In a half-remembered episode of NCIS, Gibbs is exhuming a Marine from Iwo Jima for evidence of a murder by a Medal of Honor recipient.
It is noted that the remains has the dog tag jammed between the teeth.
Gibbs informs…somebody 
…that the tags were wedged between the teeth and the jaws slammed shut, to keep the mouth closed, or something.
Is this accurate, or just something made up for the show?
If true, how is this not abusing a corpse?
There is a disturbing scene in the movie “A Midnight Clear”, where the graves people place a dog tag in between the front teeth, then smack the jaw shut with a mallet. Whether this was common practice in the battlefield is unknown to me. However, when a service member is killed, one tag is collected and the other stays with the body to insure identification later, if necessary. Inserting it into the teeth would insure that it remained with the corpse.
The purpose of the notch as an aid to that process has been debunked by Snopes, who quotes the military’s Graves Registration as a source. The notch is just a remnant from the embossing machine.
And the Snopes article was based on this: http://www.qmfound.com/short_history_of_identification_tags.htm. Per Capt Wooley, of the Graves Registration Department, “Thee(sic) sole purpose of the identification tag is stated by its designation. Tags found around the neck of a casualty, and only those tags found around the neck, stay with the remains at all times tags found any place besides around the neck are made note of in the Record of Personal Effects of Deceased Personnel, and placed in an effects bag.” So I guess a tag found in the mouth doesn’t really count, as the soldier may have been snacking on it when he was killed.
Hey, the reality is so much more boring than the legend that I needed to make it a bit more grisly. 
ETA: Note that Capt Wooley is of the Army Graves Registration Department. What Marines do with their dog tags is anybody’s guess and probably not something we want to look into too deeply. :eek:
Supposedly the reason for doing this was if the body decomposed, the tag would remain stuck between the upper teeth of the skull and the reason for the notch in the tag was to align it and keep it from slipping out as you sammed the jaw shut.
But as stated, this was all a myth and the real reason for the notch was to align the tag in a machine.
My dad, who served in WWII, said this was told was told tongue-in-cheek to new recruits when they were first issued thier dog tags. He used to tell us kids that when showing us his dog tags. He also used to tell us kids that since he wore false teeth (which he didn’t get until many years after his service, but us kids didn’t know that) that since he didn’t have real teeth for them to stick the tag between, he was required to carry a 16d nail in his pocket so his tag could be nailed to his forehead if he got killed.
I would also point out that today’s tags no longer have a notch. The Army is apparently fooling around with creating a dog tag with an information chip imbedded.
An aside: a few years ago I was contacted by someone who spotted my name on a Vietnam dog tag retrieval website. I lost track of my dog tags after Vietnam and never bothered to replace them, regs be damned. Apparently people have gone to Vietnam and retrieved piles of tags that have been found by locals at different military camps, etc. One of them was mine. I contacted them and they sent it to me, no charge. Had my original (pre-SSN) serial number on it.
Cool! How did it look? Really rusty or corroded? Have you since cleaned it, or left it as-is?
As-is. It was tarnished, but not rusted, as they were made of aluminum.
This was my experience, too. I served during the 1980s and 90s.
Chefguy, that’s a cool story.
When I went through training with US Army Quartermaster corp we had a couple days training from a Graves Registration sergeant.
Mentioned the notch thing being an urban legend and a Hollywood thing.
Apparently, kicking a piece of metal in between the teeth is a good way to make life difficult when using dental records to identify remains.
A wounded man would be unlikely to put the dog tags in his own mouth. It might serve as a simple way for a medic to indicate “don’t waste your time with this one” to other medics that might follow.
Nope. Medics have more reliable (ie, not going to fall out of someone’s mouth) methods of triaging casualties (not to mention that if the casualty is even a little bit alive, medical training dictates that you don’t go sticking things in his mouth).
Have to note that now all new troops get a DNA sample taken and put on file. There probably won’t be another unknown soldier.
Re: bodies and the identification thereof, I have a slightly related anecdote that I haven’t told in a couple of years and which I trot out whenever I can, so here goes:
In college, I worked for awhile in an engraving shop. Nameplates for desks, rubber stamps, notary embossers, etc. One of the jobs we did while I was there involved engraving tiny little numbers on small tabs of metal about half the size of a tic-tac, but not as thick.
I asked what they were.
The were, basically, dog tags. One of our biggest clients was a local textiles & chemicals manufacturer, and I was told that certain jobs at their plant involved chemicals that were so caustic that, should there be an accident, there would be almost nothing left of the victims to identify.
The little tabs we were engraving with numbers would be put into the potential victims’ mouths like dental fillings to allow speedy identification of their presumably otherwise unrecognizable remains.
It was, no question, the closest I’ve ever come to being so creeped out by my own job that I couldn’t do it.
Could be. We don’t even have an Unknown Soldier for Vietnam anymore: Michael Blassie - Wikipedia
What, their employees would consent to invasive dental work so they could maybe later be ID’d? Sorry, but my BS meter is going off.
Apparently the Vietnamese, after realizing that ex-military types were interested in purchasing old dog tags, started manufacturing them and artificially aging them. I believe mine to be the original item, as the service number is correct. Wish I could find that peace symbol I wore in their place.
I’m only relating what I was told.
Chefguy , there is an industry of counterfeiting dog tags and Zippo lighters but there are still a lot of real ones floating around. Your AO in Vietnam had not been touched in 1997 when I was there. I tried to do a sweep of our AO with a metal detector in 1998 and was arrested. Good chance your tags are the real thing. In 1999 I worked with Mr. Hau helping dig the footings for the new Khe san museum . We found many dog tags , cig lighters , marine badges,medal , all kind of stuff. We were excavating on approximately the old Khe san hospital and graves registration sight. Body’s were kept in refrigerated container until they could be flown to grave reg in Danang. As for your peace symbol . I cant give you the real thing but here is a link to a picture of you wearing it on Christmas day of 1968. The only time they gave us a full day off.
I would be so amused if Chefguy comes back and says, “uh . . . do I know you?!”
Old Seabee -All knowing, All seeing. Kilroy has nothing on me !!!