You are invited to submit a Story of Service about a person who served America in World War One. The person can be a member of your family, or someone whose information you have collected as part of a classroom, Scout, or other organizational project.
4.7 million men and women from the United States served in uniform during WWI. The United States suffered 375,000 casualties during the war, including 116,516 deaths. Two million individuals from the United States served abroad, including 200,000 naval personnel who served on the seas. Red cross, nurses, ambulance drivers, YMCA and uncounted other Americans supported the nation's war effort both in the war zones and in America's factories, shipyards, farms, and elsewhere.
Their stories of the service must not be forgotten, and what you enter here about each individual will be recorded in the permanent record of the Doughboy Foundation.
Your submission will appear on our web sites and in the WWI Memorial Apps.
Many people have found family records and resources on their WWI ancestors. Others are looking for ways to get started. We have some resources to help you get going. This includes the free WWI Genealogy Research Guide by Debra Dudek a treasure trove of help and resource. Also, it takes time to put together the information so we have a PDF of the form you can download as a reference and to share with other family, class or organization members participating in creating your story.
WWI Genealogy research is challenging. Not only was record keeping a bit haphazard in those days, but tragically, on July 12, 1973 a fire broke out at the St. Louis National Personel Records Center devestating their records.
To help, we have licensed Debra Dudek's wonderful WWI Genealogy Research Guide as a free resource to help you put your ancestor's story of service together.
The eBook is 100 pages of "How to" and "Where do I find" know-how about tracing and finding WWI stories including those of non-combatants such as nurses and volunteers. If you are interested but have no idea how to start, Debra provides a roadmap and plently of advise that will guide you on your journey.
[DOWNLOAD]
Putting together these stories takes time and often collaboration among and between family, class and organization members. To make this easier, you can donwload a PDF copy of the "Story of Service" submission form.
We recommend you print and distribute copies as a handy reference as you research your ancestor's WWI story. Then, when all the information is gathered, copy and paste the result into the submission form online.
Here is where you can provide the narrative story of your veteran's service during WWI. When the story is read it will begin with an introduction of who provided it. Include any information that you feel helps tell their story, and let's others understand their service.
Please do not compose your narrative story on this form. It is possible that the system could log you out after a period of time, or something could go wrong with the upload.
We strongly urge you to write your narrative in a word processor (like MS Word or Google Docs) and then copy and paste it into this form. Then if something goes wrong, you have not lost your effort.
What they say is true! Your story will say so much more if you can include some pictures, letters, draft cards or other scanned references to illustrate your veteran's story.
You can upload up to 3 files. We accept .png | .jpg | .pdf files.
If it all worked, you will receive a confirming email with a copy of all the information you submitted. Check your spam folder is you do not get a confirming email within a few minutes of hitting the submit button.
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