Posted on 02/01/2014 9:00:35 PM PST by peacelover81
I need help on finding free records of my grandfather who fought in world war 2 and the Korean war.
Military Personnel Records
http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/
Hope you can find them. If he was in the Army, most of the WW2 records were lost in a fire in 1973 at the St. Louis Records Center.
later
Welcome to Free Republic, hope you have some luck!
...you can also try contacting your local VA (VETERANS ADMINISTRATION).
If he is still living, you may need a consent form and should contract the government office responsible for the service branch records.
What’s his name?
There are still a lot of records remaining after that fire...my wife got her Dad’s partial records from them last year. He was a WWII vet.
Which one of the several million veterans was he?
Or do we have to just guess?
You have to provide some basic information.
As already mentioned most records were destroyed in the 1973 fire.
The best source of free records is your local library.
Most of them have the (expensive) library edition of ancestry.com, which is the portal for all things public.
The problem is getting computer time at a library. Go in on a weekday morning if you can.
Also, if you live near a big city, you may have access to the National Archives and Records Center. Google them.
Good luck!
Also check out familysearch.org
They have a lot of stuff.
I think you'll find them in that big cardboard box in the attic - the one next to the box of camping equipment.
If not, try looking in those old orange crates stacked next to the winter tires in the garage.
Regards,
“my wife got her Dad’s partial records from them last year. He was a WWII vet.”
She was lucky. I have searched for two WW2 vets and both have no records on file there. Fortunately, both had a few personal records they had kept through the years. The Govt website indicates about 80% are gone from the fire.
Contact your state representative’s office. My mom contacted our congressman’s local office and they got the records for us. They were able to re-create them somehow.
I read somewhere, recently, that they now have technology that can even extract information off of burnt records.
Good luck, and welcome to Free Republic.
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