On March 8, 1918 at Ft. Custer, the army issued two dog tags to each of 30-thousand draftees, with instructions that they wear one around their neck and the other around their wrist “to make identification certain in case of explosion where portions of the body might be blown to pieces!”
Source : WAKV (Plainwell, MI) : The Memory Station Facebook Page
Sarah Sicard, “A Brief History of the Dog Tag“, January 15, 2016.