Dog Tag

Jackspeak - A guide to Royal Navy and Royal Marines Slanguage.

Dog Tag - Identity Tag.

How do you identify a dog? He has a collar and name label hopefully, plus these days a micro-chip. Well the powers that be haven't quite got around to chipping service folk, but it's always a case of never say never.

Years ago dog tags were simple devices, then they were replaced with two tags; one green and one red made of a weird material that did not decompose, they were slung around the neck on a chord which had a separate loop for the green tag. The idea being that if you wandered off to the pearly gates one of the tags would be cut off your neck chord, placed with your effects, and the other would stay attached to your grotty remains. Thereby identifying you to all and sundry.

This tag is slightly different in that it's made of metal, (State the Bloody Obvious). It was issued to aircrew. Drivers of rotary and stiff wing vehicles which defy gravity have a rather understandable reluctance to burn. However, if one does become the centre of a pyre it soon becomes distinctly difficult for forensic medical types to identify your crispy duck lookalike. Hence the metal.

So what do we have? Name, obviously, service number, Meth isn't an accelerant for fire or a means of intoxicating the wearer, it's the religion I was brought up in. No matter what you tell the military, even if you are a law abiding chanter of satanic rituals you have to declare a religion. Finally your blood group. Now that is all well and good, BUT, interrogators of nastier regimes will still ask you, in the nicest possible way, for the information, and if you do perchance survive a collision with the earth the people who rescue you will always blood type you before giving transfusions. So the information is purely for investigative reasons. Unless of course during the period of your career you become rather forgetful, then it's a handy aide memoire.