A serviceman’s identification tag is a personal badge with a number, used to identify and record servicemen, in particular, to quickly identify the killed and wounded in combat conditions, and therefore compulsory to carry on their person. During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army used small screw-on Bakelite containers (cases) in which a piece of paper with the soldier’s personal details was inserted. The form was filled in two copies. In case of death of a soldier one copy was sent to the registry, the second copy was given to relatives after burial.

Many Soviet soldiers did not put a note in the “death case” at all, considering it a bad omen. Often soldiers wrote their surnames and names on spoons, which were worn behind the boot shaft. At the end of 1942 the compulsory soldier’s death cases were canceled.