I sat tightly next to the open doorway looking at the roaring engine spitting fire a few feet away on the wing. My stomach boiled and my mouth was sticky. I fingered the still untarnished and unfamiliar gold bar on the collar of my army fatigues. The trees below, with arms outstretched, lined the winding river that slipped beneath the plane.
The hot look of the jumpmaster and the challenging stares of heavily booted men lining both sides of the belly of the plane taunted me, and I knew that the decision on whether I was going to jump had already been made. It had been made when I had signed up for jump school after receiving my commission as a Second Lieutenant. I had embarked on the road of no return, with this company of rookies just out of basic training.
Our first experience with jumping during training had been on the 34 foot wooden towers. Each trainee, wearing a harness with 10-foot straps, was hooked to a trolley that ran on a cable which angled toward the ground 75 feet away. He would jump out from the tower and be bounced along as he was whisked to the far side.
In order to illustrate its safety, the sergeant had fastened only one strap and then did a somersault out of the tower. Because of the strain on the wrong side of the metal—snap, it broke. Clawing the air, he plunged to the ground, bounced with a thud, and lay still.
Everyone waiting in line on the tower and on the stairway gaped, stunned and disbelieving. Quickly four instructors picked up the lifeless form and raced around the corner of the nearby building. The tower sergeant at the other cable shouted, “Next!” and grabbed the nearest soldier to fasten the trolley to his harness. He cowered against the railing wide-eyed and imploring. The sergeant pushed him toward the stairs, ordered him to get out and turned to the next man. I stared as the 10 men before me turned and raced down the stairs. “You’re next, lieutenant”, barked the sergeant.
Panic stricken, I looked down the stairs while the sergeant, positioning himself between me and the stairs, fumbled with my harness. Numb and unprotesting, I let him propel me to the gate and with a half jump and a big push from behind, I was launched into the void I fell the length of the harness and was swiftly propelled away, bounding toward the end of the cable. Delirious with renewal of life, I tugged and bounced and flailed my feet with joy, leapt off the other end and unsnapped my harness. Behind me the others had resumed jumping.
Our first free fall from the 250 foot steel towers was awaited with a mixture of eager anticipation and apprehension. Each skeletal steel structure stretched into the sky with four umbrella-like structures on top like cupped hands waiting for the cables to draw chute and man from the ground toward them. As each chute reached the top, the automatic device released the trainee and he floated to the ground while trying to avoid drifting into the tower.
White waiting my turn I watched the men swiftly diminish in size as they ascended, waiting, helpless to stay the automatic and inevitable release, I strapped on the harness, waited, and without warning was swiftly and silently drawn away from the earth. The instructor, arms on hips, rapidly grew smaller as he looked intently up at me. My elation at breaking free of the earth was momentary upon realizing that my freedom was to be short-lived.
There was a heavy clang above me, a sharp jerk and I fell about 20 feet. Wild-eyed, I looked up, saw that the flapping chute was beginning to fill with air and felt it decrease my rate of fall. Suddenly the tower loomed perilously near and I instinctively pulled in my feet. Quickly pulling on the back straps of the chute, I tilted it away from the tower, and the gentle breeze drifted me away. Seconds later I crumbled into a heap on the ground and fought to keep from being enshrouded by the billowing silk.
Now the plan droned on determinately toward the drop zone. The jumpmaster hovered over us like a midwife anxious to help the plane disgorge its load of life. Each of us was lost in thought. Across from me a lanky soldier slowly chewed gum. The man next to him stared blankly out the open door beside me. All were silent, having lost the zest for continual wisecracks and camaraderie that pervaded the training on the ground. This was it!
The jumpmaster knelt by the door, peering blow, trying to fix our position. Suddenly he jumped up, faced ums and shouted above the roar, “Stand up”.
Everyone leapt to their feet, holding the metal strap of the static line tensely in one hand and faced the door.
“Hookup.”
