The long-lost dog tag of a World War I infantryman has been found in France and returned to his family in Kansas.

While searching battlefields with metal detectors, Michael Toussaint and Jean Claude Fonderflick have uncovered the identification tags belonging to five Americans, including Pvt. Kent Potter of Chase County, Kan.

Often such discoveries are sold on the Internet. But the Frenchmen were determined to return them to the families of their owners.

The search led them to the granddaughter of 1 of the Americans who lost his dog tag. The Illinois woman helped the Frenchmen reunite the dog tags with the relatives of other veterans.

Dale Potter, of El Dorado, Kan., received his late father’s dog tag Thursday at the Chase County Historical Museum.