A devastating July 12, 1973, fire at the National Personnel Records Center in suburban St. Louis, destroyed some 17 million military personnel records.
Anyone trying to get military records for a relative – or the subject of a news story – may have heard those dreaded words: Those records were lost.
What follows is like a military tattoo, in a precise order:
…in a fire…
…in St. Louis…
…in 1973.
Turns out that infuriating inferno took place 40 years ago last Friday.
Both Donna Miles, of the Pentagon’s own American Forces Press Service — About 85 percent of the records of soldiers discharged between 1912 and 1959, including veterans of World War II and the Korean War, went up in smoke — and Amy McCullough, of Air Force Magazine – The fire is still taking its toll on military families, as the lost records were quite literally one of a kind and irreplaceable — have detailed the conflagration, its impact, and the continuing efforts to salvage answers from the ashes.