ID tag? WW2?

[Claire64]

That's fascinating.  You learn something new every day!  I will pass this on to my friend.  Thanks everyone. 

[Mean_genie]

If you look in contemporary newspapers, you'll see ads for this kind of thing - wristbands, pendants etc. It made a lot of sense to keep a note of your ID number, in case something happened to your card, and it would be particularly useful for children (who didn't carry their cards) if they were lost. Of course they were also a good way of identifying dead bodies, but that wouldn't be advertised as an big selling point...

[Treetotal]

Interesting information, not something that I have heard of before. I will research It more and add the information that I find to our box file on Evacuees. It will be useful for future exhibitions.
You learn something new every day on here. Thanks for sharing.
Carol

[Viktoria]

As an evacuee ,but taken by parents to Dad’s relatives in Shropshire at three and a half I did not have such a tag.Nor my older sister.
The identity tags I remember which must have been my parent’s ,were of a type of asbestos .Green or dark red I seem to remember.
Asbestos would  survive intense heat from a burning building so human remains could be identified .
Perhaps children evacuated from their schools would have identity tags like those mentioned.
Viktoria.

[Girl Guide]

My mother had an ID tag, a bracelet type.  It is brass coloured with an oval disc in the middle.  Her first name initial, surname and then the reference to where she was living.

This was the E.D. Letter Code, Schedule No. & Sub. No.

If anything had happened to her she would have been identified by those reference numbers.  She was living with her parents at the time and would have been about 15/16.

[Ray T]

For info, the official WW2 (and also WW1 as far as I’m aware) came in pairs - one grey and the other a grubby orange. One of them was waterproof and the other fireproof so there would be a good chance of something surviving however the soldier met his fate.

Interestingly, I have my fathers but they are fake. He somehow managed to loose the originals - a cour martial offence - but managed to acquire some blanks and had the info stamped onto them before anybody noticed.

[Viktoria]

That is right Ray, the dark red I remember could at one time have been orange ,were they different shapes too,I seem to remember that.
Viktoria.

[Kiltpin]

Back in 1970, I was issued with two ID tags at the start of Basic Training, or Square Bashing.   

One was round, dark red and had a single hole and the other was green, eight sided (but a bit elongated) with a hole at either end. The red one hung from the green one by a short chain. We were told that one was waterproof and the other fireproof, but no one knew which was which. 
   
"Oi'm only telling youse what they tells me, Right!" 
"_{Yes, Corporal.}" 
"Right?" 
"YES, CORPORAL!"

I say issued, but the reality was different. We had them for the six weeks of Basic Training. Then they were collected in by the panda clerks to be kept with our records. 

Every year, we had to go to the General Office and agree that these tags were correct. They were then put back in the same envelope and put back in records for safe keeping. It was a standing joke that this was the prime example of military intelligence.

When I finished my time and did the final signing out, Gen Office apologised to me for not being able to give me my tags as a memento.   It seems that they had been misplaced while they were in safe keeping! 

Regards 

Chas


 

[The Yokel]

Just like my Mums, with string rather than a chain