From left Frank Herman's daughter, Gloria Hoffman; his wife Susan Herman, 96, and his daughter Joni Horner posed with a picture of the World War II combat veteran at Herman's home.

It took nearly 76 years, but one of Frank Herman's dog tags are back in the hands of his family.

The Butler County native lost his dog tags when as private in the U.S. Army's 39th Infantry Regiment he fought his way across France, Germany and Czechoslovakia during World War II.

After the war, he returned to Butler, married, had four children and worked for Armco until his retirement in 1983. He didn't share much about his military service with his family.

His daughter, Gloria Hoffman of Butler, said her father kept two Purple Hearts with his other military medals but would never tell them where and how he was wounded.

“He did not talk about the war, maybe in his later years,” Hoffman said.

“I only remember him saying in his last years, 'I lost my dog tags.' He never knew where he lost them or anything.”

His granddaughter, Megan Hoffman of Orlando, Fla., who grew up in her grandparents' house, said, “He lost his dog tags in the war, and he was sad about that.”

One of his daughters, Jeanne Sheffer, gave him replacement dog tags before Herman died in 2009.

But the real tags, or at least one of them, surfaced unexpectedly this year through an unlikely set of circumstances.

This is an excerpt from a larger article that appears in Wednesday's Butler Eagle. Subscribe online or print to read the full article to learn how the dog tags found their way back to Butler.