Since my father’s personnel file burned at the NPRC leaving nothing behind, learning about a military organizations is important so that I can reconstruct his service using organizational records.
The Ike Skelton Combined Arms Research Library (CARL) digital library is home to an important collection for beginning research into military organizations. This massive collection was donated by George Nafziger to the Library. The Nafziger Collection of Orders of Battle contains detailed information about military organizations spanning from 1600 to 1945¸all of which can be downloaded from the website.
To locate information about WWII, I clicked on the button
This brought me to a search page for the collection that already had the “World War II” filter selected.
There were many results to browse, so in the search bar, I entered the terms: 500th AAA
The results narrowed down to a small number of relevant documents. The first result was the one I wanted, “American antiaircraft artillery, barrage balloon and coast artillery battalions, 1941-1945.”
I clicked on the result and was brought to a page where I could view, download and print the document.
I downloaded this PDF file, and copied the source information into a document where I keep links and annotations about what I locate.
The document is a long table, listing information about all these WWII Battalions.
The first page contains the column headers (slightly misaligned):
Page 5 is the Battalion I am interested in:
What does this mean:
The 500th AAA Gun Battalion (Semimobile) was raised (began on) 20 January 1943. It was disbanded on 20 September 1944.
What to do with this information:
This information about this organization becomes part of the timeline of my father’s service. It will also be combined with information gathered from other sources.
When reconstructing records of my father’s service, this is key information for looking for military organizational records. This will help to unlock the data found in the Morning Reports. Since the Battalion was disbanded in September 1944, I will have to look to those Morning Reports for that month to find out what happened to the men of the organization after that. My father was still in Greenland until November 1944.
Combining this date information with my other reading, it may be that my father was in this Gun Battalion at Camp Davis, NC.
An interesting point is that the 500th AAA Gun Bn was redesignated (renamed) from the 500th CA Bn in June 1944. The redesignation was noted in the Morning Reports. This previous name was not reflected in the list, but combining the date with the older designation will help me locate the appropriate Morning Reports.
The Department of Veterans Affairs offers a useful and interesting resource that can be downloaded. It is titled “America’s Wars.”
As the title suggests, it contains a list of US Wars, as well as the years of the conflict. It goes beyond the dates to include the number of service members who were involved and the number of battle deaths. For most wars the number of non-mortal woundings is also reported along with other statistics. Notes that document estimated values are included.
The second page of the reference includes dates of death for the last veteran, the last widow and the last dependent of earlier wars. The U.S. Veterans and Dependents on the VA Benefits Rolls as of 2023 is included. There is also predicted estimates of the number of living WWII veterans until 2039. This is a reminder to interview those who are still among us!
While hunting for the rest of the Morning Reports for Battery A, 500th AAA Gun Battalion, I located a different format of the original roll, that offered a different option for downloading. (You can read how I searched for and download the Morning Reports of the 500th AAA Gun Battalion for September 1943’s at WWII Morning Reports using the NARA Catalog).
The interesting thing about these Morning Reports is that June and July for the same organization were filmed sequentially. This makes me curious if the reason may be related to the redesignation of the Battalion on 8 June, when the Coastal Artillery (CA) Battalions were redesignated Antiaircraft Artillery (AAA) Gun Battalions.
There was another surprise in store: these records could be downloaded in PDF files containing chunks of the Roll. (That means you do not have to download these one-page-at-a-time!)
I have been going through the results to determine if they relate to the Battalion that I am researching.
This took me to Image 1 (of 640). Not the links next to the thumbnails.
The links on the right side are navigation to the results.
I clicked on the link for Image # 643.
Even though my browser was not loading the PDF file, this page was different than others I had found. It had an option to download the PDF file.
Image # 644 looked familiar to me, based on the Morning Reports I had viewed for this organization. It was a page indicating the previous name of the organization before it had been redesignated.
The above image is the thumbnail view of the image below.
Of course, I downloaded the PDF file.
The filename was one of the 30 listed below the image, 85713825_1940-01-thru-1943-07_Roll-0711-04.pdf
Rather than have to download each image separately, the downloaded file contained the Morning Reports for June (beginning on 8 June) and July 1943 for Battery C, Battery D and the Medical Detachment of the 500th AAA Gun Bn.
