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The CSM an Explanation: First Light.
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Short Stories We lay with our backs propped against a small earthen bank. Furtively sharing a cigarette between the two of us. The 105 mm HE rounds and mortar shells were still falling around us. It didn’t matter, we nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, as they say .
Any way, it was only harassing fire , designed to provoke a reaction and flush out a better target , more worthy of their attention. They were hitting all the likely FUP areas. Luckily for us the fuse setting’s were still set wrongly. The shell’s were impacting, and burying themselves three or four feet under the soft peat before they exploded. The 33 lb. shell had literally land right on top of you to do any damage .
We sat contemplating the approaching dawn, and after nine years in the army I was given my first proper definition of “First Light”, by Colin Price.
“It’s not the actual ability to define and see just shapes. First Light ,is where you are able to define the actual colours, rather than just mentally perceive what you think the colour should be . It’s only green or blue or grey because your brain tells you that it is what the objects colour is supposed to be “.
We had both subconsciously been watching and listening to the rounds falling around us. The last one had been close. Close enough to lift us bodily off the ground with it’s shock wave. It had been the third round of a not so random pattern .Opposed to the somewhat sporadic firing we had encountered earlier.
As if we had been doing it all our lives, we raised ourselves up just far enough to scan the area, taking half each to check in a full circle, then with a brief nod to one another, we were both up and running like hell, hoping that the fourth and final adjusting round wouldn’t arrive till we’d both found another temporary hiding place.
First Light was well into the full dawn by now. It looked like today would be just like yesterday.
A day fraught with danger.
