Dog tag

The latest Soviet dog tag model, as used during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, was a simple piece of aluminium. These had the soldiers branch of service and ID number stamped onto them. A much cruder item than the western equivalents.

The Russian dog tag was the same, only with the text "ROSSIYA" ("РОССИЯ") instead of "CCCP". The material, shape and everything remained unchanged for some time.

Now there seems to be a modern version of the dog tag around, a oval piece of steel. These still sport the same, simple lines of text, but are now much tougher.

It is said that soldiers going into combat often replaced their issued aluminium dog tags with private purchase ones. A serious threath to every motorized infantryman was to die inside a burning tank. This scenario could lead to the aluminium melting, and this combined with a burnt corpse would make identifying casualties very difficult. Therefore many soldiers bought steel dog tags, making these was a common practice in garrison towns, as there was always a need for them. These tags would often contain a lot more information than the issued ones: name, address, blood type, names of family and/or relatives, what ever you felt you needed. If soldiers couldn't afford one, but still wanted to make sure that they could be identified in case their death resulted in an unidentifiable corpse, made their own from steel spoons. The spoons handle was snapped off, and the neccesary information inscribed in the metal with a sharp blade or other object.

The commercial dog tags with texts like SPECNAZ and inspirational, colourful pictures are only that, commercial. These are not officially used by anyone.