I was a paratrooper for several years. Went to jump school at Ft. Benning when I was still a cadet. Was stationed in Italy with 1/509 ABCT for over 3 years. After officer basic and Ranger school. Those were good times. Good, honest people. There really is a "brotherhood of arms". It is ancient and real. Picture the few vets that survived from King Phyrrus' army that won the battle against the Romans at Heraclea. They lost lots of friends and brothers in that bloody battle in 280 BC. 20 years later some of them still were closer to the memories of that time of trial than to family. If you have been there you know.
I am ashamed to say that I hated to see Nixon sign the accord to end Viet Nam. I was young, nieve, arrogant, and thought that it was my given right to go into combat. I see so much wrong with that. Now. At best I thought I was invinceable. That age seems to demand it. At worst, I was just dumb. Believe it or not, my time in military school did not inflate that hubris. I did that on my own. Lord, no one hated war worse than the men who returned from two tours to teach at West Point. They had seen the sovereign grist of death on the battlefield. Strong men. I knew a captain who taught philosopy. He could not wait to get out of the service. He would tell "war stories" at steak night on Wednesdays to the upperclassman. But, mostly he was quiet. Wore one ribbon. Medal of Honor. That is THE red badge of courage. None bigger. No one gets that without a huge, steaming bowl of trauma. Death, amibiguity, pain, and the utter randomness of the battlefield. He never reconciled the expereince. I suspect he wore the ribbon mostly to honor the ones that did not come back. Sort of an odd antitdote to "survivor's guilt". But fact was: he had seen Death, smelled it. His own, and survived it. Forty years later I bet he still ponders.
How could I have been so blind? Every day of those four years on the Hudson taps was played to honor a fresh death in the killing fields. My roommate's father died our senior year. He was the last general killed in the war. It hit my friend hard. He carried a grudge the years he had to serve. Hated that his father had been sacrificed. The paradox was that the father was doing exactly what he felt called to do. There's justice in there somewhere deep. After my one on one doctoring days, I just think of the loss of humanity. But, for those who model the true warrior archetype, it is not so clear.
There are things worth dying for. Warriors, true ones, flush with integrity, honor their paths the best they can. I knew a lot of those men. Death is simply an acceptable risk. Do not get me wrong on that. I am not against war or aggression. But, the flippant, spineless old men in suits telling the young citizen-soldier when to risk life and limb. With no clear objective? "Honor", "service", and "duty to country" are good sound bites. But, if my daughter had come home in a box from our first foray into Iraq. And my second was being told that we were going to have to retake that parched land paid for with her sister's blood? No way. No freaking way. Hemingway once wrote: "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." More and more I can't find fault with that.
Whew. I have strayed tonight too far from intent. I wanted to honor the death of two young paratroopers. Mike Rohrer and Charlie Capps. They were two men who died in peacetime. There is some special irony for those killed in the line of duty but not in war. I am saddened by the untimeliness and misfortune of their demise. It still rankles me. Makes me know it was best I did not get shipped to 'Nam. My type came home with a flag given to next of kin. It would not have taken long. If the company commander were to have written my parents honestly after the fact, it would have gone like this: "Your son, childish, grandiose, and emotionally sensitive, did not listen to his platoon sergeant. He subsequently was blown up in short order."
But, there were two men that died in Hammelberg, Germany one bright July morning in 1976. I was there. They were good troops. Well thought of. One was the colonel's driver. The other in A Company. They were young, tough kids. They thought nothing of drinking local wine till 5 am, then running 5 miles in PT at 6. Then doing a full days work. They were the type of men/boys you played high school football with. Who carried your mother's groceries to the car at Newsom's Food. The one who dated your sister and you didn't mind it. Even if he got a cheap feel or two.
I can still see parts of that day in clear tones. Like an old Polaroid under the glass on a desk. This dreary time of the year it comes and sits with me. Still. My unit was stationed in Italy. We were part of the NATO "Ace Mobile Force". Each country had a small unit in this "elite" group. Most all were paratrooper units. We did lots of travelling to exotic places to jump out of airplanes. That was good by me. We trained in Germany, jumped in Great Britian, ran patrols in Turkey, survived in Belgium Commando School. It was a hell of a good time.
