Mr. Hosbach: How do you get the Service Record. At our Court House all i got was a one sided page of his discharge? Marva

Marva, to my knowledge, an individual Service Record, in its entirety, does not exist. It was a 24 page tan booklet which fit into a tan envelope (Form No. 208) about the size of a current day business envelope. All information pertaining to the individual from "Induction" to "Final Endorsement" (Discharge) was recorded in the Service Record. There was a companion, W.D.A.G.O. Form 20, February 1, 1942, "Soldier's Qualification Card", which, among other things, listed, in Section 28, "RECORD OF CURRENT SERVICE", THE DATE, ORGANIZATION, GRADE, PRINCIPAL DUTY AND MOS (military occupation specialty) of each change of duty station and promotion pertaining to the individual. This was an 8 1/2 x 11 two sided form which was punched (coded) much like the key punch system which came later. To my knowledge, these forms for the individual do not exist. I have both my Service Record and Form 20, only because I was the custodian of these Forms for my entire Unit and made "True Copies" of mine before leaving the Service. Ellis Hosbach Bethel Park, PA

Some of those punch cards are what they are using to try and get back some of the info that was in the fire in St Louis, it is NARA that is doing this in D.C. I didn't know they were that big, I thought they were about 8" long and about 5" - about the size of a letter size envelope - you used to wrap them around a "thing" and then key punch info and it appearred as little holes in the card, then they had to interprete what they meant.To bad you can't get that entire envelope, you would really have the story of someones military career. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ellis Hosbach" <ewh@adelphia.net> To: <WORLDWAR2-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 10:49 PM Subject: Re: [WORLD WAR II] Questions re Discharge Papers for U.S. Army | Marva, to my knowledge, an individual Service Record, in its entirety, does | not exist. It was a 24 page tan booklet which fit into a tan envelope | (Form No. 208) about the size of a current day business envelope. All | information pertaining to the individual from "Induction" to "Final | Endorsement" (Discharge) was recorded in the Service Record. There was a | companion, W.D.A.G.O. Form 20, February 1, 1942, "Soldier's Qualification | Card", which, among other things, listed, in Section 28, "RECORD OF CURRENT | SERVICE", THE DATE, ORGANIZATION, GRADE, PRINCIPAL DUTY AND MOS (military | occupation specialty) of each change of duty station and promotion | pertaining to the individual. This was an 8 1/2 x 11 two sided form which | was punched (coded) much like the key punch system which came later. To my | knowledge, these forms for the individual do not exist. I have both my | Service Record and Form 20, only because I was the custodian of these Forms | for my entire Unit and made "True Copies" of mine before leaving the | Service. | Ellis Hosbach | Bethel Park, PA | | | | ==== WORLDWAR2 Mailing List ==== | To post queries/answers to the list, send an email to: WORLDWAR2-L@rootsweb.com We are an international list. Please remember to tell us what country your ancestor was from and what country you are in now if different. This helps us help you. If you give dates please help us understand the date you are referring to. For example: 4 Nov 1944 or Nov 4, 1944. | | ============================== | Census images 1901, 1891, 1881 and 1871, plus so much more. | Ancestry.com's United Kingdom & Ireland Collection. Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13968/rd.ashx |