Looking for someone that was in the military with you or tracking down military records for a family member! 1. Gather all the information you have papers, letters, military records, any information from friends or relatives who remember some of the information. key things: are time/dates of service, units assigned to, service number or at least social security number. 2. gather this up and write down all you can in calender sequence. Then you have some of what you need. This will still leave holes in the complete information/story. 3. when possible - go to the internet and try to search the units the veteran might have been assocation, i.e.-25th Infantry Division, MP's, 9th Infantry Division, armor. Simple searches may also include lots of leads, such as searching Vietnam war, Korean war, WWII. You will get many sites/links to go through but this may help you with information.. 90% of all the links have a webmaster that will be more than glad to lead you on your way or provide lots of information. 4. When this is all the information you may be able to obtain then turn to the government.. You may request (under the Freedom of Information Act) records on this Veteran from the St Louis Records Center.{address in another location on this site} They will advise you of the forms required and fill them out with all the information you have obtained so far...Please undeerstand they have all the records for veterans. It is a major undertaking to locate them, in their warehouse -BE PREPARED FOR A LONG WAIT- It can take months.

If you are looking for someone you served with-use the information in item 3. also here are some helpful sites to start with. Start by searching for units/ships etc. then start on these sites..It took me thirty years to locate a friend of mine and it was not from one of the above. I found his address written on a piece of memorbila and started writing all the persons with that last name in the phone book for that city..67 inquiry letters later I got a response from him.