June 24 2006

Well gang, there’s very touching news this week.
As you may recall, last week was Father’s Day, and a 105mm howitzer was to be placed on the grave of Olaf Biermaister.
It was a pretty big deal, as you might well imagine, and a lot of Olaf’s army buddies showed up from his old artillery unit for the occasion.
Such a ceremony requires everybody being in the right frame of mind, and since the installation of the big gun was to occur at 1:00PM, everyone concerned gathered at the VFW Hall at 7:00AM in the morning to drink beer and attain a certain level of cheerful somberness.
The morning had broken with a steady torrential rain, but as the 5 ton truck pulling the great howitzer, and the numerous cars cued up behind it, began their trip to the cemetery, the sun came out and smiled on the proceedings.
The parade through town, though a little ragged, went rather well actually, as did also the procession to the grave-site.
Looking back on it, it probably wasn’t a good idea to let Olaf’s number one buddy drive the 5 ton, because he had never backed up a trailer before. And when it came to backing up the howitzer to its place on the grave, Olaf’s buddy jack-knifed the 105mm.
His first try cut a gouge across three graves, knocked down two tombstones, and the barrel of the big gun cut down a sapling and defoliated another.
By the time that Olaf’s buddy had been replaced behind the wheel (the third one to try finally got the howitzer where it belonged) that part of the cemetery looked as though a small herd of elephants had been taking a mud bath there, and someone had hollered "Fire".
The twenty one gun salute was uneventful, except that everyone lost count, so they just kept firing until all the blank rounds were gone.
At last, with proud smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes, the assembled stood at various interpretations of "attention" as one of their number, about 70 years old, wheezed his way through "Amazing Grace". On the bagpipes.
"Amazing Grace". How appropriate.

Till next week
Helga Biermeister
Secretary