THE LONG WAY HOME
Viet Vets Regain Identity Tags, Recognition

The week of Jan. 12, 2004, Tom Barnard, of Longview TX, won PeprallyUSA.com's Pic of the Week contest with the photograph above. Mr. Barnard, a graphic designer at LeTourneau University, used a 2.1 megapixel digital camera, the Canon Powershot Pro90IS, to capture an enormously poignant moment in the life of Vietnam Veteran Denzil Messman. Mr. Messman was presented with his own dogtags, which were lost in 1968, in Viet Nam. The presentation was made by Illinois businessman and Korean War vet, V.R. Roskam, who, with his wife, Martha, had salvaged three dozen of the identification tags from a street vendor in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, in 2001.

Mrs. Roskam had discovered the worn and tarnished tags while browsing for jewelery and old coins. The tags, bearing such personal data as religion and blood type, along with military ID numbers and service members' names, were said to have come from the bitterly contested central Vietnam highland region. To Mrs. Roskam, their presence as souvenirs on a peddler's cart was overwhelmingly offensive.

"I picked them up and just looked at them," she said. "I felt so sad."

"If I had lost a son (in combat), I would want anything that would honor his memory," she said, so the couple purchased all 36 tags for $20, and brought them home to America, with the intention of reuniting the tags with their owners, or the service members' next of kin.

The Roskam's son, Peter, a member of the Illinois state senate, who helped his parents search for the tag owners, commented, "Vietnam veterans many times came back and didn't receive the type of honor they should have."

In submitting this photograph to PeprallyUSA.com, Mr. Barnard wrote:"This solemn yet uplifting...public ceremony was held to honor Mr. Messman for his service to his country. For many of the men whose dogtags are being returned, this is the first time...that anyone has stopped to recognize them and actually say thank you."

"This was only one of many ceremonies of the same sort that Mr. Roskam led in various cities around the nation," said Tom Barnard. "It was his desire not just to return the dogtags, but to publicly thank...the veterans whose identities he was returning."

Le Tourneau University, of which Mr. Roskam, is a former trustee, donated the use of the facilities.

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