It was peace time. No one thought much about dying in battle. All of us talked about "the balloon going up". Course, at that point, the Commie/ Evil Empire was our nemisis. All strategy focused on what to do when thousands of tanks with nucs came down the Fulda Gap. We just knew it would happen. Even hoped it woudl. And THEN, we would be in the middle of it. "In contact". Up against it. Fighting and defending what we thought was good and true. It was much later that I learned that our real mission was to shed blood. Ours. We were the ones to establish an airhead. The place where everyone else would land. Theoretically. Translated, especially with the conventional war that was anticipated, casualties would be "profound". Provocation equaled substantiation to the politicos. War... the only recourse; "why we have already lost a whole battalion of paratroopers...we have just begun to fight". Yada, yada.
The NATO relationships were odd from a military perspective. We were stationed in Italy to "show the flag". We did field exercises however, in large plots in Germany. Twice or three times a year, we would load up all our shit, including the artillery. Fly into or "jump" into Hoenfels, Wildflecken, or Grafenwohr. People wonder how armies learn how to make war. Fire teams, squads, platoons, companies, battalions, brigades, divisions, they practice. Alot. That's how it's done. It is expensive. It requires infinite planning and patience. But, that is how, at least in the old days, liberty was defended.
Hammelburg was located west of Frankfurt near Bad Kissingen. Central Germany. Surrounded by a thick ancient forrest, by 1935 it was a training camp and military training area for the reconstituted German Army. It was used as a POW camp for Allied army personnel after 1943. It was actually the backdrop for Hogan's Heroes. THAT Hogan's Heroes. But more than anything, it was a living hell for those Allies who were imprisoned. Some were marched there from the Battle of the Buldge. 500 miles through the snow in the the midst of winter. Survivors were not numerous. Bad karma and all, after the war the base became a training station. A staging area for US and NATO troop movement. An exercise like that brought us there that fated day.
It had taken the better part of a week to get all gear and personnel from Aviano to Wildflecken. I had been on leave to the States just before. My first trip back home in over a year. I was still wrestling with jet lag and was on the last group to move up. I was on the ground for the jump in the drop zone cadre. I had a score of great guys in my Recon platoon. We were to be the "eyes and ears" of the batallion in time of duress. We all thought we were pretty tough. Our motto was: "Live by chance, love by choice, Recon by profession, death by fire." Like I said, invinceable. "Mind over matter". I don't mind and you don't matter. Sneed, Parka, Tsherne, Stoker, Ivey, Forrest, Mad Mike Meinen, Marshall, Bags, Shannon, Firestein. I can see them now. They were good people. Good soldiers. They were family.
There is an orchestrated, violent beauty to a military jump. The ritual begins with picking up a chute from the "riggers". These men are ones that spend their lives repacking the chutes after a jump. Lives depend on this learned skill. They were a small and proud band. Took care of their own. You did not want to fight a rigger. That meant fighting the whole bunch. But, I digress: the chutes are handed out. Platoons cluster. Each troop helps another don the gear. It's like wearing a heavy life preserver. There are prelim checks by squad leaders, then again by the platoon sergeant. Each buckle and harness inspected. Not just looked at, EXAMINED. Any fray, twist, or broken buckle and the chute is ditched. We then sit on the ground in a rows like a gaggle of term pregnant women. We hurry up, then we wait. The Army way. Then the jump masters start in. Most are hardened vets, senior NCO's and officers, who have done this a hundred times. But, they all treat it like it was the first... or the last. Care and safety with dangerous and serious men.
Some soldiers are picked to tote the large bags of eqipment attached to a bungee cord linked to the front of the jump harness. Hundreds of pounds of weapons and ammuntion are carried this way. You go to war under a chute, you fight with what you bring with you. Pretty simple. The trick with being the one to jump with these bitches is to pull the linch pen in time to have the heavy drop tumble down just above the ground. Release, drop, land. Too early and you get dragged down. Too late and your legs get crushed.
Before loading the jumpmaster's briefing is given. Every detail of safety, hand signals for types of duress, and commands. All covered as if we had never heard them. Small groups then stand up. Into the jaws waddle the jumpers. The assistant jump master and master acting like a maitre de's at a good place to eat. They lead each of four single files or "sticks" into the bowels. From the rear. The tail of the C-130 can drop down like the jaw of a great steel dragon. In summer, feels like a hot cave. Both sides of the interior have narrow, aluminum and canvas seats. These are mirrored in the center. Faces now painted with camoflague. The thunderous roar of plane props in motion. Sixty warrior souls pack into a small space. Nothing but deafening sound. Something like crashing waves in a tropical storm. Maybe louder. Constant. Each brother faces another. Cannot move. Need to pee. Do it in my pants. The space in the aisles belongs to only the demi-gods. Jump masters. Thier turf alone until the door opens. A thousand feet in the air.
