Army Discharge Papers???????????????

I am so confused.

My Congressmans office called the records office in StLouis to try and get my fathers discharge papers. The said they would fax them each day but didn't but I did finally get them today.

Here is what is messed up on them.

It shows he enlisted in 1962 but I was born in a military hospital in 1961. The paper also shows he was at Ft Chafee in 1957. The discharge papers also show that he was with Contiental Air Command CONARC as his last assignment but I know that was not true. He was working on an Army base at the time and was never in the Airforce.

The discharge papers show 10 years foriegn service but 6 years total service. That does not add up but I am sure it was 27 years service.
How can foriegn service be a higher number than total service? He was also drawing a military retirement check and the VA can see that but again the VA says he does not show up on their system but can find him on other systems. The VA tells me his service record is obviously wrong since it shows him having assignments at a date before they can find an enlistment date.

The VA tells me that I need to be sending forms and such to get his service record corrected.

Is anyone familiar with this kind of thing?

Dads service record shows he was at places I know he was not and also omits tons of stuff as well and their own math does not add up. A few things on the service record is correct however.

... Intelligence? Classified Information?

He did do intel...

But I don't see how they can show Airforce service on his DW214 or what ever it is called because I know he could not have been there the time it says he was there. I was still in School and we were living on an Army base. It also does not make sence that he first enlisted after already having forign service. The form itself shows years and dates many years before it shows his enlistment. His enlistment should not need to be any kind of secret.

Has anyone out here ever worked for the VA or know how to navagate all of this mess. I have been working on my dads affairs since he got sick and every single thing is not working right.

From my own experience in the Navy, I can see where this could easily happen. For example, when I re-enlisted, the paperwork consisted of several forms. One cancelled the previous enlistment contract and another was the new enlistment contract for the new period. If somewhere along the line his original enlistment contract went missing and the only enlistment contract someone doing paperwork could find was a later re-enlistment contract, that may have caused a bad entry in the service record. While in the military, you are constantly having to get corrections made to your service record due to errors. Mostly it's things that are not documented.

The StLouis archives had a massive fire some years back and a lot of records, including mine, were destroyed. I know they had a project to reconstruct as many as possible, so maybe your dad's flawed one is a result of that problematic reconstruction.

Fortunately, I have a good copy of my DD214 and was already in the VA system so it's not that great a problem for me.

One of the service organizations such as American Legion, DAV, etc. might be able to help.

Good luck.

Thanks Don,

But could this explain how it shows Airforce duty when he was never in the Airforce?

There was a fire at the records center in St. Louis in 1973, and millions of records were damaged/destroyed. More info on the records center here. If you haven't checked it yet, here's the VA's website. My dad's been working for the VA since he retired from the Army in '93, when I see him, I'll ask if he knows any info that would help you.

Oh...a fire. Hmmmm.

It looks like they lost tons of my dads stuff and some poor airforce guys stuff ended up in my Dads.

It shows he enlisted in 1962 but I was born in a military hospital in 1961. The paper also shows he was at Ft Chafee in 1957. The discharge papers also show that he was with Contiental Air Command CONARC as his last assignment but I know that was not true. He was working on an Army base at the time and was never in the Airforce.

Click to expand...

Do you know the year he retired /separated from the military, then go back 27 years to figure out when he enlisted. Also do you know if there was any break in service ie contract ended, he didn't sign back up for several months, or he was in the Reserves during any of that time ?

From what I can tell :
1. The Air Force separated from the Army in 1947 to become its own branch.
2. CONAC was activated in Dec 1948 and deactivated in August 1968.
3. the first draft for the Vietnam conflict was in 1969 (after you were born in a military hospital ) so that means what was said before about reenlistments is the most likely reason.

My Dad sent me this link, hope it might help:

DD-214 Policy Department of Defense

This is a long shot... But some folks have filed their discharge papers with the county records office just to avoid these types of problems (my own father, in WWII, had records of major campaigns in Europe missing from his own service history).

Also, have you gone through all your father's personal records at home and in any safe-deposit boxes? I found my Dad's records (including a laminated business sized photo-reduction--this was from ~1946 or so) of his discharge papers in his stuff as we were cleaning up from his death (sniff-sniff).

Good Luck and hang tight.
-Bill

I was able to get my Dad's Navy records from WWII recently, it only took about 6 weeks. It sounds like they have screwed up your Father's file and merged in pieces from other people, possibly with a similar name. Maybe by asking for a search by name rather than number, or something along those lines, you may be able to get more of the correct records.

I am a retired Army vet with over 28 years service. I was active when CONARC was in existence. It was an Army headquarters organization which covered the continental United States for management and training purposes. It stood for Continental Army Command and had nothing to do with the Air Force. CONARC was reorganized into two separate headquarters TRADOC and FORSCOM one for Training and the other combat forces management, i.e. Training and Doctrine Command, and Forces Command. I can not speak to the other issues with the DD 214 without looking at it and it may need to be corrected. But there is nothing to do with Air Force with CONARC even if it was mistakenly spelled wrong on the document.