The
yellow warning light came on, which was the signal for the troopers to stand up
and get ready. We attached our static lines to the overhead steel cable
that ran from the front to the rear of the plane, and checked our buddy in
front of us to make sure his line was properly attached. The static line
was the nylon strap that pulled the parachute out of the pack as the trooper
fell away from the plane so it could deploy properly. Without the static
line, jumpers would have to manually pull their ripcord to open the pack, thus
allowing the chute to fall from the pack, catch wind, and open up. It
would be terrible if the fellow in front forgot to clip his line to the cable
and exited the aircraft. His chute wouldn’t deploy, and he’d be on his own
to activate his reserve chute, which the trooper has been trained to do.
I
attached my line to the overhead cable and yanked on it a couple of times to
make sure it was securely attached, then checked the trooper in front of me to
see that he had done likewise. If he was good to go, I slapped his helmet to
let him know I had checked his line. We then shuffled to the door and
waited for the green light.
Standing
in line, waiting for our turn to stand in the door of the aircraft, we were
packed tighter than sardines in a fish can. Was I nervous? Not
really; I had been here before, and even if this were my first time, the
training I received at Fort Benning was so intense and so thorough, that the
only difference between my two weeks of training and the actual jump was a
thousand feet.
During training, I made several jumps from the steel
towers that were 250 feet high, and now flying in an aircraft at 1,250 feet
when I exited the plane, it was only going to be a longer descent.
The green
light came on and the jumpmaster screamed at the top of his voice,
“Go, go,
go!”
One after
another, the men in my stick shuffled fast to the open door, wind howling in
our ears; at the door, each man paused for just a split second, to place his
hands on the sides of the doorframe, then leaped vigorously into the prop blast
of the roaring engines.
When it
was my turn to leap from the plane, I, too, paused for a brief second to place
my hands on the doorframe, and then pushing off I took the plunge.
However, instead of clearing the aircraft and falling to the earth below,
I felt myself bumping along the aluminum skin of the aircraft, and then,
without warning, I was enveloped from head to toe in white nylon, like a
funeral shroud.
Something had gone wrong with my exit from the plane, but
I had no time to consider my plight. Moments after being wrapped in nylon
as though I were in a cocoon, I heard a loud pop, and then watched as the
nylon, which only moments before had enveloped me from head to toe, fell away
and I found myself walking across the top of an inflated parachute. I had
no idea what had just happened, and couldn’t concern myself with it, for now I
had to concentrate on the earth below that was rapidly approaching and prepare
myself for a landing.
Approximately
two hundred feet above the ground, I heard a voice yelling at me.
“Get out
of my way, you son-of-a-bitch, get out of my way!”
I looked
around, looked below me, to the side of me, above me, but couldn’t see anyone.
I hit the ground and make a perfect landing – feet and knees together,
twisting and rolling, just like I was taught at jump school. Moments
after I hit the ground, another parachutist landed a few feet away from it.
It was one of the 2nd lieutenants who had been sitting across from me in
the plane. He was screaming and yelling at me,
“Why
didn’t you get out of my way, you stupid idiot; you stole my air.”
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