Remembering the Fallen, Memorial Day 2019-- Part 2: A Great War Memory

Continued from today's Cooter's History Thing blog.

"In fact, Dier has exactly one memory of Jerry Corp, but it's a good one.

" 'Someone on the perimeter called in for a routine fire mission asking for illumination, ' Dier plans to say in his speech.  'I dropped a round down the the 81-millimeter mortar tube.  The shot went out, and we waited for the familiar pop and the subsequent intense light that the round would provide as it drifted slowly back to the ground for several hundred feet in the air.

"The descending illumination revealed a nearby hillside covered in jungle.  Jerry and I laughed as the flare drifted toward the hillside, watching a multitude of chirping birds who mistook the flare for sunrise.  The noise from the birds stopped suddenly -- as if a switch had been flipped -- when the flare burned out.' "

Continued on my Down Da Road blog.