Under some conditions, you can get military records for a US serviceman, and maybe that can shed some light on where he was and when. But you wrote "I guess his records were lost in a fire", and indeed there was a massive fire described at https://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/fire-1973.html and it hit a lot of pre-1960 Army records. In case you haven't checked for the records yourself, I'll take the liberty of repeating the standard reply about records:

Hello there! As your question is related to looking for identification/information regarding military personnel, the AskHistorians Guide on Military Identification may be of use to you. It provides a number of different resources, including how to request service records from a number of national agencies around the world, as well as graphical aids to assist in deciphering rank, unit, and other forms of badges or insignia. While the users here may still be able to lend you more assistance, hopefully this will provide a good place to start!