Wednesday, April 2, 2003
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Wednesday, April 2, 2003 |
Veteran receives tag lost in warA dog tag that had been lost during the Vietnam War more than 30 years ago has been returned to its rightful owner. Fayette County School System Safety Coordinator Harry Sweatman, an Army veteran of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the same one that just landed in Northern Iraq, received the lost dog tag this week from a missionary who had found it on a recent trip to Vietnam. "This all just dropped out of the blue. It was the last thing that I expected," said Sweatman about the returned tag. When Bob McMahon of New Hampshire returned home from his trip to Vietnam, he immediately began the task of tracking down the tag's rightful owner. One evening at home Sweatman says he received a telephone call from McMahon saying that he had found the tag. "At first I thought the call was from a missionary wanting money. But as he continued to talk I realized that he had actually found one of my tags and was wanting to verify that he had the right person," added Sweatman. McMahon found the tag in a store in Vietnam along with many others that had been lost by during the war. He and his wife have been working to return as many of them as possible. Sweatman says he had no idea that he was missing the tag since he has a pair at home. However, he is grateful to McMahon for finding and returning the tag after all of these years. He says he is touched by all of the research and time that the missionary put into reuniting the tag with its owner. "I am going to write him a thank you letter expressing my gratitude," said Sweatman. "I also hope to look him up on my next trip to New Hampshire and thank him personally."
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