The pdf files present the Morning Reports in chronological order, rather than the way the images are presented counting down (in the order they were photographed on the original roll).
Since this filename with -04 on the end suggested it might the 4th piece of Roll 711 (4 of 4), I took a chance and downloaded the file with -03 on the end.
Page 5 of the pdf had my answer! This file contained the Headquarters Battery of the 500th AAA Gun Bn
Both of these PDF files contained 125 images, so I know that when I locate these downloadable files in future, I will probably have to locate the rest of the organization by checking the files before or after the one that I am viewing.
Although I am not yet sure what triggers the conversion of individual images to being grouped together into PDF files for an organization, I will continue to look for these records and ask questions.
Minor update: I have located with two links Morning Reports for the 500th AAA Gun Battalion for June and July 1943, with each link leading to a page with a different type of file to download. One link is for downloading individual TIFF file downloads of each page, the other is for downloading PDF files.
WWII Morning Reports up to 1943 are now available on the NARA website and can be located through the NARA Catalog. (More Morning Reports are being added, as I have located ones for 1944, too.) For those wishing to research WWI Morning Reports, I recommend using them on Fold3.
Why search for the Morning Reports?
These organizational records can tell us where all the assigned soldiers were on a specific day, and the activities being done. They tell us when and how soldiers moved from place to place. They show when there were promotions, sick for duty and when they were sent to the hospital. They also show if soldiers were assigned to other organizations for temporary duty, or when they were permanently transferred to another organization. At a minimum, a soldier’s name will appear upon transferring in and transferring out of an organization. Memos may also be tucked into these reports.
For those of us whose Army ancestors’ personnel files burned in the fire in 1973, without leaving enough to be restored through technical means, these records are a key part of the reconstruction process.
Why search for them now?
In this blog post, I will describe how to search for the Morning Reports and download them. The process is not as easy as searching through fully indexed records, which will definitely come soon.
Given that fully indexed records will be easier to search, the question becomes whether or not to wait. For me, there have been some research questions that I have been wanting to answer, and these records hold many of those answers.
Know before you search
Currently Morning Reports up to 1943 (with at least some beyond that date) are available to view and download through the NARA Catalog. That means if the military organization was not formed until after the last year that was loaded to the catalog, you will not find the records. It also means that if your soldier joined an organization after the last year currently in the catalog, you will not see them in the records.
The WWII Morning Reports were filmed by month, then organization. That means you will have to hunt down the group of Morning Reports month-by-month.
The images were filmed in reverse chronological order. As you see the image number increase, you will see dates in reverse order, and the names of organization backward. For example, I was searching for Batteries within a Gun Battalion, so Btry D will appear before Btry A. When the download the files, you will see the number in the filename decreases.
There is a SPACER image separating reports between organizations, so look for them at the start and end of the month.
Searching for a name
This approach is not recommended. Searching the NARA Catalog can be awkward, and when I did try to search for a name the search results gave no feedback to help identify if a result would be of use to me. Searching these records by name will evolve over time, possibly on another existing genealogical website.
Searching by military organization
This blog post will focus on searching for the military organization for a soldier.
The search box on the page contains the text “Search within this Series.” This box is where you type your search terms.
Searching option: I found it easier to search the whole catalog. Of course, the effectiveness of this technique will depend on the keywords that are used. You can try it both ways and see which way works better for you! I searched from: https://catalog.archives.gov
I scrolled through the results to scout out what was available.
Since I did not review the result for the Red Wings in 1999, I cannot be sure what how the search terms 500th and AAA connected with the record. Perhaps the result included words about a 500th game or goal, and AAA Hockey teams. Most results seemed more relevant to my goal of finding promising Morning Reports.
NOTE: YOU HAVE TO CLICK ON THE SEARCH RESULTS to see the links to the results within the set of images where the search terms are located. (You cannot open in new tab and to see the images with the search results (the organization)! If you were to click to open in a new tab, you would be taken to the first image on the roll, with no navigational clues to get to the morning reports of the organization.
