Hello all: My dad enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941, got a cold, and was put into the hospital in Jefferson Barracks, Missouri for almost a year while the doctors tried to figure out if he had a heart problem. They finally decided he had a pre-existing heart condition and gave him an honorable discharge in 1942, with no pension or benefits. He was able to petition over the years; getting bumped up to 10%, then 30%, then nothing, then eventually got Senator Wayne Morse to investigate and get my dad a 100% disability pension in 1970. Dad was always very bitter about his Army experience. I have obtained a large file of paperwork and it comes up over and over again in the forms that he was given a CDD of some sort that caused him problems in getting gainful employment. One military doctor called his condition: neurocirculatory asthenia, psychoneurosis, and neuroasthenia, with decompression into schizophrenia. He was seen by many doctors and no two can agree on his disability. Some say he had a bad heart, some say he had no heart problems, some say it was military-related, some say not. He had problems working under pressure and could not hold down a job. He also had applied to Boeing and RCA but was immediately dismissed when they saw his military records. One of his letters to the VA says that the Army should have just "lined us up against a wall and shot us." In 2004 he died by suicide. The last decision was after his death and two doctors declared his death to be service related, so the VA paid for his funeral expenses and sent me a nice flag. I was told by a retired, high ranking military man that "What they did to your dad they did to a lot of people." The pressure finally broke up my parent's marriage. In the papers I have there are instances of the military people coming to our house and checking out our family, which feels very creepy. I feel frustrated, and damaged myself, about having lived my entire life under all of this mystery. My own doctor told me, after my dad died, that I have PTSD myself because of having lived with a dad who had this hanging over him. That seems pretty strange to me, but I think it's true. I have just found about these SPD codes and wonder which codes, if any, were on dad's discharge papers, so I have written to NARA to ask about that. Does anyone out there have any information they can send to me, and words of advice, etc? I would really appreciate any feedback at this point.

I have come across a similar situation with my grandfather.He enlisted in 1942 and spent much of the time in a hospital. He was given the code CDD also. His papers state that he was unable to sign because of a physcial condition. It was also difficult for him to deal with people and would get very stressed. My grandparents didin't even share a bedroom for as long as I can remember and the family life was strange. I can remember talk of him being used as a "guinea pig" He also attempted suicide later in life. He was given an Honorable discharge. At one point, my dad called the VA and they told him, "you don't want to know what that means." I was on active duty myself and assigned codes. This code seems to be old in nature and I am not having much luck discovering what it is. I will let you know if I can find more information.

Sadly an event occurred that not many are even aware of yet:

The 1973 NPRC Fire, a "Record" Loss

On July 12, 1973, a disastrous fire at the NPRC destroyed approximately 16-18 million Official Military Personnel Files.

National Archives and Records Administration's National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records (NPRC-MPR OR NPRC), St. Louis, Missouri.

The affected record collections included:

U.S. Army personnel discharged November 1, 1912, to January 1, 1960. Estimated loss 80%;
U.S. Air Force personnel discharged September 25, 1947, to January 1, 1964, with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E. Estimated loss 75%;

Some U.S. Army Reserve personnel who received final discharge as late as 1964;

A very small number of U.S. Navy, United States Coast Guard, and U.S. Marine Corps records which were out of file and were caught in the section of the building which experienced the most damage in the fire.

No duplicate copies of the records that were destroyed in the fire were maintained, nor was a microfilm copy ever produced. There were no indexes created prior to the fire.

In addition, millions of documents had been lent to the Department of Veterans Affairs before the fire occurred. Therefore, a complete listing of the records that were lost is not available.

Nevertheless, there are many alternate sources that a qualified researcher can access in an effort to reconstruct basic service information.

They, then, can have the Records Center issue a replacement known as a “Certificate of Service.” A Certificate of Service usually takes a couple of weeks to be processed by the NPRC when there is no DD214 in your file, and when supporting documents can be found.

Many NPRC reconstructions can take longer, possibly months.

might try at this link:

http://www.archives.gov/veterans/evetrecs/