Who Lost A Dog Tag?

By Bart Anderson

A sky train of 396 C-47 transport planes, stretching out for more than one hundred miles, was nearing the French Riviera in the predawn darkness of August 15,1944. On board were 5,607 infantry, engineer, and artillery paratroopers who were spearheading Operation Dragon, the Allied invasion of southern France. The remaining 3,400 men of the 1st Airborne Task Force would bail out and land in gliders later on D-Day.

As each flight neared its designated drop zone, green lights flashed on in cabins, and out the paratroopers plummeted into the black unknown. One of those troopers was Eugene L. Brissey of Loveland, Ohio, a member of Colonel Rupert D. Graves’s 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team. Brissey crashed hard into thick shrubbery; his dog tag and chain were ripped off.

Scrambling to his feet, Brissey chucked his parachute, and then stalked off through the foggy darkness in search of his company. The least of his thoughts was the lost dog tag, although it did flash through his mind that if he was killed, he might be buried with the word “Unknown” marked on his wooden cross. However, Brissey survived the war.

Thirty-seven years later, Colette Saeys, who lived inland from the French Riviera, was raking her yard when she noticed that a small metal object had been collected with the leaves and brush. Picking it up, she saw the name Eugene L. Brissey stamped on it. Mrs. Saeys put the dog tag in an envelope and stored it in a drawer.

Eight years after she found the dog tag, two Americans, a man and his wife, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, visited Mrs. Saeys and her husband. The French lady ran a Bed-and-Breakfast inn. After some conversation, the American man recalled he was in the area during the Second World War. Then the French landlady went into the drawer and produced the dog tag. At that time, Mrs. Saeys returned the tag to the man who had lost it in her yard forty-five years earlier during the heat of battle, Eugene L. Brissey.