NY WWII vet receives long-lost dog tag from France
By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated Press
May 27, 2013 10:51 AM CDT
In this Wednesday, May 22, 2013 photo, World War II veteran Irving Mann poses for a photo with his dog tag that was found and returned to him, in Rochester, N.Y. Mann says he was skeptical when an email from a French woman recently arrived at his Rochester jewelry store. She said she’d found the tag...   (Associated Press)

A long-forgotten dog tag that spent the past 69 years in a farm field in France is back in the hands of the western New York veteran who lost it.

Irving Mann says he was skeptical when an email from a French woman recently arrived at his Rochester jewelry store. She said she'd found the tag in her barley field and was looking for its owner.

The 88-year-old chairman of Mann's Jewelers says he thought it might be a scam.

But any doubts disappeared when the woman, Sophie LaFollie, sent it to him in the mail, just in time for Memorial Day.

Mann says he must have lost the pendant when his 90th Infantry Division stopped for a few days while fighting across Nazi-occupied France in 1944.

See 2 more photos