Imagine a prehistoric beast. Think of seeing a covey of these fierce looking, bizarre creatures coming over the horizon. Foreign. Revenging valkyries. Terror from the skies. Each the size of two and a half houses. The width of a large porch. Flying like monsterous, mythical dragons. Soft from the distant horizon the rumble of muffled thunder crescendos. Louder. Louder. In the blink of an eye, the lumbering, pregnant beings float just over a clearing. From the drop zone looking up you see small dots, then plumes, then strange canopies, streaming out of the bowels of these alien creatures. Hundreds of them. Death from above.
Back to the drama. The doors and rear of the aircraft slam closed. In the shady bowels there is a focused, boiling, raging, chaos slowly building. Each warrior locks into his own space. Some sleep, some silently sing, some just zone out. The tension builds. The jump master moves up and down the aisle prowling like a tiger. Looking for anything amiss.
Then, showtime. Twenty minutes out, the pilot relays this through the jumpmasters' headsets. The first jump sequence command is screamed out. "Twenty minutes!!!!" Twenty minutes till we fall from six hundred feet. The troops now ramp up. There are some hooowha's and barking then it settles again. Systole and diastole.
"Ten minutes." Now some screaming, and bizarre profanity. It gets real: the doors open. Think of standing next to a track as a monstrous train screams by. That's the sound. If its cold like night jumps in mid-winter, the wind cuts like a knife. All part of the deal.
Six minutes is the point things go faster. The command, "Six minutes" is followed immediately by "Get ready!!!". The light by the door turns on. Bright red. The energy mushrooms. It is palpable. Grown men in frenzy. Just near ready to peak. Then, "Outboard personnel stand up." Those near the skin of the craft stand. "Inboard personnel stand up." Now, "Hook up." The jumpers, each holding a clip in hand, connect to the static line. The large snap link anchors the static line in the aircraft to the chute. By jumping out, gravity and speed open the canopy. No thinking required. Just get to the door. Jump up and out.
"Check static lines." Everyone checks that the life line is not tangled and is securely fastened. "Check equipment." Each looks one final time at their gear and at the back of the troop just in front. Last chance to make sure there is nothing out of order. "Sound off for equipment check." The jumper just behind the man nearest the door shouts, "OK" if all is kosher with the equipment of the man in front of him. The "OK's" echo to the last man in the stick. He looks at the jumpmaster, points, and says, "All OK."
There is a time lapse between the "All OK" and the next command. It can last a minute or longer. But, it is the time when the door is open, the red light on, the adrenaline is gushing, and it is nearing a climax. It is a moment many of us look back on now and relish. I was young. I felt alive. The future was a jumbled matrix. What mattered was now. How magical. I was present for my own life. In retrospect: in real and esoteric terms, it was and is the reason I was born.
"Stand in the door". It is 10 seconds away. As the jumpmaster screams this out, he slaps the first man on the back. Juiced to the hilt, he scoots to a position with hands braced on the craft, just outside the door. In that 10 seconds, if you are lucky enough to be, "the man in the door", you look at God's earth flying by, you feel at one with the shrieking, vibrating plane. For the briefest moment it all slows down. The light flahes green. No thinking. Just reaction. Up and out. Up and out. Just like the first jump at Benning. Get up and out. The static line extends, out comes the chute. It's so very quiet. One second you are standing by a screaming train, the next, alone in your bed. I hear the voices of other jumpers. Dogs, I can hear the dogs going crazy on the ground. Relief. Fucking "A".
I locate the colored smoke on the ground from the drop zone cadre. Six hundred feet goes fast. Nearing the ground. Pulling hard now on the left riser. I steer into the wind. Nearing the ground. Pull hard, pull hard. The anterior lip of the chute lifts. Whosh! Plop! A good soft landing. An orgasm. Hit, do a PLF, stop. Get up, collapse the chute. Start rolling it up. Find where you are. Where your men are. Course, training jumps are one thing. With tracers and machine gun fire, that lazy time in the air is hell. 50% death rates were common with some of the jumps in WWII. That was before they even hit the ground.
