Canberra paramedic completes 17-year quest to return World War II dog tags to US soldier's family

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The discovery of a set of Second World War dog-tags in the Solomon Islands set Canberra paramedic Dan O’Sullivan on a quest to re-unite them with the soldier's family. It took 17-years and a trip half-way around the world. But the dog tags finally found their way home.

Transcript

00:00 In 2006, Dan O'Sullivan, a paramedic working for Aspen Medical, made a discovery in a Honiara

00:07 marketplace.

00:09 I happened to come across an elderly gentleman that was selling some World War II artefacts

00:16 and amongst some of the things he had on the ground was a set of dog tags. I had to buy

00:20 them off him so it cost me about $10 I think it was and from that moment I started researching.

00:28 But finding out more took much more than just an internet search.

00:32 It took me essentially 14 years to finally get a breakthrough before we worked out where

00:39 exactly he was from.

00:42 The dog tags belonged to a US Army Second Lieutenant killed in action in 1944.

00:48 He died on his 28th birthday unfortunately. He ended up being from Portland in Maine.

00:55 He wasn't married, didn't have any children but certainly had an extensive line of brothers

01:02 and sisters, family etc.

01:04 An email from one of Ben Cox's relatives one morning in 2020 finally ended the search.

01:10 I was over the moon. It was a very emotional time I guess you could say. 14 years of hard

01:16 work and there were periods there where I really didn't think that we might find that

01:23 connection.

01:23 COVID travel restrictions caused delays but in November this year Dan's employers helped

01:29 pay for his journey to Portland where he handed the dog tags to the family.

01:34 It's brought Ben's memory back to life.

01:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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