Discharge papers
The one document a veteran’s family can’t do without
There’s a form called a DD-214. It’s the discharge paperwork, and a veteran’s family needs it to claim almost anything: the burial flag, a headstone or marker, a place in a national cemetery.
This is a United States system, so what follows applies to American service.
Most families can’t find it. A good number don’t know it exists. And a surprising number don’t know the person served at all.
What it unlocks
Burial in a VA national cemetery at no cost, for the veteran and often a spouse. A headstone or marker. A burial flag. A Presidential Memorial Certificate. In some circumstances a burial allowance toward costs.
The VA asks for a copy of the DD-214 or another discharge document when a family applies for the headstone, the marker or the certificate.
The scheduling office for a national cemetery burial takes calls on 800-535-1117, and that is the number to call first if a death has already happened and the papers are missing.
Getting a replacement
The National Archives holds military service records and will issue a replacement. Next of kin can request one. It’s far easier if the veteran asks for it themselves, while they can.
It isn’t instant. Requests are worked through in order and the wait can be long. A funeral being arranged this week will not wait for it.
Doing it once, in advance, and putting the paper somewhere findable turns a wait of weeks into a drawer.
The 1973 fire
On 12 July 1973 a fire broke out on the sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. It burned for twenty-two hours. Forty-two fire districts fought it, hampered throughout by low water pressure.
Somewhere between sixteen and eighteen million service files were destroyed. Around eighty percent of Army records for people discharged between 1912 and 1960 went. So did about seventy-five percent of Air Force records for discharges between 1947 and 1964, for surnames falling alphabetically after Hubbard.
There were no duplicates, no microfilm and no index. The cause was never established.
Staff recovered around six and a half million damaged files, and the center still rebuilds basic service histories from pay records, VA files and military hospital paperwork. It works, and it is slow.
For a family whose relative served in that period, a discharge paper in a drawer at home may be the only copy that exists.
Nobody knows to look
This is the part that catches families, and it has nothing to do with paperwork.
Plenty of people who served never talked about it at home. Three years before a long civilian career, decades ago, in a job nobody in the family has ever asked about. The children know there are photographs somewhere and that is all.
So the papers sit in an envelope marked ARMY in a box in the study, and nobody opens it, because nobody has any reason to think it matters.
Two lines
That they served, with roughly the years and the branch. And where the paper is.
The second is no use without the first.
Sources
- The 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center, National Archives
- Military service records, National Archives
- Burial benefits eligibility, US Department of Veterans Affairs
- Planning a burial in a national cemetery, National Cemetery Administration
That they served, and where the paper is. Two lines, and only one person can supply them. Here is a finished binder, free to read: the example binder.