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DA Form 2385 belongs to the DA series of Department of the Army publications. Its official title is TEMPORARY GRAVE/NICHE MARKER, and its stated purpose is temporary grave/niche marker (s&i arlington national cemetery, attn: annc-a, arlington, va). Edition in force: 10/01/2020. Publication status: ACTIVE. Length is 1 page(s), with roughly 116 fields available for entry.
Responsibility for content and revision lies with OAC. The prescribing directive is PAM 290-5, which sets both the trigger for use and the disposition of the completed document. Entry is made by the named party or by the records clerk holding the file, with review and signature applied in the prescribed order. This edition has been superseded by a newer one. It is kept accessible for reference and for records already completed under it.
Formats offered: PDF, XFDL. All are the same published layout in different containers, and the choice between them is a matter of how the entries will be made rather than what appears on the page. The pdf serves as the authoritative rendering. A fillable pdf exposes editable fields on screen; a printable pdf is the blank form as a flat page for handwriting.
The pdf displays in current browsers and in any reader application. For fillable use a full reader is preferable to a browser viewer, since viewers vary in whether entered data is retained. An xfdl file is available too. The format is IBM Lotus Forms, in use across Army form systems, and it opens only in the Lotus Forms Viewer.
All formats are free to download and no registration is involved. The files are the published documents, distributed unmodified.
What the form asks for
- BRNSER
- CHANGES
- ContentArea1
- DATE
- DAY_A
- DAY_B
- DAY_C
- DENOMIN
- GRADE
- GRAVENO
- Group1
- MO_A
- MO_B
- MO_C
- NAME
- NICCRT
- NUMBER
- PVTMON
- Page1
- R100
- R101
- R102
- R103
- R104
Entry proceeds block by block in the order printed on the page. Identifying particulars occupy the head of the form: name, identification number, unit or organisation, and date of preparation. These fields govern how the record is later retrieved from the file, so they are completed before any substantive block.
Interactive fields are filled by typing into them. Movement between fields is by tab, following the order established when the form was constructed, which usually tracks the page layout. Check boxes and radio groups are set by clicking, and exclusive groups permit one selection at a time. A one-line field has no wrap: text beyond its width prints truncated even when the screen shows it. Overlong content is placed in remarks or on a continuation, not forced into the field.
The signature block is completed last and by hand or by an accepted electronic means. An unsigned form is a draft. Where a second signature is called for — reviewing official, approving authority, witness — each is applied in the order the blocks appear and dated as of application, not as of preparation. Blank mandatory fields are the most frequent defect; a nil entry is marked as such rather than left empty. Other recurring faults: transposed digits in identification numbers, dates in the wrong order of day and month, and stale copies retaining prior data because a working file was reused instead of a fresh blank form.
A Privacy Act statement appears on the form where personal information is collected. It sets out the authority for collection, the purpose, the routine uses, and whether disclosure is mandatory or voluntary. The statement is read before entry, not after. Completed copies carry personal data and are handled and stored under the safeguards applicable to that data.
Disposition of the completed document follows the prescribing authority — delivery to the office it names, transmission through the unit administrative channel, or placement in the individual's record, according to circumstance. The preparer keeps a copy. Retention is governed by the applicable records schedule, not by office custom.
Companion forms are traced by series and number. Within the DA series, documents sharing a proponent or a governing directive are frequently required together, and a form cited on the face of another is generally submitted alongside it. Continuation sheets, covers, and transmittal forms are part of that set and are assembled in advance of submission.
Revision by the proponent supersedes an edition. Version is read from the edition date printed on the form itself, and a stored copy is compared against the current edition before it is used again. Documents already executed under an earlier edition are not redone because of the change.
What is offered here are copies of published Department of the Army documents, made available for download. The site is independent of the Department of the Army and publishes no forms of its own. The material is informational and not legal advice, and no statement is made about whether any office will accept a given document. Questions of entry, requirement, or eligibility go to the proponent or the servicing administrative office.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 2385?
- TEMPORARY GRAVE/NICHE MARKER
- Which edition is current?
- 10/01/2020
- Who is responsible for this form?
- OAC
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL, PDF