It was an emotional moment when 90-year-old Catherine Wallace was handed her late husband’s dog tag from the Second World War on Thursday.
Jim Wallace was a soldier from Indianapolis, Indiana who served in Normandy, helping in the fight against the Nazis.
After the war, he came back to America and served as one of the first black firefighters in Indianapolis. He died in 1997.
The dog tag was found on Utah Beach along the coast of Normandy by Francois Blaizot, a French man searching for historic trinkets. Blaizot was determined to return it to the soldier’s family.
According to the Indy Star, the dog tag’s journey home was complicated. After failing to locate the Wallace family, Blaizot contacted an American acquaintance, who contacted a veteran’s group in Indianapolis. A volunteer and former marine, Cory Goodwin, tracked down Catherine at the American Village Retirement Community.
Catherine welled up with tears as Goodwin handed over her husband’s dog tag, a letter and a bag of sand from Utah Beach.
“It is a real pleasure to give you back the dog tag of your husband,” wrote Blaizot. “It is a way for me to pay tribute to the men like your husband who came in our country to restore liberty.”
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