That was the narrative of what that day at Hammelburg should have been. It was the story of my sixty nine jumps. It was the mantra of thousands of collective jumps from thousands of modern paratroopers. The guys marshalled at Wildflecken. Took off. They flew 40 kilometers south. It was a bright, clear day in July. Wind speed was not high. Not humid. Conditions on the DZ were good. Wide, clear zone, relatively soft ground. Large areas of no ground covering except thick grass. They went through the jump commands. And jumped.
This is where something goes terribly wrong. How I saw it: from the ground, the planes are in trail. The ribbons of chutes opening fill the sky. But from the third bird back something hurtles to the ground. It looks from where I am like a chute on a piece of equipment. It comes down with violence, speed and force.
I know this. When something completely catastrophic happens, the mind can refuse to compute. In years of jumps, not one cigarette roll. Ever. When a chute wraps around a jumper, he's a dead man. And the mechanics to cause such a thing happening are at best, remote. Odds: thousands and thousands to one. But, others nearby see it happening. In the seconds that I hear shouts of "pull your reserve, pull your reserve" it registers. This is a paratrooper falling to his death.
In the army, in good units, deadly crisis brings out steady calm in the pros. This is what we do. My platoon sergeant and the DZ safety officer are close to the impact. They rush over. I just hear one of them say, "Oh my God. There's two of them." Two men, not one, have plunged to death. A twisted lump. Tangled together, in some horrible and bizarre fatal dance of Fate. Years later, someone said that they remember the perfect circle of blood and fluids which ring the impact area. 20-30 feet in diameter. The cadre seals off the area. They all for the Medivac. People do their jobs.
Word spreads like fire. "Who was it?" "Oh shit, oh shit!" "Who bit?" "No fucking way!!!" There are some moans, sobs. Some drop to their knees to pray. For a minute: chaos. Then order. Teams go to rallypoints. Squads link up. Platoons make head counts. In short order, it is known by subtraction who has gone down. The paradox: in time of war, two casualties in a combat jump is a miracle. Secure the bodies, move on. This is not combat. No one expects such blunt trama. It is so.... unfair. So.... wrong. This just can't be.
Colonel Dean Darling is the commander. He is near six foot, grey bushy, short cropped hair. His nose and Adam's apple out of proportion to an honest, angular face. He talks in a clipped sort of way. Barks a sentence, left face, stop, sentence. He won my vote that day. Handled a shitty, shitty hand like a real ace. He tells us who has died. Nothing yet is clear about the why. He is honest. He acknowledges the grief and disbelief. He has the chaplain pray. Things calm a bit. He then gets back up and says this, "We will not rest until we jump again. We will march back to Wildflecken, the riggers will repack our chutes. We will get back in those C-130's and do what we are paid to do."
It is forty kilometers back as the crow flies. Fifty by the route we make. Must be 1500 by the time we have a prayer service and get the order of march together. We roll. I remember it like a dream sequence. At that fresh point it still does not register. Years later, I can see the road, hear the troops talking softly, feel the cool as the sun sets. But, now I am zoned out. Present, not present. We head into the woods. Each person now deep within his own thoughts. Not much talk. Stop for water and some chow around 0200. I am miserably sore. So tired. But it just doesn't register in the way my body processes. This is another man walking. Not me. It is another life in which something tragic and unexplainable have happened. Not me. This could not be me, it could not be my life. This is not happening. Years later I learn that denial is a first defense in grieving. Amen.
It is the day after. A cloudy day. Some scattered rain clouds build on the horizon. All pissy, all dead tired, we are strangely focused. We do the jump sequence, load, fly back, and jump. There is mostly silence in those spots where chaos and screaming always prevail. An exit out that door offers us each a gift: catharsis. It is the final prayer of a ritual pilgimmage honoring our two dead comrades.
Piecing together what happened in the plane that day was never easy. Urban legend took over early. But, it appears that one or the other of Capps and Rohrer was early in the stick. For some unknown reason, he did not get a good exit from the door. Anathema to all paratroopers: hung jumper. That means the man is tied to the plane. The chute is not fully deployed. The jumpmaster saw the static line bow. He leaned out and looked to confirm. Textbook response. Two or three jumpers continued out the door. They were unaware of the drama unfolding. The hung jumper is not conscious. He does not respond to the jump master's hand signal. Before anything else can be done, the second in the doomed pair jumps. Again, the odds of poor exit and hung jumper are so very, very, very small. One jumper in a hundred thousand and it happens twice in one stick of fifteen men. Rough odds: ten billion to one. 10,000,000,000 to 1.