I thought that September 1943 would be interesting, as it was the first full month that the 500th AAA Gun Battalion was stationed in Greenland.
Clicking on this result takes you to the first image on the roll, which is most likely NOT what you are looking for. See the list of links to the search results located on the right.
Since we know that these rolls were filmed backwards, we know that Image 249 is the last image of the Battalion for September 1943. Click on the link: Image # 249.
Image #249 is the last page of September Morning Reports for all of the 500th AAA Bn CAC. It is the last page of the Medical Detachment’s September Morning Reports (Med Det 500th AAA Bn CAC), which is the report for 30 September 1943. Below is a close up of the top of the report.
Keep looking at the Organization field to get to the battery, company or other organization you are seeking.
From the page with the image, you can view and download the image to your computer. The Download button is on the lower left of the document viewing window.
You can also click on Extracted Text to open a window with text that has been extracted from the image, and can be copied. Although a few errors may be present, the quality of recognizing the typewritten characters is good.
I left the Extracted Text window open as I viewed image by image, going backward in the days of September 1943 so that I could collect the text. (I am keeping an Excel Spreadsheet with the image numbers, links and other data.)
At the bottom of the image viewing window, I used the Next button to see the previous Morning Report.
Since I went through the images sequentially, they began with the end of the Medical Detachment and ended with the beginning of the Headquarters and Headquarters Battery. The very last image was the beginning (because they were filmed backward), rewarding me with confirmation of what I knew about the 500th AAA [Gun] Bn parent and its sub units:
VARIATIONS ON SEARCH TERMS:
I did try a variety of search terms, experimenting with spelling out words, using more of the organization’s name, and the specific battery. Some of the results were for other battalions numbered in the 500’s (e.g. 502, 506). Definitely try different combinations of names and abbreviations when searching for military organizations.
What’s next for me
Downloading more of the 500th AAA Gun Battalion’s Morning Reports, searching both backward and forward to learn of their reorganizations. Of course, I will search for when my Father transferred in and out of the organizations to follow his history throughout his time in service.
I will also be trying to see if it might be more straightforward to search for the organization’s Morning Reports other ways.
WWII Military Research can have challenges for many reasons. Of course, the fire at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) may have burned an army ancestor’s file. Unlike WWI records. Not many of the WWII records are online. This means a little more work is required in identifying which records will help and then traveling to the repositories.
We had known that my father was stationed in Greenland as a soldier during WWII, and that he traveled to Greenland by ship. He spoke very little about WWII, but that was some of the very little that he had shared.
His Report of Separation contains the date that he departed the Continental United States, in Box 36.
Date of Departure: 1 Aug 43
Destination: Greenland
Unlike the WWI ship manifests, the WWII ship manifests are not digitized and indexed. That means to use them you have to take a trip to NARA II in College Park, MD. The problem is that these records are stored by ship name, so you need to know the name of the ship to find the manifest. (In contrast, we can search using a soldier’s name to locate the ship manifests without knowing the ship names upon which our WWI ancestors traveled.)
Timelines are one of my favorite tools in genealogy. Of course, I have been busy building a timeline and gathering information in a binder dedicated to researching my father’s WWII experience. Without the ships’ names, there was some missing data in that timeline.
Having that timeline, I had explored this book for candidate ships carrying him to and from Greenland. I had identified potential ships and eliminated many.
The one clue that has been taking me places was a single sheet of paper found in my father’s personal belongings. It commemorated his crossing of the Arctic Circle. This certificate included his name, superior officers’ signatures, and the latitude of the Arctic Circle. Being concerned with operational security during wartime, this certificate had a blank line for the ship name as well as for the longitude where they crossed the circle. The day of August in 1943 was also blank. But there was one clue, his military organization: Btry ‘A’ 500 AAA Gun Bn
Morning Reports are a wonderful resource. Several years ago, I brought my research team with me to NARA St. Louis to view and copy the Morning Reports for the 51st Pioneer Infantry Regiment, in which my grandfather served in WWI. The WWI Morning Reports are now online, which makes them very convenient to gather and use. However, the WWII Morning Reports have not been digitized and require a visit or the use of a retrieval service.
