whenever i see a wartime garand i speculate on what battles it saw and where it may have been carried. is there any concrete data out there about certain serial #s used at such and such places?
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whenever i see a wartime garand i speculate on what battles it saw and where it may have been carried. is there any concrete data out there about certain serial #s used at such and such places?
The Fire
A fire at the NPRC in St. Louis on July 12, 1973, destroyed about 80 percent of the records for Army personnel discharged between November 1, 1912, and January 1, 1960. About 75 percent of the records for Air Force personnel with surnames from "Hubbard" through "Z" discharged between September 25, 1947, and January 1, 1964, were also destroyed.
What Was Lost
It is hard to determine exactly what was lost in the fire, because there were no indices to the blocks of records involved. The records were merely filed in alphabetical order for the following groups:
•World War I: Army September 7, 1939 to November 1, 1912
•World War II: Army December 3l, 1946 to September 8, 1939
•Post World War II: Army December 3l, 1959 to January 1, 1947; Air Force: December 31, 1963 to September 25, 1947
Millions of records, especially medical records, had been withdrawn from all three groups and loaned to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) prior to the fire. The fact that one's records are not in NPRC files at a particular time does not mean the records were destroyed in the fire.
Reconstruction of Lost Records
If a veteran is advised that his or her records may have been lost in the fire, he or she may send photocopies of any documents they possess to the NPRC, particularly separation documents. The address is National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records, 9700 Page Blvd., St. Louis, MO 631325 1 00. This enables the NPRC to re-establish files by adding those documents to the computerized index and filing them permanently.
Thanks for the great info about the fire! Several years back I wrote the NPRC for copies of my service records for '95-'01. I had completely forgotten about my request by the time the showed up, 2 years later!Quote:
Originally Posted by robbytheguy