Reclaim The Records has announced possibly the largest-ever public dataset of deceased US veterans.
The Beneficiary Identification Records Locator Subsystem (BIRLS) database provides an index to basic biographical information on more than 18 million deceased American veterans who received veterans benefits in their lifetime, including health care, disability or life insurance policies, educational benefits (the GI Bill), mortgage assistance (VA loans), and more.
Finding a name listed in the BIRLS database means that you can make a free FOIA request for a copy of that deceased veteran’s full VA claims file, which may contain hundreds of pages of never-before-seen biographical and historical material about the veteran, their military service, and their interactions with the VA. BIRLS provides a direct link to make the free FOIA request.
Can a Canadian citizen in Canada submit a FOI request?
Very exciting news for a lot of genealogists!!!