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Show HN: New search engine and free-FOIA-by-fax-via-web for US veteran records
Search the BIRLS Database - over 18 million records about deceased US veterans, from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, now online and FREE from Reclaim The Records
If you cannot find a known-deceased military veteran's name or information in the BIRLS database, but you still want to try to get a copy of their full claims file, there are a few steps you can take to try to get the VA to dig deeper and attempt to locate their records. Note that for these types of "build your own FOIA request" cases, where a veteran's name was never included in the BIRLS database (or at least not in the public version), the VA will need to do a more thorough search of their records to try to locate any surviving materials, and it may take many more months to receive a response. Examples of some famous deceased American military veterans (most of whom served in WWII or later) who are not listed in the BIRLS database include Humphrey Bogart, Yogi Berra, Woody Guthrie, Stan Lee, Henry Fonda, Jackie Robinson, Buddy Hackett, Jack Kerouac, Herman Wouk, Carroll O'Connor, Ralph Ellison, Harlan Ellison, Haskell Wexler, Peter Falk, James Garner, Lenny Bruce, and Kirk Douglas.
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