Our Battalion was training in Wildflicken Late Summer/Early fall. My 4.2 Mortar Platoon was on the highest Mortar range and the wind was blowing too strong to allow us to fire. Our Platoon Sgt. tried to tell the range control this, but was ordered to fire any way. You see the problem was we were night firing illumination rounds. 100,000 candle watt power.
We were firing at our max range and the wind was carrying our rounds back on us and down into a small town a mile or so down the mountain behind us. The rounds were coming down around our position and was setting the ground cover on fire all around us.
Rounds were landing down in the town, but I did not see any landing on any buildings at that time. The fires spread fast due to the high winds and we had to bug out as the fires were closing in on our ammunition. For the next seven days we were fighting fires along with our Red-Eye platoon and other units. The fire had moved underground and as you were walking through an area it was nothing to see a Christmas tree go up in flames.
By the end we had managed to burn down a 1,000 acres of Christmas tree farms. I did manage to grab a parachute from one of the illumination rounds as we were bugging out and I still have that.