>Unfortunately, the record of his Army service is extremely skeletal.
>The Department of the Army responded to a request for his service
>records with an apologetic letter explaining that they had been
>destroyed in an accidental fire, which is the United States
>government's way of denying any request for information which it finds
>inconvenient to answer.

Actually, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor that this is actually true, as a fire in the National Personnel Records Center in 1973 did destroy a good number of veteran's service records up to that time. With about 80% of the records lost in that fire the VA has procedures to work around this for Veterans filing for disability claims. You know it's a problem when the VA actually has a form to file regarding it.