Comes with hand-signed C.O.A.

*We are extremely honored to be able to offer this Vietnam War collection of KIA, WIA, and lost U.S. soldier dog tags excavated from the Tet Offensive battlefield. These dog tags were excavated from the rice paddies and various combat battlefields of the Tet Offensive and are left in original and uncleaned condition. A percentage of all proceeds for each sale of this collection are being donated to the Wounded Warriors Project in memory of those who sacrificed and gave their lives in combat.

This Vietnam War U.S. dog tag was excavated from the battlefields of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. These dog tags are a collection of mainly U.S. Army and Marine dog tags from units and divisions that saw intensive combat during the offensive. These very personal items carried by a soldier or Marine were sometimes lost in the heat of battle or lost when WIA at medical aid stations.

Edward Liekis Jr. (Marines, 1967-68) and Spencer Zielenski (Army, 1969), after being wounded in battle, were taken to aid stations where medics cut off and discarded their boots with the dog tags tied to them. Joseph Chernowas was injured during a mortar attack and had his boot and dog tag cut off and tossed out the back door at an aid station. He remembers seeing flak jackets, bloody boots and steel helmets lying in piles behind one of the aid station tents.

Ronald Castonguay (Army, 1970-71) of Massachusetts lost his dog tags when medics cut off his boots from his badly swollen feet in order to treat his trench foot. And then there was Alfred Pergeau, who lost both dog tags when his Marine squad was attacked by an NVA division in Quang Tri in 1969.

Chuck Manlove (Marines, 1966-67) received two reissues of dog tags in Vietnam and remembers losing one pair, as he put it: ‘…on ambush as the NVA attacked. We were only a reinforced squad. The VC followed us afterwards. When we finally got picked up I was running down the beach and taking off everything as fast as I could to get to the Amtrac and ran for home. I lost them north of Hue, three kilometers from the Ben Hai River in Dong Ha.’

On January 30, 1968, communist-affiliated troops from North Vietnam and the Viet Cong launched what became known as the Tet Offensive against South Vietnam and its American allies. The Tet Offensive was one of the largest military operations of the Vietnam War, and became a key turning point in the conflict. The Tet Offensive was a surprise series of attacks launched during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year festival. Many South Vietnamese troops were on holiday when the attacks began, and the military was caught off guard. The campaign initially targeted more than 100 cities and towns, including the strategic southern capital of Saigon, now named Ho Chi Minh City. The Tet Offensive was a catastrophic military failure for the communists. Historians estimate as many as 50,000 communist troops died in the effort to gain control of the southern part of the country. The South Vietnamese and American losses totalled a fraction of that number.