Requesting Your Service Treatment Records: What to Ask For and Why

If you've ever filed a VA claim — or you're thinking about one — you've probably heard someone say, "You need your service treatment records." What they usually don't tell you is exactly what those records are, how to get them, or what to actually ask for when you request them. That gap in information costs veterans ratings every day.

Your Service Treatment Records (STRs) are the paper trail of every medical thing that happened to you in uniform. Every sick call. Every immunization. Every time a corpsman wrote down that your knee hurt after a jump. Every dental visit. Every entrance and separation physical. For VA purposes, those records are gold. They're often the difference between a denial and a grant, because they're what VA uses to decide whether your condition started in service.

This guide walks you through what STRs actually contain, how to request them without missing pieces, and why the specific language you use on your request matters more than most veterans realize.

What Service Treatment Records Actually Include

STRs are not just your old physicals. The full set covers more than most people expect, and if you only ask for "my medical records," you may get a thin version of what's really out there.

A complete STR file typically includes:

Enlistment and separation physicals, including the Report of Medical History (DD Form 2807-1, or SF 93 on older records) you filled out and the Report of Medical Examination (DD Form 2808, or SF 88) the examiner completed when you came in and went out.
Sick call notes and in-service treatment records — handwritten chart notes, SF 600s, encounter forms.
Dental records (DD Form 2813 and related forms). These matter for dental claims and sometimes for TBI, jaw, and sinus issues.
Immunization and lab records.
Mental health treatment notes, which are often filed SEPARATELY from the main medical jacket. This is a huge one.
Hospital inpatient records, which are also commonly filed separately — not with your outpatient STRs.
Line of Duty (LOD) determinations and any Medical Evaluation Board (MEB) or Physical Evaluation Board (PEB) paperwork.
Occupational health records — hearing conservation audiograms, respirator fit tests, exposure monitoring.
Flight physicals, dive physicals, or jump status medicals, if applicable.

If any of those are missing from what you receive, ask for them separately — inpatient hospital records are kept apart from STRs, and mental health records are often filed separately too — because a missing record can lead to a denial for lack of an in-service event or injury.

Why STRs Matter So Much for VA Claims

To win a service connection claim, you generally need three things: a current diagnosis, an in-service event or injury, and a medical nexus linking the two. Your STRs are the primary evidence of that middle piece — the in-service event.

If you tore up your shoulder on a deployment and never went to sick call, that doesn't mean the injury didn't happen. But VA raters look at the paper record first. When a sick call note from 2007 says "complains of right shoulder pain after fall during PT," that one line can anchor a claim 20 years later. Without it, you're relying on buddy statements, lay evidence, and inference. Those can win claims too, but they're a harder road.

Secondary condition claims under 38 CFR § 3.310 work differently: once a condition is service-connected, a new condition it caused or made worse, such as a hip problem from your service-connected back injury, can be service-connected too, and the key evidence is usually a medical opinion linking the two rather than your STRs.

And for anyone working on an appeal — Higher-Level Review, Supplemental Claim, or Board — your STRs are the record VA is reviewing. If something's missing from VA's copy, the senior reviewer or Board judge can't see it. You need to see what they're seeing.

How to Actually Request Your STRs

Where you send your request depends on when you served and whether you're still on active duty.

If you've been discharged for a while

If you left the military before October 16, 1992 (Army), January 31, 1994 (Navy), May 1, 1994 (Air Force and Marine Corps) or April 1, 1998 (Coast Guard), your STRs are most likely held by the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis. The main pathway is a Standard Form 180 (SF-180) — "Request Pertaining to Military Records" — submitted either by mail or through the online eVetRecs system at archives.gov.

If you left between those dates and the end of 2013 (September 30, 2014 for the Coast Guard), the military sent your STRs to VA instead of NPRC, and VA has since scanned them into your electronic claims file (your "C-file"), so requesting a copy of your C-file through a Privacy Act request (VA Form 20-10206) is how you get them. If you left earlier and have already filed a VA claim, VA has probably pulled your STRs from NPRC into your C-file too.

If you recently separated

If you separated on or after January 1, 2014 (late 2014 for the Coast Guard), your service scanned your STRs into DoD's electronic system, and VA pulls them from there when you file a claim; for your own copy, contact your branch's STR custodian, which the National Archives' medical records page lists.

If you're still in or recently retired

Active duty members can usually request records directly from their MTF (Military Treatment Facility). Retirees should ask their last MTF for a complete copy before clearing — much easier to get it then than years later.

What to Specifically Ask For (This Is the Part That Matters)

Most veterans write "please send my medical records" and stop there. That almost guarantees you'll get an incomplete file. Here's what to put in writing instead:

Complete Service Treatment Records, including outpatient, inpatient, and specialty clinic notes.
Mental health and behavioral health records, specifically noting that these may be filed separately from the main medical jacket.
Dental records (if relevant to your claim or for completeness).
Hospital inpatient clinical records from any military hospital you were treated at while on active duty — name the hospital and the year (and month, if you know it), because inpatient records are filed by facility and year (records from a civilian hospital have to be requested from that hospital).
Any Line of Duty determinations, Medical Evaluation Board, or Physical Evaluation Board records.
Occupational and preventive health records, including hearing conservation audiograms, hazardous noise exposure records, and any exposure monitoring, such as your pre- and post-deployment health assessments (DD Forms 2795, 2796 and 2900).
Enlistment and separation examinations (DD 2807-1 and DD 2808, or SF 93 and SF 88 on older records).