Here, at last, was information about my father’s outgoing trip. On 1 August 1943, Battery (Btry) A of the 500th Antiaircraft Artillery (AAA) Battalion (Bn) of the U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps (CAC) was onboard the SS Yarmouth.
Now, I could learn more about the USAT Yarmouth from Engineer Charles’ book.
At this point, it was time to slow down and record the collection of evidence that I had. One of the best ways to understand something is to undertake explaining it to others, so I created a document to share with my brother. This document contains the facts I know, so that they can be summarized in a research plan.
We remembered mentions of the outgoing convoy, and now I can investigate them. I will contact NARA to see if I can arrange to view the Yarmouth’s manifests, and perhaps consider looking at the deck logs. Both should be located at College Park, MD.
No, NOT all the WWI and WWII military records for your ancestor were burned!
We often hear the misinformation and read many posts on Facebook claiming that all the military records burned. This post will help shed light on just a few of the records about your ancestor’s service that are still available.
It is important to know there were original records that were never in the OMPFs, and so, they were NEVER BURNED. These records were part of the paperwork generated by military organizations, and were kept separately from the individual personnel records. The individual personnel records were actually constructed by using these original records.
This blog post covers some great examples of records that could help you understand your ancestor’s military experience: Rosters/Musters and Morning Reports. For military ancestors who died while in service, there are WWI Death Files and WWII Individual Death Personnel Files (IDPF).
Muster Rolls and Rosters
These records contain information about service members who were in an organization, so you can place your ancestor with an organization at a specific time. These are lists of the members of an organization during a specific time period (or at a specified time such as the last day of the month). They shows who was sick in hospital, who was “lost” to the organization by transfer, and to where they were transferred, who was “gained” by the organization through transfer, and who was attached. By piecing these together, a service member can be tracked.
Browsable images of WWI muster rolls and rosters are available online at the FamilySearch website. You need to know the military organization for the service member because these are not searchable. United States, World War I, military muster rolls and rosters, 1916-1939 (The filmstrips are available at the National Personnel Record Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, MO.)
Morning Reports
These reports cover the day-by-day details of an Army organization, giving a brief summary of the status of the men and animals in the organization.
The front of the morning reports contain columns that record the counts of officers, enlisted men and animals. On the back, brief notations were made naming the soldiers who transferred in, transferred out, transferred to a hospital or were sick. Notes were made of soldiers who were loaned out to other organizations, who were promoted, where and how far they traveled, courts martial, and disciplinary actions.
Like any other diary, this will give context to your military ancestor’s service even when his name is not mentioned.
These records are available at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC). The U.S. Navy has Ship’s Logs, which rarely mention individuals. Learn more about Ship’s Logs here.
WWI Death Files / WWII Individual Death Personnel Files (IDPF)
For service members who died while in service, a death file will exist. In WWI, these are Death Files; in WWII they were called Individual Death Personnel Files (IDPF). These files are truly individual, as the contents will vary for each case. Each should contain the circumstances of the service member’s death. If the ancestor died in combat, there will generally be a description of how he died, compiled from available witnesses.
For an ancestor who went overseas, the file will contain correspondence with the next-of-kin to establish whether to ship the service member’s remains back to the United States, or bury him in an overseas military cemetery. In the file for a WWI service member who was buried overseas, there may be information about a Gold Star trip sponsored by the government to allow mothers and wives to visit the grave of their fallen soldier in Europe. If the service member was originally classified as missing in action, the file may contain information about how the remains were identified.
Although these files exist for those who died during service stateside, typically these files contain less information that for those who died in combat.
For service members who died while in service, a burial card will exist. The burial card contains information about where the service member was interred, and where the remains had been relocated. (To learn more, read the blog post Researching Soldiers Who Died During World War I.)
The family of the soldier below chose to have his remains stay in Europe, in the American Battle Monuments Commission Meuse-Argonne Cemetery. NARA Archivists have reported not yet finding where the photographs are stored that are referenced on the cards.
Know that only the personnel records for Army and Air Force service members were involved in the fire, and that even those ancestors still live in the unburned pages of the military records.
