Finding an american soldier by his dog tag

Hi everybody !

I introduce myself: i am a french student of 22 years old, interesting on history and WW2 of course, but i come there for a special research

A part of my family comes from Normandy and during the liberation an american soldier gave my grand-mother his dog tag. So my grand-mother kept it, but she never wonder whom it belonged. But with my familiy we made some research. We asked the person working there on the american cimetery of Colleville-sur-mer, and with the data on her computer she told us only that he was not dead in Europe during the war. It is only that i know of him.

So i want to know if we can have access of the veteran data. I didn't succeed to find it on internet. So, finding a data where a can easily find informations from what i know ( name, first name, ect...).

I want to say also that my request hasn't financial goals. I don't want to sell it. It belongs to my family, it is a record of this war and of the liberation of my country. I just want to make this soldier less "anonymous" for us.

I'm waiting for your help, and i excuse me for the quality of my english, i don't use it very often.

Bye !

 

At this site, if you enter his Army Serial Number from the
dogtag, you may find his home town:

NARA - AAD - Fielded Search - Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, ca. 1938 - 1946 (Enlistment Records)


Dave

 

Thank you for your help, but unfortunately i don't succeed to find him. His army serial number is unknown in the file, i'v tried to find that a lot of time. It bigins by 384. And i cannot find him his entire name. So i suppose he may have been enlisted before 1938. dans they say there they have no files for them on page 4 :
ftp://216.54.96.55/aad_docs/rg64_army_serial_faq.pdf
Or National archives seems to be unable to registrate files which a difficult for them to read, and that for 1.5 million persons.

 

So his name is VERNON ASKEW
His army number is 38476980

 

That gives me chills...how awesome that something like this stayed in your family.

 

you may not be able find him because I remember hearing that in 1970's (maybe 1960's) there was a fire that burned down a building that held military records of people. ( I think it was fire of 1973 national archives fire in st Luis, Missouri.) I may be wrong.

There is a site that researches and finds people records who served in military.
This site WESTMORELAND RESEARCH

Franz

 

you are correct that there was a fire.. I coulde not find much on my grandfather due to the fire also.. it took lots of research and help from the wonderful peeps on this site and put more together. This may be why you can not find anything on him. I wish you well with your findings.. I looked threw info that my grandfather had on his unit.. He was not in his.. Sorry..

 

Also the T44 stands for when he got his tetanus shot.. T1944...I know Pa got his when he first went in during basic training in 1943 and
Pa's shows T43... so this man may have started in 1944..

 

Thank you guys for your support even if my research hasn't succeed. This man will stay the unknown soldier. Franz45 I retain your site "westomerland research" even if i don't want for the moment asking them about this. I just wanted to do a speed research about this guy, and i thought it could be very simple. But unfortenatly a fire of achives or a an administration error put this wish away. But i will keep it preciously in the family, it has a lot of valeur sentimentale as we say here. There are not a lot of french people who owns something like that.

 

A search of the 1930 Census records produced two possibilities:

Vernon Askew, Accomac County, Virginia
Vernon Askew, Shelby, Texas.

Both were born in 1922, which would put them at an appropriate age.

A wildcard search of the digital enlistment records with the value 38476*** returns no records. A search of 3847**** returns 884 records, most enlisted from Oklahoma or Texas.

There is some percentage of the enlistment records missing from the digital online database. There seems to be a block missing around this particular s/n.

I would suggest contacting the National Archives directly with this s/n explaining that it is missing from the digital record and see if a paper or microfilm record is available.

 

Good work, mcoffee!

 

Thanks a lot Mc Coffee !
I'm asmhamed of not having seen your answer before, i thought this case was desperate and i did'nt returned to this forum.
Now there is two possibilities. And even three because i see there is a third one who was born in 1917, also in Virginia. I will write to the Us national archives now we know this is fewer possibilities. Do you think they agree with information requests from people who are not in the family ?
I will take you aware of all of that.

 

I have not dealt directly with NARA, but since the majority of the enlistment records are online, I would think they would honor the request. If you were asking for a full service record, it would be different.

Good luck with your search.