Lost dog tag retuned to marine's family, 57 years after he served in Vietnam

Inglis, Florida - Fifty-seven years after he served with the United States Marine Corps (USMC) in 1966 near the Da Nang Province in Vietnam, the lost dog tag that belonged to USMC Corporal Larry Hughes was presented to his family on February 17, 2023 by Andrew White, the Mayor of Inglis, Florida.

Mr. Hughes died in 2019. However, his son, Carl Hughes, and his sister, Patricia Hughes Prickett, who both live in Inglis, Florida, accepted the dog tag and a plaque from Mayor White, that will be displayed at Inglis Town Hall in Mr. Hughes' honor.

James Webb, a former marine and former U.S. Senator from Virginia, and Michael Desch, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, took a group of students to visit an airstrip used by the U.S. military near the Da Nang Province in Vietnam, where Webb had fought in a battle during 1969. A villager rode up to Webb on a bicycle and handed him a dog tag which was on his keychain, and one of six he'd found over the years while plowing a rice field. Professor Desch gave the man some money, and the two men decided they would locate Corporal Hughes and return his lost dog tag to him.