DD Form 2745, the Enemy Prisoner of War Capture Tag, is a three-part perforated tag you fill out at the point of capture to link a detainee to their personal property and to a permanent administrative record. To fill out DD Form 2745 correctly, print the capture data on the tag in legible, waterproof ink, tear it along its perforations into its three numbered parts, attach Part A to the detainee, place Part B with their personal property, and forward Part C to your supporting military police element. Army Regulation 190-8 governs the process for all services and lists the exact fields the tag must contain.
When You Fill Out the Tag
Tagging is the second step in the six-step detainee handling sequence taught under the acronym STRESS: Search, Tag, Report, Evacuate, Segregate, and Safeguard.1Marine Corps Training Command. Detainee Handling Student Handout You complete the tag immediately after the initial search and before the detainee is moved anywhere. The point is to capture the facts of the seizure while they are still fresh and while you are still standing where it happened, because grid coordinates and circumstances get harder to reconstruct with every hour that passes.
What to Write on the Tag
Appendix B of AR 190-8 lists the data fields the capturing unit must record on every DD Form 2745:2Washington Headquarters Services. AR 190-8 Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees – Section: Appendix B
- Name: last, first, middle initial.
- Rank or grade.
- Service number, if the detainee has one or provides it.
- Date of birth.
- Date of capture.
- Time of capture, in local time.
- Location of capture, given as grid coordinates rather than a general place name.
- Capturing unit.
- Circumstances of capture: whether the person surrendered, was found hiding, was apprehended on patrol, and so on.
- Medical condition, including any wounds observed and any treatment provided.
- Personal property: a description of weapons, documents, and other items found on the person.
You will rarely have every field at the moment of capture. The regulation expects you to enter what you can right away, at a minimum the date, time, location, and capturing unit, and to add the remaining details as they come to light. Print clearly. Use waterproof ink if you have it: the tag stock is durable and water-resistant, but that only helps if the writing survives too.3Marine Corps Training Command. Detainees Student Handout
The Three Parts and Where Each One Goes
The form is perforated into three sections, each printed with the same serial number so they can be matched later. Parts A and C have reinforced eyelets at the top for wire or string.3Marine Corps Training Command. Detainees Student Handout Once you finish writing on the form, separate the parts along the perforations and route each one as follows.
Part A goes on the detainee. Thread wire, string, or another durable material through the eyelet and attach the tag to the person’s clothing. Part A stays with them through every stage of evacuation. Every unit that takes custody along the way is expected to verify that Part A is present and legible, and to create a replacement if it has been damaged or lost.2Washington Headquarters Services. AR 190-8 Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees – Section: Appendix B
Part B goes with the personal property. Part B functions as the envelope for the detainee’s belongings, excluding weapons and sensitive items, which move through intelligence channels separately. Identification documents, money, clothing, and religious items stay with Part B so they can be matched back to their owner at any point in the process. Under the Geneva Convention, personal property must be returned to prisoners on release, and Part B is what makes that traceable.
Part C goes up the administrative chain. The capturing unit forwards Part C to the nearest military police element or designated collection point, and from there it moves to the theater prisoner-of-war information bureau. That bureau maintains a central accounting of everyone in U.S. military custody and feeds into the Central Prisoners of War Information Agency established under Article 123 of the Third Geneva Convention.4International Committee of the Red Cross. Convention (III) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War – Article 123
The matching serial numbers are what hold the system together. When a detainee reaches a collection point, receiving personnel verify that the number on Part A on the person matches the number on Part B with the property, and Part C provides the paper record higher headquarters uses to reconcile the file.
If You Don’t Have a Blank Form
Doctrine treats the information as more important than the paper. If no DD Form 2745 is on hand at the moment of capture, create a field-expedient tag containing the same data fields and replace it with a proper form at the earliest opportunity.5Washington Headquarters Services. FM 3-19.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations A piece of cardboard with accurate coordinates, a date, and a capturing unit is worth more than a blank form left in a supply room.
The form itself carries an edition date of May 1, 1996 and is listed in the Washington Headquarters Services forms directory. It is not available for electronic download; the directory refers requesters to the Department of the Army’s Forms Management Branch, and units ordinarily requisition capture tags through standard supply channels as part of pre-deployment planning.6WHS.mil. DD 2745 – Enemy Prisoner of War (EPW) Capture Tag
What the Capture Tag Does Not Replace
DD Form 2745 is the capturing force’s record. It is not the detainee’s own identity document. Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention requires each party to furnish anyone who might become a prisoner of war with an identity card showing name, rank, service number, and date of birth, and that card cannot be taken from the prisoner.7International Committee of the Red Cross. Convention (III) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War – Article 17 Whatever identification the detainee already carries stays with them; the capture tag is an additional record created by the U.S. force.
The paper tag also does not stand in for biometric enrollment. DoD policy requires collecting fingerprints, iris scans, and facial photographs from every detainee as soon as practicable, and assigning an internment serial number within 14 days of capture under normal circumstances.8Washington Headquarters Services. DoD Directive 2310.01E DoD Detainee Program The tag is the first layer of accountability at the point of capture; biometrics and the internment serial number come later, through separate systems, and supplement rather than replace it.
Consequences of Getting It Wrong
AR 190-8 is a lawful regulation, and failure to comply with it can be prosecuted under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which covers failure to obey an order or regulation and dereliction of duty. Punishment is whatever a court-martial directs, and lesser violations may be addressed through nonjudicial punishment under Article 15.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 892 Art. 92 Failure to Obey Order or Regulation Beyond individual accountability, incomplete or inaccurate tagging can compromise a detainee’s legal status, complicate later tribunal proceedings, and weaken the detaining force’s position under international law.