Navy veteran’s dog tags found on Nantucket, family hoping to get them back

WBZ

By Mike Sullivan

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    NANTUCKET, Massachusetts (WBZ) — A food and wine festival worker on Nantucket stumbled upon the dog tags of a decorated Navy veteran who passed away in 1982. Now his family is hoping to get them back.

Ernest Gentile Sr. was part of the first Navy SEAL frogmen demolition team in American history. His family says he earned the Navy Cross for cutting submarine netting in French Morocco. For the most part, he kept his war stories from his family, but the ones that he did tell are now retold by his children and grandchildren.

“He would go underwater. One of the medals he received, from what I understand, is him and a buddy were cutting some of the mines underneath, clearing the way for some of the ships to go through while they were under enemy fire,” said his granddaughter, Anne Gardner.

“I recall a story being told where he was a sailor off of one of the ships in the Sea of Japan. He went into the water as the frogmen underwater demolition team to help clear the area for the chain being pulled across the channel to keep the Japanese ships out,” said his daughter Jacqueline Gardner.

“We had pictures of him in his hard hat suit, and we wondered how he could even walk around, but he said, ‘You’re in the water,'” remembered his daughter Frances Downs. “He would teach us how to swim and to hold your breath underwater. It was a big treat to reach a certain spot.”

Location of dog tags now a mystery:

Anne says her grandfather, lovingly known as “Pamper,” battled cancer as a result of shrapnel in his body. He died in 1982, but recently his dog tags were discovered in Nantucket.

“No clue how. We used to live on Nantucket at one point,” said Downs.

“Maybe it came off while he was swimming, and finally eventually washed up on the beach,” suggested Gardner.

A worker at a food and wine festival on the island took a photo of the tags. The worker says the tag was being passed around at the festival for people to see, but he is unsure who is in possession of the tag now. We are working to see if the festival knows its whereabouts, but we have yet to hear back.

“It would be awesome. We could make some kind of a display,” said Downs, thinking about the return of the tags after all of these years.

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