There is a valuable resource that was recently added to Ancestry.com. The U.S. Hospital Admission Card Files, 1942-1954. The information contained may help you piece together some of your family member’s puzzle. However, there is a catch……
This database describes itself in part,
The files contain records pertaining to some 5.3 million patients, mostly U.S. Army personnel wounded in battle during World War II and the Korean War. The World War II records include only Army personnel treated at Army facilities, but the Korean War records include a few records (approximately 5 percent) for non-Army personnel and non-Army treatment facilities (approximately 4 percent).
The catch is – the database only contains, as it states, those who were in a hospital. The full data set at NPRC in St. Louis also contains those who were not treated in a hospital and those who died in military service.
When you use this new Ancestry database, you may still be missing part of the information you need to tell your story. Additionally, not every field seems to be indexed for every entry, so you see different fields for different people. This may be because the information wasn’t on the original Hospital Index Sheet or it just wasn’t transcribed.
Bottom line – check the database but be sure to follow-up with research at NPRC yourself or with a researcher. The image below is from my cousin James Privoznik who was Killed In Action. You won’t find him or this information in the database.
Do you need help telling your family member’s story and locating records? Ask me to schedule your free phone consult today and let’s get started with research.
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My grandfather was a POW during WWII and there is an admission card which states he was a repatriated prisoner of Germany repatriated during current year and then
Description 5586532. I can’t find any legend or explantation of what description 5586532 could mean. Are there records of POWs and there time as a POW? I’ve been trying to discover which camp he was held at. Is this something that can be gotten from St. Louis?
Sherri I’m sending you an email.
Jennifer
Hi!
Since my Dad’s service records were likely destroyed in the 1973 fire, I was thrilled to discover the one-pager of info about my Dad at the army hospital in Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides in 1943-44. But of course, this raises more questions!
As the sheet itself says, this is “Information from the hospital admission cards…” Do we know anything about those “cards”? DO THEY STILL EXIST?
I learned programming around 1970, and vividly remember working with the old 80-column punch cards (also called Hollerith cards). The challenge then was to cram as much info as possible into those 80 columns. And that makes me pretty sure that the “hospital admission cards” we’re talking about were those cards, and a big clue is the coding of dates, such as “123” = December 1943 and “024” = February 1944. I’ll bet the original cards had full names and who-knows-what-else, leaving only space to cram in those other dates and codes, as compactly as possible.
ALSO: Now that I have that one-page sheet, is there any hope that I might discover anything else about my Dad in New Hebrides?
Thank you!
Hi Kevin,
I’m sending you an email from info@wwiirwc.com to talk about this.
Jennifer
I’d like to know more about a distant cousin’s medical admission card…
What questions do you have?
I’d like to know the specifics, such as how long he was admitted and what his rank was at the time, as it was close to his discharge date. 🙂
His rank specifically won’t be listed. You’d need to do the research or hire someone, like me, to find the answers. The admission and discharge dates from the hospital are on the index.
If you would like to do a research project or discuss one, you can email me at info@wwiirwc.com and provide his discharge paper and any other papers you have. If you don’t have that then I need a unit, full name of veteran, service number, rough or exact years of service, branch (I assume Army since you are talking about hospital index). Then we can set up a phone call to discuss options.
Jennifer
Okay, thanks, will do!