[aaatripp]

To remember Bud Emmer's 27th birthday on this day. No birthday cake for Bud. He was still recovering from burns suffered in the explosion of his P-51D FT-G "Arson's Reward" on 9 Aug 44. Now he was a POW, somewhere in Germany.

Sadly, in the evening of this day, Bud's younger brother, PFC Raymond Phillip Emmer would be killed by enemy mortar fire in the woods just west of Udenbreth, Germany. Ray was a member of a heavy weapons unit of H Company, 2nd Batallion, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Division, in Omar Bradley's First Army. He was in a foxhole with his buddy, William B. Williams and was desperately upset because a letter had arrived from his mother telling him that Bud had been shot down---Ray believed that his older brother was dead. Ray was buried in Europe and in 1948 the remains of both Emmer boys would be returned to St. Louis by their father and buried with military honors at New Mt. Sinai Cemetery. With the passing of their parents in Oct. 1975 the family is together at the family burial plot.

'Lest We Forget.........

Tripp