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