Membership eligibility

To be eligible for membership in The American Legion, you must have been honorably discharged from the U.S. military and served at least one day on active duty in the following periods:

4/6/17-11/11/18 12/7/41-12/31/46
World War I World War II

6/25/50-1/31/55 2/28/61-5/7/75
Korean War Vietnam War

8/24/82-7/31/84 12/20/89-1/31/90
Lebanon and Grenada Panama

8/2/90-present Cessation of hostilities as determined by the U.S. Gov't.
Persian Gulf

You are also eligible for membership if:

• Your basic training time was on federal activation orders and during the above periods.
• You were federally activated subsequent to and during any of the periods given above.
• Your activations were for training or for missions; check the title and subsection of your activation orders.

Under eligibility guidelines for Legion membership, the term "active duty" as used in our national constitution includes "active duty for training."

However, our guideline further defines National Guardsmen and reservists as eligible under services to federal activation orders Title 10, Subsection 672 or Subsection 12301, created following Desert Storm to replace Subsection 672. In other words, to determine eligibility for servicemembers in the National Guard or reserves, the activation order is the authority line. Non-eligible activation orders are Title 32 for the National Guard and Title 10 Subsection 270 for the reserves.