War veteran reunited with dog tag after 69 years Newark Mayor Cory Booker, left, shakes hands with Willie Wilkins after returning a box containing Wilkins' World War II dog tags (AP) Willie Wilkins later returned to the US and worked on an assembly line. He was a happy man who doted on his only daughter, but he had a nervous breakdown and post-traumatic stress disorder and retired at age 44, his daughter said. Willie Wilkins and his family were convinced his dog tag would remain buried somewhere in what were once the bloody battlefields of Provence. But in a backyard 4000 miles away, in Istres, France, Anne-Marie Crespo was tilling the soil around an olive tree on a spring day in 2001 and found it. Ms Crespo knew the small piece of metal stamped with a name and numbers belonged to a soldier and kept it on a bookcase shelf. She presumed the soldier died on the battlefield, and she held a ceremony to honor Mr Wilkins and other US war dead. "I often thought of this poor soldier dead for FRANCE + FREEDOMS," Ms Crespo later wrote in a letter to Carol Wilkins. Willie Wilkins (AP) Ms Crespo showed the "treasure" she found to visitors. One took photos of the dog tag and sent them to her brother, Philippe Clerbout. Mr Clerbout posted the pictures in an online history forum and got a reply from the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington. Mr Clerbout became a man with a mission: finding Willie Wilkins. Mr Clerbout sent emails to anyone he thought could help, from the White House to media outlets. A woman from the US Department of Veteran's affairs located Willie Wilkins. Carol Wilkins thought the woman's phone call was a prank and insisted on calling her back. The call was legitimate. The Wilkinses were presented with the dog tag on Wednesday, Victory in Europe Day. Bertrand Lortholary, the Consul General of France, attended. Willie Wilkins has been in a rehabilitation facility and suffers from Alzheimer's Disease and other ailments. When asked if he ever thought he would see his dog tag again, he shook his head. "I never did," he said.