The other bizarre and tragic occurance: the angle of each hung jumper is such that as one swungs toward the aircraft tail he slams against the plane and ricochettes back like a ball on a teather. The odds then of the other hitting that moving target are insanely low. The two young men hit nearly face to face. There is enough force with the violent contact to snap the static lines. These lines are tested to thousands of pounds of tensil strength. They just never, ever snap. Odds of it happening: slim and none. The lines then whip around the two like cord from a spool. They are instantly enshrouded in the canopy trying to unfurl. Someone said they thought one man gained enough consciousness to try and pull the reserve. I did not see that. I hope not, because it would have been the last several seconds of a life, and would have been full of a terror. One that I hope never to know.
So, in the blinking of an eye, two good men died. That has been thirty nine years this summer. Here told the locals erected a monument of sorts in memorium. That sounds good. I hope it is true. But, for me, I still carry a fragment of that odd and fatal day deep in my bones. There is an old Linda Ronstadt song that I ran upon a while ago. It seems pretty solid to what I feel:
If life is like a candle bright
Then death must be the wind
You can close your window tight
And it still comes blowing in
So I will climb the highest hill
And I'll watch the rising sun
And pray that I won't feel the chill
'Til I'm too old to die young
Let me watch my children grow
To see what they become
Lord, don't let that cold wind blow
'Til I'm too old to die young
I have had some real good friends
I thought would never die
But all I've got that's left of them
Are these teardrops in my eye
Hooowah, my Airborne Brothers.
I am ashamed to say that I hated to see Nixon sign the accord to end Viet Nam. I was young, nieve, arrogant, and thought that it was my given right to go into combat. I see so much wrong with that. Now. At best I thought I was invinceable. That age seems to demand it. At worst, I was just dumb. Believe it or not, my time in military school did not inflate that hubris. I did that on my own. Lord, no one hated war worse than the men who returned from two tours to teach at West Point. They had seen the sovereign grist of death on the battlefield. Strong men. I knew a captain who taught philosopy. He could not wait to get out of the service. He would tell "war stories" at steak night on Wednesdays to the upperclassman. But, mostly he was quiet. Wore one ribbon. Medal of Honor. That is THE red badge of courage. None bigger. No one gets that without a huge, steaming bowl of trauma. Death, amibiguity, pain, and the utter randomness of the battlefield. He never reconciled the expereince. I suspect he wore the ribbon mostly to honor the ones that did not come back. Sort of an odd antitdote to "survivor's guilt". But fact was: he had seen Death, smelled it. His own, and survived it. Forty years later I bet he still ponders.
How could I have been so blind? Every day of those four years on the Hudson taps was played to honor a fresh death in the killing fields. My roommate's father died our senior year. He was the last general killed in the war. It hit my friend hard. He carried a grudge the years he had to serve. Hated that his father had been sacrificed. The paradox was that the father was doing exactly what he felt called to do. There's justice in there somewhere deep. After my one on one doctoring days, I just think of the loss of humanity. But, for those who model the true warrior archetype, it is not so clear.
There are things worth dying for. Warriors, true ones, flush with integrity, honor their paths the best they can. I knew a lot of those men. Death is simply an acceptable risk. Do not get me wrong on that. I am not against war or aggression. But, the flippant, spineless old men in suits telling the young citizen-soldier when to risk life and limb. With no clear objective? "Honor", "service", and "duty to country" are good sound bites. But, if my daughter had come home in a box from our first foray into Iraq. And my second was being told that we were going to have to retake that parched land paid for with her sister's blood? No way. No freaking way. Hemingway once wrote: "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." More and more I can't find fault with that.
Whew. I have strayed tonight too far from intent. I wanted to honor the death of two young paratroopers. Mike Rohrer and Charlie Capps. They were two men who died in peacetime. There is some special irony for those killed in the line of duty but not in war. I am saddened by the untimeliness and misfortune of their demise. It still rankles me. Makes me know it was best I did not get shipped to 'Nam. My type came home with a flag given to next of kin. It would not have taken long. If the company commander were to have written my parents honestly after the fact, it would have gone like this: "Your son, childish, grandiose, and emotionally sensitive, did not listen to his platoon sergeant. He subsequently was blown up in short order."
But, there were two men that died in Hammelberg, Germany one bright July morning in 1976. I was there. They were good troops. Well thought of. One was the colonel's driver. The other in A Company. They were young, tough kids. They thought nothing of drinking local wine till 5 am, then running 5 miles in PT at 6. Then doing a full days work. They were the type of men/boys you played high school football with. Who carried your mother's groceries to the car at Newsom's Food. The one who dated your sister and you didn't mind it. Even if he got a cheap feel or two.
