First Parachute Jump

 The First Parachute Jump

 

     Parachuting in the military is not meant to be fun.  In a combat situation, the paratrooper on his way down presents a terrific target to the enemy sharpshooter below, and so the goal is to start the jump from as low as possible, spending as little time as possible, hanging helpless in the air.  Training jumps are planned to simulate combat jumps, the troopers leaving the plane at a maximum of l200 feet, unlike the present-day civilian jumps from several thousand feet.

     I had Army Basic Training in spring of l946 at Fort McClellan, Alabama.  During this time we trainees were given the opportunity to volunteer to take parachute training, and could then expect to be assigned to an Airborne Division.  I volunteered.  Why?  In part for the extra pay (double while on an active jump status) but more to prove to myself that I was not basically a coward.  I had had a couple of encounters with bullies in high school and, I thought, had not acquitted myself with any honor.  This would be a chance to demonstrate that I had at least enough nerve to jump out of an airplane.  At this point, I had never even been up in an airplane.

     Basic Training is not pleasant, you do the normal calisthenics, close-order drill, long marches with packs, rifle range (usually in heavy rain while you are firing from the prone position), the obstacle course, no end of inspections, and a few indoctrination classes.  Those are the basics, I guess.  I got through it with little trouble; no one noticed me, and I wondered if anyone with authority had ever seen the paper I had signed to go to parachute school.  We finished Basic and most of us were sent to Fort Lawton in Seattle to wait to be shipped out to Japan for occupation duty.  We would be assigned to a unit there.  By this time I was quite sure I would be by-passed for parachutes and made up my mind to be satisfied with the $50 per month that PFCs received then, instead of the $100 I had counted on.

     So after a horrifying, rough 16 day troop-ship voyage across the north Pacific, we landed in Yokohama and were sent to the Fourth Replacement Depot to wait.  One sunny day about fifty of us were detailed out to some lonely field to cut the grass with our dull bayonets.  I'm not kidding.  Of course we did virtually nothing but enjoy the sun and fresh air, but after about two hours of being bored, I heard my name called.  This is bad news, most of the time, if your name is the only one called.  But strangely enough, some person in authority had actually paid attention to the parachute volunteer list, and I found that I was being sent to school at Yamoto Air Strip in northern Honshu, not far from the fishing village of Shiogama.  This was certainly not the well-known jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, this was the poor man's school.  They had to get along with three or four super-annuated Curtis C-46s, some aging white nylon parachutes (the new ones were all camouflage colored) some small Quonset barracks buildings and inexperienced cadre who had recently been through the same training that we were about to receive.

     What we got was some three weeks of strenuous calisthenics, running, learning how to jump off a six, and then a ten-foot platform, plus more calisthenics and running.  There were plenty of verbal abuses and threats.  One of the most potent of the threats was that if we washed out of training for any reason we would immediately be transferred to the First Cavalry Division, an outfit composed of washouts, rejects, misfits, and cowards   And we would have to wear that awful huge yellow patch with the picture of the horse on it on our right shoulders.  The ignominy!  Toward the end of training we were required to jump off a thirty-foot tower, but tethered to a strap that would arrest our fall a few feet from the ground, much like present-day bungee jumping, but without the elastic.  A scary proposition. 

     One young punk kept us awake part of the night before the jump, bragging about how eager he was to make the 30 foot jump, and all the rest of the jumps.  He proclaimed with vehemence, that he was "born to be a paratrooper."  He definitely was not, as he broke down completely at the top of the tower, actually cried, and refused to jump.  This, after having watched perhaps twenty others jump successfully with no trouble.  And yes, he did wind up in the First Cavalry.  I made my jump and was rather relieved to find that the next scary jump would be out of one of the old C-46s, in the air.

     Next morning--to our great joy--no calisthenics, no really long run (in combat boots carrying rifles), all we had to do was get in formation to march less than a quarter of a mile to the air-strip.  We were issued parachutes, and were instructed by the parachute packers to be sure to bring them back if they failed to open.  That was the first attempt at humor for the day.  We boarded the plane, three squads of twelve each, and found that the jumpmaster was a truly funny guy.  He had us laughing so hard at his jokes and funny stories that we hardly heard the order to "Stand up and hook up!"

     I was number four or five in the first squad, so we stood up, and hooked our static lines (the strap that pulls the back off the parachute pack, hauls the chute out so it will catch the wind and then breaks off to let you fall) to the cable stretched across the top of the plane.  The next command is "Close it up and stand in the door!"  This means every man in the squad pushing and shoving to get out as fast as possible.  All twelve should be practically running for the door, and all should be out in a couple of seconds.

     Between these commands, the joking and story telling would continue, and I believe I was still laughing when I ran to the door and stepped out into thin air.  I barely heard the jumpmaster say something about watching for the first step, it could be fairly long.

     But now things turned serious.  During training we were required to yell "one thousand, two thousand, three thousand" to remind us that we must yell this immediately upon leaving the plane.  By "three thousand" the static line should have ripped off the back of the 'chute pack, pulled out most of the canopy, and there would be an opening shock.  The static line has a tensile strength of about seventy pounds before it breaks completely away from the chute.  This shock is not too painful if you are in a feet-down position.  Sometimes if you don't jump the way you were instructed, you could be in a head-down position, and this jerk of the opening shock could be very painful, if not actually causing an injury.  If there is no opening shock after "three thousand", grab the D ring on your chest (reserve) pack and PULL.  This is supposed to deploy your reserve chute which is smaller, but will get you down alive.  Sometimes people panic and pull the reserve when the main chute is properly filled.  This is not a good idea because then much of the captive air gets spilled out between the two canopies, and you go down faster than either chute separately.  So the word is not to panic, but do pull after the required three seconds.

     So you have felt the opening shock, you look up at that big white or camouflage canopy above, check it to see if there are stray lines draped over the top (a Mae West condition), shake it out if necessary, then devote a few seconds to admire the scenery on the way down.  There's precious little time for this, as the jump could have been made from as low as 900 feet, but not lower than that.  Still, the rush you get from seeing that beautiful parachute above and all the great scenery below rushing up at you is wonderful.  Wait!   Rushing up at you??  Yikes, now is when you begin to realize that you are going to hit the ground a good bit harder than when you were practicing on a six-foot platform.  And what about trees or rocks that you don't want to land on?  It is possible to steer, just a bit, the old-fashioned military parachutes they had in l946, so you have a second or so to try to avoid bad things on the ground.

     So you hit, and you fall the way you were taught, you're not hurt a bit, and you're so excited you hardly remember to collapse the chute, gather it up, and carry the whole thing back to the waiting trucks.

     Next jump will be tomorrow.

     After my five qualifying jumps I had the chance to stay on at Yamoto as an instructor, but instead elected to be assigned to wherever they wanted me.

     So I passed up a probably early promotion to go to G Company, 3rd Battalion, 188th Parachute Infantry as a lowly Private First Class.  This company was not far away, at a place called Camp Schimmelpfennig, near Sendai.

     Joke from the jumpmaster:  A parachute trainee somehow got hold of a spare static line and managed to conceal it aboard the plane.  As they hooked up, this fellow hooked up the static line belonging to his chute, but kept the other one in his hand.  As he reached the door, he jumped out, handing the spare static line to the jumpmaster.  "Hey, Buddy, can you hold this for me?"