WWI dog tag question

[F 106 Pilot]

I just got this with a group of mid 1950's Air Force fliers things. This must have been his fathers dog tag as they have the same last name. Could you tell me why the two lines are crossed out and what might have been under those two crossed out lines The long line started with and H. He has a low # on the other side it is 577962. Thank you, Ben

[cwnorma]

I just got this with a group of mid 1950's Air Force fliers things. This must have been his fathers dog tag as they have the same last name. Could you tell me why the two lines are crossed out and what might have been under those two crossed out lines The long line started with and H. He has a low # on the other side it is 577962. Thank you, Ben

 

 

In mid 1918, the AEF figured out that a man's unit on his dog tag could be useful information to the enemy if he was captured. Prior to that, dog tags frequently had Hometowns, Ranks, Units, and other non-standard information.

 

There was a General Order from the AEF HQ that said the only information on the dog tag was to be name and serial number.

 

It appears that the first line started with a P so it was probably either "Pvt" or "P1C"

 

The second line, starting with an H probably was something like: "Hqs. xxx Regt"

 

Chris

[gunbarrel]

Something similar happened the first year and a half of WWII with U.S. dog tags. Unbelievably as it may sound, they listed the name of kin and their full address. Eventually somebody figured out that this information could be used by the enemy to extract information from our POW's and did away with them.