Eighteen hook snapped onto the center cable of the plane, like umbilical cords, our only link with the plane. The jumpmaster, who was wearing a chute, hooked up also, in the event a desperate trainee might try to drag him out while fighting to keep from jumping.
Had I done a good job in packing my chute? Was the static line properly fastened to my chute so that it would open when I jumped? Or was I carrying a streamer on my back which would merely flap and wave as I plunged to the ground, a tangled mass of cord and silk?
“Check equipment!”
I felt the man behind me fumbling with my chute and wanted to yell at him above to leave it along.
It was too late!
“Stand in the door!”
I snapped the hook onto my static line forward on the cable, turned right and crouched in the door, hands on the outside of the plane. Glancing at my watch I saw that it was 10:15. I felt the hot breath of the jumpmaster on my neck and fought the impulse to brace myself against the inside of the doorway. With the wind whipping in my face, I looked down trying to quell the fierce rebellion within, Why? Nature never even intended that I should be this high let along fling myself with mad abandon in the maw below.
The first light, the red one, blinked, the buzzer squawked and the jumpmaster pressed against me with arm outstretched. A resignation, almost eagerness to telescope time and get it over with assailed me. Soon the green light blinked and the buzzer screeched. I felt a slap on my leg and heard the shout, “Go!”
Wildly, with wet palms I pushed out while vainly protesting no, and was quickly sucked out by the roaring turbulence.
Instinctively, slapping my hands onto my emergency chute fastened on my chest, I ducked involuntarily as the tail flew by. I automatically shouted one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, while waiting for the static line fastened to the plane to open my chute. The wind whipped away my voiced and blurred my vision. The dizzying drop rattled my senses. Should I wait longer of should I pull the emergency cord since nothing happened as it should have after the count?
Suddenly I was violently wrenched with an eyepopping jerk that floated a kaleidoscope of stars and geometric images before my eyes. And as quickly, all was peaceful. Dazed, I looked up and saw the silk billowing chute floating lazily above me like a huge vanilla ice cream cone, swaying and tilting with the wind. To my left the plane grew smaller with 18 spent umbilical cords flapping on its belly.
“I made it. I’m alive!” I shouted. I felt safely cradled between the four stout straps of the harness that swept upward past my helmet from the sling support between my legs, and I berated myself for being so frightened.
Grabbing the two front straps I pulled downward and slipped forward, then maneuvered backward, and even pirouetted gracefully like a floating ballet dancer by pulling the front and opposite rear straps. I felt weightless, free as a soaring bird.
Suddenly noticing that the horizon was moving upward, I remembered the second verse of that song that had been so bravely sung during training, to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic:
“There was blood upon the risers
There were brains upon the chute
Intestines were a’danglin from
His paratrooper boots.”
I could not stop the chorus from haunting me.
“Gory, gory wat a helluva way to die
Gory, gory wat a helluva way to die
Gory, gory wat a helluva way to die
He ain’t going to jump no more!”
The landing! It’s the landing—the sudden stop—not the fall that does it. The worst was yet to come! All the training blurred in my numbed though and I struggled to remember. Relax! Keep your feet together! Bend your knees! Don’t look down!
I saw the ground tilting and reaching up to claim me. Wrenching my eyes away and struggling to respond to the training, I collided with the ground, collapsed and tumbled like a dry leaf. Stunned and staring into the dirt, I became aware that the chute bounced ahead of me in the wind, dragging me along the hard turf,
“I made it!” I exulted.
Turning on my back and reaching forward, I grabbed two handfuls of chute cord, pulled myself into a ball and pivoted around on my back till I was facing the drifting chute. The force of the chute pulled me onto my feet, Quickly, I ran around and ahead of it, spilled the wind and collapsed it. Poking my wrist out of the flowing silk, I noted that one minute had lapsed,
Clutching the chute, I proudly watched my comrades drop around me, The plane had become a speck on the horizon. Noting that I had no broken bones, I mused that I’d have to jump again for those.