The quirky comedy actor who rose from background dancer in Elvis Presley movies to favorites such as "Young Frankenstein" and…
An Army bugler's story about his special wartime assignment
Transcript
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
John Yang: And now on this day before Memorial Day, a piece from StoryCorps. In the final days of World War II, U.S. Army Sergeant Harrison Wright was stationed in a small Belgian village near the German border. He tells his grandson Sean Guess about a special assignment.
Man: I was 19-year-old boy and a blue bugle in a outfit. If a young man is killed in action, or dies defending his country, you blow caps over his grave. And it just -- there's no way to describe it. The emotion that you feel knowing that there was notice going out.
And I remember that war was over just a few days and they asked me to blow taps for all who died in the war. We climbed this high heel, it was like a mountain top and my battalion to bottom now blew blue those taps. And when I did, the man said it floated out across all it barely and said it was beautiful. They were all telling me how good it sounded and what a tribute it was to our fallen comrades.
John Yang: Harrison Wright died in 2015 at the age of 91. For more stories like his, go to storycorps.org.