[Larry]

Just a thought; it is easy to mistake 5 for a 3 and vice versa in '20th century hand writing' so it could be 1945 especially if his rank appears to match the date he got promotion. On the other hand I have seen photos where a person borrows a jacket from someone for a joke and future generations assume it's a persons rank! However I don't think this is the case here.

By the way have you considered Grey or Grady - depending how bad the hand writing is on the back of the photo!