How to Get Your DD-214: The Free Routes, the Forms, and Who Can Request One

The National Archives calls it a Report of Separation, generally issued when a service member performs active duty or at least 90 consecutive days of active duty training. The form in use in recent years is the DD Form 214, Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty. Before January 1, 1950 several similar forms did the same job, including the WD AGO 53, WD AGO 55, WD AGO 53-55, NAVPERS 553, NAVMC 78PD and NAVCG 553.

Everything it records is administrative rather than clinical. Date and place of entry onto active duty, home address at entry, date and place of release, home address after separation, last duty assignment and rank, military job specialty, military education, decorations and campaign ribbons, total creditable service, foreign service credited, and the separation information: date and type of separation, character of service, authority and reason for separation, and the separation and reenlistment eligibility codes.

It is not a medical record. Health records covering outpatient, dental and mental health care in service are a separate file with a separate custodian, and nothing on the DD-214 says what a clinic wrote down about a person. It is also not an application for anything. Holding the form starts no process. It is a document other agencies read when they decide what someone is eligible for.

Start at the National Archives, and start online. The request system is eVetRecs, at vetrecs.archives.gov, and it costs nothing for veterans and next of kin. Sign-in runs through an identity-verified ID.me account, and the VA notes that the National Archives may ask for a live selfie photo taken with a smartphone as an added verification step. The same form covers DD-214 and separation documents, the full Official Military Personnel File, replacement medals, and medical and health records.

Recent separations have a second free option. The VA lists milConnect as a Defense Department route for anyone discharged from the Air Force after October 1, 2004, the Army after October 1, 2002, the Marines after January 1, 1999, or the Navy after January 1, 1995. It requires a milConnect account. Marines who served from 1998 to the present and Coast Guard members from 2008 to the present are pointed at their personnel command instead, and the VA says the National Archives will forward such a request there.

One thing worth knowing before anyone requests anything: the VA states that if you submit an application for VA benefits, it requests your DD214 for you when it receives the application. Getting a copy yourself is useful for your own files, for employment, and for state and county offices. It is not a step you have to complete before the VA can start work.

The paper route is Standard Form 180, titled Request Pertaining to Military Records. The National Archives says that although not mandatory, using the SF-180 is the recommended method to send a request for military service information. It runs three pages. Page three carries routing tables, and the address you use comes off those tables: find your branch of service, your separation date, and the type of record you want, then send the form where the table sends it. That step matters, because not every military record sits in the same building.

Most military personnel records are at the National Personnel Records Center, and the National Archives publishes the mailing address as National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records, 1 Archives Drive, St. Louis, MO 63138. The fax number listed for the center is 314-801-9195. Federal law at 5 U.S.C. 552a(b) requires every written request for non-archival federal records to be signed and dated within the last year, so an unsigned form comes back unfilled.

The National Archives does not take requests for military personnel records by email at all. It says the Privacy Act of 1974 and Department of Defense directives require a written request, signed and dated. It also warns that Priority Mail, FedEx, UPS and other express services only get the envelope to St. Louis sooner. They do not move the request up the queue.

Two groups can ask without anyone's permission. The veteran, and the next of kin of a deceased former member of the military. The National Archives defines next of kin as the surviving spouse who has not remarried, father, mother, son, daughter, sister or brother. Next of kin have to send proof of death with the request: a copy of the death certificate, a letter from the funeral home, or a published obituary.

After enough time passes, anyone can ask. The National Archives states that military personnel records are open to the public 62 years after the service member leaves the military, and that the calculation is the current year minus 62. It is a rolling date, so the pool grows every January. Records past that line are archival, and NA Form 13075 states that access to archival records does not require written authorization from the veteran or next of kin.

Under 62 years, the general public gets less. The National Archives says records of individuals who left service less than 62 years ago are subject to access restrictions, and that only limited information or copies may be released to the general public within the provisions of the law. It frames the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act as the balance between public access and a former service member's privacy.

The DD Form 214 is issued in numbered copies, and they do not all carry the same blocks. The Army's block-by-block separation guidance states that Block 25, Separation Authority, and Block 26, Separation Code, are to be completed for copies 2, 4, 7, and 8 only. Block 24 is Characterization of Service. Block 28 is Narrative Reason for Separation. Block 30 is where a separating soldier records a request for copy 4, which the guidance says is then physically delivered before departure from the transition center.

So a copy missing blocks 25 and 26 is a shorter version of the same document, and a veteran holding only that version is holding less than the fuller copies contain. No archives.gov or va.gov page reviewed for this article states which numbered copy the VA prefers, so this page does not name one. What the National Archives does offer is the alternative: request the Official Military Personnel File rather than a single document, and the center sends what is in the file.

For the veteran and for next of kin, no. The National Archives states that generally there is no charge for basic military personnel and medical record information provided to veterans, next of kin and authorized representatives from federal, non-archival records. On the same page it says that some companies advertise DD Form 214 research services and will charge for obtaining copies, and that this is a free service provided by the National Archives and Records Administration. That sentence is the agency's own.

There is one exception, and it turns on the age of the record rather than on who is asking. Once a record becomes archival at 62 years past separation, it moves onto the public schedule: $25 flat for an Official Military Personnel File of five pages or less, and $70 flat for one of six pages or more, which the National Archives says is where most files land. Files of Persons of Exceptional Prominence are priced per page with a $20 minimum. Archival orders require the complete photocopy of the file, not one page out of it.