Seeking pictures of January 15, 1943 enlistment at Camp Crompton of William Henry Rabb of Haywood County, NC

Question

Special Media Division · Answer

Thank you for posting your question on History Hub! The Still Picture Branch does not have portraits/headshots or group photographs taken during training. According to the Military, graduates&rsquo; formal photos, both individual and group, were taken by private local commercial photographers and offered for sale at the time taken. Unfortunately those items rarely became part of official military records nor were they retained by the commercial photographers responsible for shooting the photos. The Still Picture Branch has many candid photos of U.S. Military personnel but in most of them, there is no identification of the people shown. We have various name indexes, filed by last name where one can complete a search for the specific person you are looking for. 
 
 Our Army personality index can be found as 111-PX: Index to Personalities in the U.S. Army Signal Corps Photographic Files . A tutorial on how to use the Army, WWII and Korea digitized section can be found at: https://historyhub.history.gov/military-records/army-and-air-force-records/b/army-air-force-blog/posts/researching-personalities-in-u-s-army-photographs . 
 
 If you have not done so already, you can request his Official Military Personnel File (OMPF). It is possible that a photograph could be attached to the OMPF. For more information about how to request personnel records from the National Archives' National Personnel Record Center (NPRC), please visit our website here: https://www.archives.gov/veterans . Specifically, members of the military who separated between 1962-present can be found at the NPRC, while those who separated between 1912-1961 can be found at the National Archives at St. Louis . For the most complete copy of a personnel file, in Section I of the SF-180, on the line for "Other" (Specify), write "Complete copy of every page of personnel file - not an extract." Please note that in 1973 a fire at the NPRC unfortunately destroyed a large number of US Army and US Air Force personnel records. You can find more information at https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/fire-1973 . 
 
 We invite you to continue the conversation with community members on History Hub, but should you have follow up questions for the staff at Archives II, please email us at stillpix@nara.gov so that we can assist you further. We hope this assists you with your research! Sincerely, Still Picture Branch Special Media Division (RRS) [RRSS- 24 - 26343 -SB]