DD Form 2062 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 2062, Record of Preparation and Disposition of Remains (Outside Continental U.S.), April 1984, and it exists to Record of Preparation and Disposition of Remains (Outside CONUS). What the DD prefix records is an administrative judgment made long before your copy was printed: this transaction was determined to be common to the whole Department rather than peculiar to one service, and so the documentation of it was standardized at Department level.
The practical effect of Department-level issue is interoperability. not stated establishes the requirement across the Defense enterprise; not stated keeps the document current for all of it. No service maintains its own variant, which means a completed record travels between components — service to agency, agency to joint command — and arrives in a format the receiving office already knows how to read.
The edition in force is not stated, carried by the publisher as not stated, and edition discipline is stricter on a Department form than most people expect, precisely because supersession happens everywhere at once. There is no interval during which one service still works from the previous layout while another has moved on.
The form is laid out top to bottom in a sequence that reflects how the record will be read, not merely how it was drawn. Identification comes first because everything below it is understood in relation to a named person, unit or transaction; substantive entries follow; certification closes the document because certification attests to what precedes it. Filling out of order tends to produce internal inconsistencies — an entry that made sense before the header was settled and does not afterward.
Before the first entry, compare the date printed on the form face with not stated. This is not bureaucratic fussiness. Editions change field numbering, and a receiving office working from the current layout may look for information where your copy does not put it. On a Department form the exposure is wider than usual: your record may be reviewed by an office in another service entirely, one with no reason to remember what the previous edition looked like.
Unclear entries are resolved from the printed instructions first and from not stated where the two texts diverge.
Download the form
Formats available: PDF, across 2 pages and about 138 fields. That several formats coexist is a consequence of scale — the Department cannot standardize the software on every desk that needs this form, so it standardizes the document instead.
The difference between a fillable and a printable pdf is a difference in what the file contains. A fillable release carries an interactive layer: each box is a defined field with a name and a data type, and what you type is stored as data inside the document. A printable release has no such layer — it is an image of the page, and the only place your answers can go is onto paper. The distinction matters downstream, because a Department record often gets scanned and forwarded several times before it reaches its final file, and typed characters survive that chain in a way pen strokes do not.
What the form asks for
- Report number.
- Report control symbol.
- 1. Thru: (Recipients and Address Authorized Distribution).
- 2. To (Recipients and address authorized distribution).
- 3. From.
- Decedent data. 4. Remains of (last name, first, middle initial).
- 5. Grade/rank.
- 6. Social security number.
- 7. Branch of service. Press space bar to mark X in first box if Army, second box if Navy, third box if Air Force, fourth box if Marine Corps, or fifth box if other.
- 8. Cause of death.
- 9. Place of death.
- 7. Specify other branch of service.
- 10. Date of death (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 11. Means of identification (complete and attach appropriate documentation).
- Mortuary data. 12. Remains received at mortuary. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Hour.
- 13. Embalming started. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Hour.
- 14. Embalming completed. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Hour.
- 15. Explain any delay in recovery, autopsy, preparation, inspection or shipment of remains.
- 16. Type of case. X first box if not autopsied, second box if autopsied.
- X if mutilated.
- X first box if viewable, second box if non-viewable, third box if viewing questionable.
Submission follows not stated and whatever local instruction supplements it. Make a copy before the original leaves. Department forms travel across organizational lines by design, and the administrative distance that makes them useful is the same distance that makes tracing a lost one difficult.
Forms referenced inside this one are located by number alone, and that simplicity is a direct product of Department-level numbering. Because the DD sequence is maintained centrally and not duplicated by service, a number is a complete address: one number, one document, throughout the Defense establishment.
It helps to see the DA and DD sequences as what they are: separate registries with separate custodians. One serves a single service under a service proponent, the other serves the Department under not stated or an equivalent office, and neither was ever indexed against the other. A number that appears in both systems points to two unrelated documents, which is why reading the prefix comes before reading the digits.
Understanding why editions change explains why checking them is not optional. Revision follows directive reissue, changes in what data is required, and amendments to mandatory notice text — decisions made at Department level and communicated through publication rather than notification. The file you saved does not update itself, so the edition date at download is what you rely on.
A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2062?
- DD Form 2062, Record of Preparation and Disposition of Remains (Outside Continental U.S.), April 1984
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?