Spelling these out one by one helps because different custodians store different pieces. Mental health and inpatient hospital records in particular are notorious for being physically separated from the main STR jacket. If you don't ask, you often don't get.

Also request records in both electronic and paper form if available. Older records are sometimes only on microfiche or paper; newer ones are electronic. Asking broadly covers both.

When You Finally Get the Records — Read Them

Once you have your STRs in hand, actually sit down and read them. Not skim. Read.

Look for:

Any complaint, however small, that matches a condition you have now. A single "c/o low back pain" note from basic training can anchor a claim.
Entries from TMCs, aid stations, or shipboard sick bays that may be in handwriting that's hard to read. Decipher them.
Gaps. If you remember being treated for something and there's no record of it, that's a flag — the record may be incomplete.
The separation physical. Did you check "yes" on any boxes in the Report of Medical History? Those self-reported complaints at separation are powerful evidence.

If something's missing that you remember clearly, you can request a search for related records, submit buddy statements corroborating the event, or check whether VA has notified you which records it couldn't get and what it did to look for them — VA is required to tell you, and you can ask for that in writing. Under 38 CFR § 3.159, VA has a duty to assist you in obtaining relevant federal records, including STRs, and must keep asking for them until it gets them or it's clear they don't exist.

When VA Already Has Your Records but Still Denied You

This is where things get frustrating. Sometimes VA has your complete STRs, the evidence of the in-service event is right there, and the claim still comes back denied — usually because the C&P examiner didn't connect the dots, or the rater missed something buried in the file.

That's a decision problem, not an evidence problem. And it's the kind of problem that gets fixed on review.

At Augustus Miles, we see this often. A veteran will send us a decision letter denying service connection for a knee condition — and then we open the STRs and find three separate sick call notes documenting knee pain in service. The evidence was there. VA just didn't weigh it correctly.

If your decision came back lower than your records support, or denied outright when the paper trail says otherwise, that's where Augustus Miles comes in. Our VA-accredited attorneys know how to pull the specific pages from your STRs that should have been load-bearing in the original decision and build them into a Higher-Level Review or Supplemental Claim.

A Few Practical Tips

Keep multiple copies. Scan everything. Store a copy somewhere offline and somewhere cloud-based. STRs lost once can be nearly impossible to recover a second time.
Don't send VA your originals. Always send copies for a claim; keep originals for yourself.
Request your C-file too. If you've ever filed a VA claim, VA has a claims file on you. That file contains STRs plus every piece of evidence VA has considered. It's often more useful than the raw STRs alone.
Be patient with timelines. NPRC requests can take months. Plan ahead if you're building an appeal with a filing deadline.

Your records are the foundation of every claim and every appeal. The better organized and more complete that foundation is, the better your chances when VA takes a second look.

If VA's Decision Doesn't Match What Your Records Show

If you've already gotten a VA decision and the rating doesn't line up with what's in your STRs, Augustus Miles can help. Our VA-accredited attorneys handle Higher-Level Reviews, Supplemental Claims, Board appeals, rating increases, and secondary condition claims — on a contingency basis, so you pay nothing upfront. Our support team is made up entirely of veterans, and many of them are former clients themselves.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to get Service Treatment Records from NPRC?

It varies, but requests through the National Personnel Records Center often take several months, sometimes longer during periods of high volume. If you're building toward an appeal with a filing deadline, start the records request as early as possible so you're not scrambling at the last minute.

What if my STRs are incomplete or lost?

You still have options. Under 38 CFR § 3.159, VA has a duty to assist in obtaining federal records. If records are formally unavailable, you can submit buddy statements, lay evidence, and secondary sources (unit records, deck logs, morning reports) to establish the in-service event. The 1973 NPRC fire destroyed most records of Army veterans discharged from 1912 to 1960 and many Air Force records for veterans discharged from 1947 to 1964 (surnames Hubbard through Z), and VA has specific procedures for asking NPRC to reconstruct records in those cases.

Are mental health records part of my regular STRs?

Not always. Mental health and behavioral health records are frequently stored separately from the main medical jacket, which is why they get overlooked. When you request your STRs, specifically ask for mental health and behavioral health treatment records as a separate line item. If you don't ask, you often don't receive them.

What's the difference between my STRs and my C-file?

Your STRs are your military medical records from your time in service. Your C-file (claims file) is the VA's complete record of your claims history, including your STRs, every piece of evidence VA has considered, C&P exam reports, rating decisions, and correspondence. If you've ever filed a VA claim, requesting your C-file through a Privacy Act request gives you a fuller picture of what VA has actually seen.

What if VA has my records but denied me anyway?

That happens more than it should. If the evidence in your STRs supports service connection and VA still denied the claim, the fix is usually a Higher-Level Review or a Supplemental Claim, depending on whether you have new evidence to add. Augustus Miles often handles these — our VA-accredited attorneys dig into the STRs that should have been load-bearing in the original decision and build the review around them.