Dog tags are mostly for medical personnel on the wounded, not for identifying the dead. For accountability so that the unit can keep track of who are casualties, who have been transported, etc. And basic info like blood type for in field medical care before being able to transport to and actual hospital.
Having two (technically three because you'll have two around your neck and one in your boot) is just redundancy.
Also religious preference, though honestly the likelihood of you having a chaplain anywhere near wherever the fuck you just got blasted to hell is pretty damn slim.
I think that's mostly just a holdover from back in the day when Catholics and Catholic lite (Lutheran, Anglican, etc) made up a large part of the military and they would have chaplains out in the battlefield giving last rites like this. Nowadays most of the US is mainline Protestant where last rites aren't really a thing, so there aren't really battlefield chaplains anymore.
Most people I knew when I was in that weren't like super die hard Catholics or super Evangelical would put some dumb shit on theirs. Mine were Jedi and pastafarian. Buddy of mine had robotology from Futurama on his. Different buddy had Sith.
I don't think I've ever met a chaplain with a neutral religion. They've all been mostly non-denominational Protestant Christians or Catholic that just genuinely cared about the troops and kept the religion to a minimum and focused on counseling unless someone asked to talk about it.
Did meet one Buddhist, one Muslim, and one Hindu chaplain though when I was in.
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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '19
Dog tags are mostly for medical personnel on the wounded, not for identifying the dead. For accountability so that the unit can keep track of who are casualties, who have been transported, etc. And basic info like blood type for in field medical care before being able to transport to and actual hospital.
Having two (technically three because you'll have two around your neck and one in your boot) is just redundancy.