After Nearly 70 Years, A Soldier's Dog Tag Comes Home

When Anne-Marie Crespo began puttering in her garden in Istres, France one day 12 years ago, she was about to discover a link to her nation’s wartime past -- and to a 20-year-old soldier from North Carolina who had been tasked with one of the military’s most sacred yet emotionally wrenching assignments.

Crespo, while digging beneath an olive tree at her home near the Mediterranean port city of Marseilles, uncovered a World War II-era dog tag belonging to Willie Wilkins, who had accidentally dropped in 1944.

On Wednesday, with the help of French citizens, the US Department of Veterans Affairs and a Newark-based organization that aids military veterans, soldier and tag were reunited. Wilkins also received the State of New Jersey's Meritorious Service medal.

“This is a wonderful story that completes a circle that began with a Newark native’s service to our country in history’s greatest war. We are honored by Willie Wilkins, and it is truly appropriate to help return these artifacts to him and to recognize him today, on the anniversary of the final defeat of Adolf Hitler,” Mayor Cory Booker said.

Booker was speaking at a city hall ceremony to commemorate the 68th anniversary of “V-E Day,” the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies on May 8, 1945. Among those attending were members of the Junior ROTC from Malcom X. Shabazz High School.

“It is indeed a great privilege for me to be here and acknowledge one more time the commitment of American soldiers who helped France get back its freedom so many years ago,” said Bertran Lortholary, the consul-general of the French consulate in New York City. “We will never forget what you have done for us.”  

Wilkins, a 90-year-old South Ward resident, was the guest of honor at the ceremony -- but was unaware beforehand that he was to be presented with such a personal memento of his long-ago service.

Years of effort on both sides of the Atlantic preceded the return of that memento to Wilkins Wednesday.

After pulling the tag from the ground 12 years ago, Crespo cleaned it and placed it on the mantle of her Istres home. Like Lortholary and many of her other fellow French, Crespo remains grateful to the US military for liberating her country from Nazi tyranny; she even held a small ceremony in honor of the thousands of Americans killed during the war, including, she believed, Wilkins.

Among those who attended Crespo’s memorial was a friend named Philippe Clerbout, who owes an especially personal debt of gratitude to American GIs: US soldiers returned Clerbout’s father to France from a German prison camp.

After recording the name and serial number, Clerbout spent the next several years trying to find out all he could about about Wilkins, who was serving in a quartermaster grave registration company when he lost the small metallic tag during a campaign to liberate the French Riviera in August 1944.

Finally, Clerbout connected with the US Department of Veterans Affairs Office in Indianapolis, which informed Clerbout that Wilkins was indeed alive and well and living in Newark with his daughter, Carol. A VA official then contacted Jack Fanous, executive director of the GI Go Fund, who reached out to Carol Wilkins and helped arrange Wednesday’s ceremony.

Based at city hall, the GI Go Fund provides services like job placement and helping access medical care for military veterans. The agency is also helping Wilkins -- who, like many veterans of his generation, did not take full advantage of all the services to which he was entitled -- obtain veterans benefits.

Wilkins’s duties during the war involved digging and recording the locations of graves near overseas battlefields, returning soldiers’ effects to loved ones and preparing the scarred bodies of the fallen for burial. The doleful task left Wilkins suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, his daughter said.

Still, Wilkins went on to lead a productive life, raising a family while working at Western Electric in Kearny and serving as a deacon in his South Ward church. On Wednesday, the sharply dressed great-grandfather smiled broadly as he spoke with Booker and other officials during the ceremony.

“I haven’t known such joy in my heart since my mother died in 2007,” said Carol Wilkins. “When I got the call from the Veterans’ Administration that they had found Daddy’s dog tags, we were so happy. I want to thank the mayor and everyone involved for returning these tags.”