A quick post for today: I have been trying to get my great uncle Michael Edward Tierney’s military records from NARA for awhile – even though I had everything but his shoe size and army serial number I kept getting the response “Not enough information to find his records.”

I was surprised at the response, actually since I included his birth and death dates, known addresses, parent’s names, burial location and his division and other Army info from his headstone. But I suppose there’s no cross-referencing for those old records

But, it wasn’t until Ancestry recently published the U.S. National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928-1962 that I finally turned up his Army Serial Number, and that unlocked the box.

I received about 48 pages of records, and even with duplicated info I have a fair bit of research to go through and write up. But for now I thought the service pay card below was an interesting thing to post – the soldiers were paid $1.00 a day when stationed in the US and $1.25 when overseas. Great Uncle Michael was paid a total of $416.50 for 337 days of service, including stints as a Wagoner in the Meuse-Argonne offensive and in the St. Die Sector of France.

(Updated later: looking at the records again, it appears this card may be a pay adjustment and not the complete pay he received during his service. There are some other records that mention $15 per month – and what looks like the application to receive this money was from several years post-war in 1925.)