Researching Military Records

[roo_ster]

Howdy:

My maternal grandfather was in WWII in the pacific.  Got wounded & died 20 years later from gangrene*.  I never met the man.

There have been contradictory bits of information from my mom & my grandma when she lived.  I'd like to get the facts down straight by means of a military records search.

How would one go about such a thing?



* Those were 20 productive years.  A year before he died, he was informed that the aftereffects of the wound were causing his lower leg to not get enough oxygen & that they needed to amputate.  His pride would not let him go without a leg, so he sucked it up (along with plenty of cold ethyl) and died a year later from the gangrene.

[Paddy]

IIRC, Barbara has a way to do this.  There's at least one thread here somewhere about that.

[HankB]

Unfortunately, a lot of military records were lost due to a fire a couple of decades back . . .

[Thor]

If you have his service number, full name and dates of service (or close), you can contact the records archive in St Louis, Mo. They may or may not have his info available.

http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/standard-form-180.html

[Scout26]

Unfortunately, a lot of military records were lost due to a fire a couple of decades back

http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/fire-1973.html

[Art Eatman]

For anyone who served before the fire of the 1970s, no records of A through G are available.

Wiped out my father's records as well as mine.  He never mentioned his Bronze Star or Purple Heart while he was alive.  I've no idea how they came about, and now I can't find out.

Art

[Cromlech]

He never mentioned his Bronze Star or Purple Heart while he was alive.

That makes it sound to me like he really earned those medals then.

[roo_ster]

Bernard Brown.

Damn.

[Art Eatman]

Yeah, cromlech, most likely.  He never talked a whole lot about it, but from the way he phrased things, it sounded like he regarded the whole deal as a more interesting form of deer hunting.

He got bored after a few days in a rest camp (two weeks off from war) and wandered back Up Front to an artillery outfit.  Their forward observer had been killed by German artillery.  So, he went out to be the FO.  "Camped out" as it were.  He told the story because of the fun he'd had calling in artillery on a German supply route, and the frustration of not being able to "kill a little staff-car thing".  The little staff-car thing of course was a Kubelwagen, and the subject came up because I'd bought a good-used Volkswagen Beetle.

Art

[Barbara]

That's not necessarily true..many records were destroyed, but if someone served in the military during that time, there are almost always ways of tracking it down. The medical records and the detail in the files cannot be duplicated but other records do exist.

[Barbara]

FWIW, my father's Korean service records were also within the group that would have been destroyed and he was able to obtain them.

My best friend's grandfather, whose name began with an F, also has records available, including his status as PoW.

Art, you were old enough to remember when your father returned from the War, correct? Do you recollect where he came from or if he was in a hospital prior to returning home?