A soldier’s medallion, or death tag, was a personal identification tag of a serviceman, necessary to determine the identity of a fighter in the event of his death. The medallion of the 1941 model consisted of a black ebonite hexagonal or octahedral capsule with a lid and two slips of paper inserted in it.
The first tokens appeared in the Russian Empire in 1877, during the Russo-Turkish War. All soldiers and officers received metal tags with a cord to wear around their necks. The badge was stamped with the names of the regiment, the number of the battalion and company, and the personal number of the serviceman.
The innovation was established by the Charter of Nicholas II in September 1902. In the course of history, the medallions were repeatedly modified: not only their quality, material and appearance changed, but also their meaning.
The soldier’s ID tags, with which Soviet soldiers entered the Great Patriotic War, were established by the order of the People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR No. 138 from March 15, 1941. The “Regulation on Personal Accounting of Losses and Burials of the Deceased Personnel of the Red Army in Wartime” was introduced.
Medallions were made at small factories and in artels. At the same time, the citizens of the besieged Leningrad made their own tags that differed from the standardized tokens. Due to the lack of supplies in the besieged city, they were made using the available dark gray-green ebonite of a round, non-faceted shape.
During the Great Patriotic War, medallions were worn not around the neck, but in a special pocket of the trousers, which was located between the side pocket and the fly. It was believed that that area was the least vulnerable in combat.
Before the introduction of Red Army identification books, despite the fact that the capsule with a paper insert was the only document of a serviceman, there was a superstition among soldiers that wearing a death medallion was a bad omen. Very often they were simply thrown away or the paper forms were not filled out. Furthermore, such capsules could be used for other purposes, for example, small household items were stored in them or they were modified into a mouthpiece. In November 1942, the medallions were abolished and were no longer provided to the soldiers.
