From My Mind to....

Airborne School: A Memoir Continues

Part 2

Week 1: Ground Week.

Ground Week was aptly named as we spent an inordinate amount of time in touch with the ground. That first week was designed to ensure everyone was in shape to endure what was to come. Thankfully, our time in Virginia Beach had helped our northern bodies acclimate (a little) to the Ft. Benning heat.  Whenever someone messed up, everyone dropped to do 25 push-ups. I stopped counting the number of push-ups I did by lunchtime. But, I’d swear I was doing between 500 and 1000 push-ups daily. Runs were not done for speed; we ran as a unit, shuffling along at about a 12-minute mile. The Black Hats required all cadets to finish as a unit.

The training site had make-shift showers to cool the unit when the Black Hats deemed it necessary. Almost every afternoon at about 1:30, a summer shower lasting ten minutes or so would halt training. Training resumed immediately after the storm with our clothes drying quickly from the heat. Because of the heat, we wore fatigue uniforms without the long-sleeved top. One of my first purchases was sunscreen.

In addition to PT, we learned the basic skills preparing us to jump with a parachute and land safely.  The Army needs its soldiers to get from plane to ground safely and as fast as possible. You didn’t want to be floating down gracefully with people shooting at you. Exiting the plane while avoiding tangled lines was as important as landing properly. Day two introduced us to the 34 ft. Tower where we learned how to exit an aircraft and perform a proper PLF (parachute landing fall).

To learn the exit technique, we wore a harness (two cabled tether lines attached to two large buckles that rested gently against our chest just above our nipples). The harness was attached to a static wire line that extended about 50 yards from the tower on a slight decline on which we traversed after jumping from the tower. Remember those buckles—they’ll play an infamous part in this story soon.

Standing in the door at the top of the tower, strapped to the static line, a Black Hat yelled, “jump up six inches and out 36 inches,” which I did with great gusto keeping my arms tight against my body and my legs together. Keeping tight was critical when jumping to ensure the risers didn’t get tangled from the prop or jet wash from the engines. Dropping about ten feet, the tether lines stopped my drop with an audible ‘snap’ sending a sharp pain through me as the buckles slapped against my t-shirt clad body.

Wincing in pain from those buckles, I rode that line dangling and bobbing essentially mimicking the parachute at the mercy of wind currents, until I was caught by a guy at the end of the line who set me firmly on the ground. I had about ten seconds to unhook from the line before the next guy on the line would collide with me. The Black Hats had a lot of folks to exit those towers; we exited that door at a rate of one person every two seconds on each of five lines. Messing up was not an option; the pressure was on.

The other aspect of tower training was execution of the PLF, which was impressed upon us until our feet touched the ground and instinct took over. We jumped from the tower, still harnessed, landing on plowed ground below. While I appreciated the softer ground, it was more difficult to include all five points of the PLF. Those points are:
         1 – balls of feet
         2 – side of the calf
         3 – side of the thigh
         4 – side of the hip, or buttocks
         5 – side of the back
… rolling your body through each point in the span of one to two seconds.

By the end of the first day of 34-ft Tower training, each of us had two significant bruises where those buckles hit us every time we jumped. I jumped from that tower no fewer than a dozen times a day over the next four days. I felt like those bruises were visible on my back. I couldn’t decide if I was better off that I had less weight at 120 pounds to drop, or that I was not better off because I didn’t have enough meat on me to cushion those buckles. I still had those bruises when I returned home.

The pain each time we had to jump from the tower was not conducive to maintaining proper form. We tended to get a little sloppy toward the end of the week. But, we had to pass all requirements before being allowed to move to the next week of training. I honestly think the instructors gave us great latitude in this area.

Here are some interesting statistics to bear in mind. The gear we wore when jumping weighes 60 to 70lbs. The average descent of a body with deployed canopy is about 22 to 24 feet per second. A jumper hits the ground at a speed of 13 miles per hour. (Consider running a 4.5 minute per mile speed into a wall to understand why a PLF is essential.)

Saturday and Sunday were rest days. We did laundry, a necessary evil, and those of us who had not time to get a haircut, hit the Barber shop. I got my haircut that first evening. Those who didn’t, were given extra push-ups until they did. This was the one infraction that didn’t foster extra push-ups for everyone. One haircut type available—a buzz cut. Having light colored hair, I looked bald. But with the heat, the humidity and all the gear we wore, I learned to embrace the look. 

Oh, and the weekends were our time to be able to taste our food. During the week, we were given five minutes for breakfast and lunch to get AND eat each meal. Tough luck if you didn’t finish. The Black Hats were there to kick you off your bench. If they announced be in formation in two minutes, you’d better be in formation. Doing one hundred push-ups after eating that quickly was not a happy occurrence.

Funny story: the class right behind ours was coming in from West Point. They’d been given special dispensation from their Commander that they didn’t need to get haircuts. ‘Okay,’ said the Black Hats. ‘No problem.’  We heard through the grapevine that they did three times as many push-ups that first day than we did. Every one of those cadets was lined up around the block at the Barber shop that evening.

Most of us continued to do PT over the weekend … just to keep the edge on. Airborne classes often overlapped so we had a small idea of what awaited us in Tower Week.

Week 2: Tower Week.

Now we would get to experience an actual landing while attached to a parachute. The 250 ft. tower had four arms at the top oriented north, south, east and wet. Each arm would hoist one cadet strapped beneath a real canopy 250 feet in the air and dropped for a 15-second float to the ground, where he would hopefully execute a perfect PLF under the watchful eye of the Black Hats.

The very nature of preparing the cadet for this apparatus was labor intensive, requiring up to ten personnel to ensure each cadet was properly strapped in. Also, weather conditions played an important part. Obviously, being 250 feet in the air on a metal tower was not a fun place when a storm popped up unexpectedly. Our class had one poor cadet ready to be released when some high winds blew through. He hung there for almost 30 minutes being buffeted by the winds, unable to be released as no one knew if the winds would blow the canopy into the tower. He was pretty shaken when he got down. We never found out if anyone got nicked for missing the weather report.

All told, I made five ‘jumps’ from the 250-foot tower. Our time for the rest of the week consisted of more PT and 34 ft. tower training.  You can find YouTube videos online of soldiers using the 34 ft. and 250 ft. towers.

Come back tomorrow for Part 3: I must have survived. Right?