Ok everybody so as you can probably guess from how page 2 looks, page 2 has a lot of stuff on it
to fill out. It's actually not so bad so just go ahead and tackle section 1 first. So, oops, there we
go, section 1 has a lot of biographical information. So your, you know, number 1 here, you're asking for
the vet's name that they had during, you know, the time that they were in the service. So, specifically
you want last, first, middle. So make sure you get the order there correct, but you
also have the vet's social security number, date of birth, and place of birth. So ideally you should be
able to provide all of this information and you should be able to get the vet to give you at
least the branch of service, whether or not they were an officer or enlisted, and the approximate
date, meaning like the month and the year that they went into the Army, the Marines, whatever and,
you know, also the month and the date in which they got out. All of that stuff, I mean ideally you'd be
able to fill in all the blanks here. However I mean, in some situations, the vet honestly can't
remember when they got out or when they went in or something. So, I mean, if, if this is wrong or this is
wrong or something, ideally it's not going to be a big deal because, you know, with the, the vet's name,
social, date of birth, the people who process this form should be able to find the vet's file anyway,
even if some of the information here is missing or slightly incorrect. So the only other kind of
tidbit here I have is for the National Guard line right there. So I've done I think two cases where
I've helped veterans of the National Guard get records. So in both of those cases, the records in
question actually were held by the state and not the federal government. So in my case or my cases,
it was the California National Guard in Sacramento that had the records so not the National
Archives in St. Louis, not the, you know, the Marine Corps at, you know, Quantico, Virginia, nothing like
that. You know, they were at the state level and I had to go to Sacramento to get them. So, I guess,
that's kind of my only, you know, kind of practical tip, I guess. So for 6, is the person deceased? Click no
or yes and then was the person, the veteran, retired? A full 20 years retired, they mean, from military service.
Click no or yes. So that's section one. Hopefully that's pretty self-explanatory. Section two is a
little bit harder to explain, but I'll give it my best shot. So the Standard Form 180 allows you to
request multiple things. So the, the most common one, I think, is the veteran needs a DD-214 or an
equivalent. So if their records were destroyed during the fire of 1973, for example, they might
have a certificate of service which is the same thing as a DD-214. Anyway, but the DD-214, that's
a very common thing for a veteran to ask for and it helps, I guess, in processing the Standard Form
180 if you could specify the year in which the veteran got the DD-214. So if it's an Army vet
and he knows that he got out of the Army in 1985, chances are the DD-214 was issued in 1985, so just
go ahead and type that in. So the DD-214 is, like I said, a very common thing to request. Another
very common thing to request is the veteran's OMPF. That's Official Military Personnel File and that
actually, well in theory, is supposed to include all the paperwork that that vet or service member
or veteran incurred while they were in the service. So, the OMPFs that I've requested, they have like,
you know, induction medical exams, induction dental exams, records of, you know, court-martial
proceedings. I've seen records where a veteran was caught, or a service member was caught ,you
know, AWOL for a couple days and they got punished, you know, had to, you know, lose a couple months pay,
etc. So I mean everything and anything could be in there. So the OMPF is actually quite helpful
in a lot of cases where you are trying to show, like you're trying to show like a general thing
that you might need specific evidence for. So, for example, if you need to show that the
veteran has PTSD and they have that because they were constantly being attacked, you know, the base
that they were at was constantly being attacked, the OMPF might have records of, you know, battles
and, you know, skirmishes, etc. and all of that, you know, you can take a bunch of those and hopefully
establish that PTSD actually did occur. So anyway. So speaking of like PTSD and other
injuries like that, another thing that you can use the Standard Form 180 for is to request medical
records and specifically these are going to be medical records that the veteran kind of, I guess,
had, I guess, or kind of resulted from cert, from treatment medical treatment that they received
while they were on a base or, you know, that they received in battle or something. So if they, if
you know that the veteran, you know, got treated for X while he or she was stationed at say Fort
Bliss, Texas, let's say, then you could request medical records from the hospital on base at Fort
Bliss. So that's a fairly common thing to do. Number, I guess, number four the last kind of box here.
Number four obviously is an other field so, I mean, if you have any other kind of specific thing that
you need to, that you think that the military might have, go ahead and specify that here. So, number two or kind
of section two right here, this, I think, is for, just for statistical purposes. So I mean, obviously,
it says up here that it's strictly voluntary. So the military, the VA, or something they're
probably going to be interested in why veterans are requesting records. So the thing if they know
that like, if the VA knows that a lot of people, a lot of veterans are trying to request records
for medical purposes or for, you know, employment purposes or benefits or something, hopefully that
information will be used to, you know, serve vets better in the future. So, if you can,
like, you know, there's no kind of, well, there's very minimal kind of privacy kind of concerns here,
I think, so if you can, like, you know, I, I would go ahead and fill in section two, like you never know
what will help a vet further on down the line. So, last section, section three is also pretty
self-explanatory, I think. The first part this, this part right here, you basically have to identify who
the requester is. So the cases that I deal with it's always the veteran himself, himself I think
I've done, like a couple times it's herself, but most the time it's men. So I usually check
that box, but there are other boxes here where, you know, the veteran is deceased and it might be
the widow who is requesting records or, you know, the legal guardian of the vet, if vet is, you know,
incapacitated in some way. So go ahead and check the box that applies to your situation. So box 2
or section 2, this is where you specify, oops, this is where you specify who will receive the records.
So a lot of times in cases that I have, the veteran puts my name and, you know, business address there
so the, the, the records themselves will actually get mailed to me. If, you know, you don't have to
mail it to an attorney like, you know, you can put the, like if you're the veteran, you can put
down your own address and the National Archives, for example, will mail you your records, you know,
directly. So, the important thing, though, I guess the one thing that the processors of this form
will definitely check for is you need to have the requester sign right here and date it and
put in all their contact information. So in the cases that I have, like I said, it's the veteran
himself or herself who's actually requesting the records. So they sign here and date here, put their
contact information, and that's fine. Yeah, so if you have a legal guardian or, you know, next of
kin or something, you can sign here also like, you know, if you're the widow, let's say. But you
need to submit documentation so if, you know, if the veteran is deceased, you have to submit proof
of death. If the veteran has a legal guardian, you need to submit the state court paperwork
establishing that. So hopefully that made sense. It's not nearly as bad, I think. The way that I
usually do the, do the Standard Form 180 is that I request everything. So I check at least those three
boxes like that and if I have something special in that particular veteran's case, then I go ahead
and check that one and specify over here what it is that I want. So hopefully that made sense. It's
not, it's not bad like it's, it's actually not a bad form. It's pretty easy to fill out once you
kind of go through it a couple times. So hopefully that made sense and let's go ahead to page three.