Tips for Locating Veterans

The National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis has company rosters, daily reports and other official records for individuals and units that served in Vietnam. The forms you need to obtain information from the center is available at The American War Library's website. Click the link below to go there and start your search.

Click here for information about getting Military records from the National Personnel Records Center

The National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis has created a web page where Military veterans and the next of kin of deceased veterans can fill out a form requesting a copy of their DD-214. Click the link below to go there and start your search.

Click here to request a copy of your DD-214 from the National Personnel Records Center

The Veteran's Administration maintains mailing addresses for veterans who have applied for benefits. While the VA cannot release information about others, they do offer to forward an envelope to the individual. You place your message in an unsealed, stamped envelope, and include a note to the VA explaining who you are trying to reach. If the VA has an address for the individual, they will forward the note and then it is up to the addressee to respond. The VA address may not be current, and the individual may not respond -- a lot of "ifs" -- but if you know a person was seriously wounded there is a good possibility the VA has an address. [Thanks to Bob Murray, Commo Plt., 66-67 for this tip]

Click here for information on how the Veteran's Administration can help find someone

This is an excellent bulletin board with a wide audience, and many other web sites link to it (such as the Veteran's Administration site). This might be a good place to leave your e-mail address and a note. I check the files every month looking for "Dragons", and have found dozens here. The entries are regularly "lumped" into files to speed up searches so you may want to go back from time to time to leave a message in the most recent file.

Click here to go to the Army Lost & Found Listings

Social Security Number Allocations - This web page shows all of the Social Security Number prefixes and the state each one is allocated to. If you have an old roster or set of orders that includes Social Security Numbers, you will be able to tell what state the vet lived in when his Social Security card was issued. Many vets returned home and still live in their home state. This might help narrow your search.

Click here to go to the Social Security Number Allocation page

This genealogy site provides access to the Social Security Death Index. Using the Social Security Number from an old set of orders or a roster, you may be able to determine if the veteran has died. Orders are notorious for typing errors, so you never know for certain, but this is another excellent resource to try if you can't find the name in a national phone directory.

Click here to go to the Social Security Death Index at Ancestry.Com