I, however, found them to be a bloody nuisance. On the one hand the army discouraged you from wearing any sort of jewellery, rings etc., the view being that they could get caught up on something as you jumped off trucks and climbed over all manner of things. They did not want the troops damaging their trigger fingers, so I thought; now this made perfectly good sense to me.

Yet, here are these bloody things that you had to wear around your neck, day and night, held together with string (green, naturally!). It was, apparently, O.K. to strangle yourself as you jumped off trucks.

Being a thinking man, I took the view that in our line of work these things were basically unhygienic and a workplace safety hazard, certainly not the sort of thing to wear around patients. Besides that, they would always end up dipping into your food or cup of coffee everytime you sat down to eat. Some caring soul eventually pointed out that the string was a tad too long. So, I chose not to wear them thinking the army had more important things to worry about, after all there was a war going on!

To the best of my knowledge, the army only ever issued each soldier with one set of these damn discs and in the event that some poor bastard lost them, or even worse caught not wearing them, he or she could be treated to another quaint army custom, that of being charged. This is where you are marched up in front of the Commanding Officer by the real boss of any army unit ‘The Regimental Sergeant Major’ (these men are god like creatures whom, I suspect, are born with moustaches and pace sticks). Even the officers feared these people. Once in front of the C.O., one was given the chance to come up with some feeble excuse before being found guilty and taken out the back and put before the firing squad.

Well, it happened that some weeks after arriving in Vietnam the system sent me another set of these bloody dog tags that went straight into the foot locker, never to see the light of day. Some public servant, back in Australia, obviously didn’t know the rule about one set per man and stuffed up.

Another quaint army custom was the inspection of the lines (sleeping quarters), this was usually carried out by the unit god (RSM), the idea being to find something wrong so they could charge someone and thereby justify their existence. It was during one of these inspections that an eagle eyed RSM, who shall remain nameless, spotted my original dog tags hanging on a nail beside my bed.

I was on duty in the wards when I received the advice that the RSM wanted to see me. Fortunately, I was told what it was he wanted and detoured via the lines where I quickly strung together my back up set of dog tags, from the footlocker, before I confidently walked past the firing squad into god’s office.

Whilst I got away with it, I am sure he must have wondered how come the dog tags were still in showroom condition.