I can still see parts of that day in clear tones. Like an old Polaroid under the glass on a desk. This dreary time of the year it comes and sits with me. Still. My unit was stationed in Italy. We were part of the NATO "Ace Mobile Force". Each country had a small unit in this "elite" group. Most all were paratrooper units. We did lots of travelling to exotic places to jump out of airplanes. That was good by me. We trained in Germany, jumped in Great Britian, ran patrols in Turkey, survived in Belgium Commando School. It was a hell of a good time.
It was peace time. No one thought much about dying in battle. All of us talked about "the balloon going up". Course, at that point, the Commie/ Evil Empire was our nemisis. All strategy focused on what to do when thousands of tanks with nucs came down the Fulda Gap. We just knew it would happen. Even hoped it woudl. And THEN, we would be in the middle of it. "In contact". Up against it. Fighting and defending what we thought was good and true. It was much later that I learned that our real mission was to shed blood. Ours. We were the ones to establish an airhead. The place where everyone else would land. Theoretically. Translated, especially with the conventional war that was anticipated, casualties would be "profound". Provocation equaled substantiation to the politicos. War... the only recourse; "why we have already lost a whole battalion of paratroopers...we have just begun to fight". Yada, yada.
The NATO relationships were odd from a military perspective. We were stationed in Italy to "show the flag". We did field exercises however, in large plots in Germany. Twice or three times a year, we would load up all our shit, including the artillery. Fly into or "jump" into Hoenfels, Wildflecken, or Grafenwohr. People wonder how armies learn how to make war. Fire teams, squads, platoons, companies, battalions, brigades, divisions, they practice. Alot. That's how it's done. It is expensive. It requires infinite planning and patience. But, that is how, at least in the old days, liberty was defended.
Hammelburg was located west of Frankfurt near Bad Kissingen. Central Germany. Surrounded by a thick ancient forrest, by 1935 it was a training camp and military training area for the reconstituted German Army. It was used as a POW camp for Allied army personnel after 1943. It was actually the backdrop for Hogan's Heroes. THAT Hogan's Heroes. But more than anything, it was a living hell for those Allies who were imprisoned. Some were marched there from the Battle of the Buldge. 500 miles through the snow in the the midst of winter. Survivors were not numerous. Bad karma and all, after the war the base became a training station. A staging area for US and NATO troop movement. An exercise like that brought us there that fated day.
It had taken the better part of a week to get all gear and personnel from Aviano to Wildflecken. I had been on leave to the States just before. My first trip back home in over a year. I was still wrestling with jet lag and was on the last group to move up. I was on the ground for the jump in the drop zone cadre. I had a score of great guys in my Recon platoon. We were to be the "eyes and ears" of the batallion in time of duress. We all thought we were pretty tough. Our motto was: "Live by chance, love by choice, Recon by profession, death by fire." Like I said, invinceable. "Mind over matter". I don't mind and you don't matter. Sneed, Parka, Tsherne, Stoker, Ivey, Forrest, Mad Mike Meinen, Marshall, Bags, Shannon, Firestein. I can see them now. They were good people. Good soldiers. They were family.
There is an orchestrated, violent beauty to a military jump. The ritual begins with picking up a chute from the "riggers". These men are ones that spend their lives repacking the chutes after a jump. Lives depend on this learned skill. They were a small and proud band. Took care of their own. You did not want to fight a rigger. That meant fighting the whole bunch. But, I digress: the chutes are handed out. Platoons cluster. Each troop helps another don the gear. It's like wearing a heavy life preserver. There are prelim checks by squad leaders, then again by the platoon sergeant. Each buckle and harness inspected. Not just looked at, EXAMINED. Any fray, twist, or broken buckle and the chute is ditched. We then sit on the ground in a rows like a gaggle of term pregnant women. We hurry up, then we wait. The Army way. Then the jump masters start in. Most are hardened vets, senior NCO's and officers, who have done this a hundred times. But, they all treat it like it was the first... or the last. Care and safety with dangerous and serious men.
Some soldiers are picked to tote the large bags of eqipment attached to a bungee cord linked to the front of the jump harness. Hundreds of pounds of weapons and ammuntion are carried this way. You go to war under a chute, you fight with what you bring with you. Pretty simple. The trick with being the one to jump with these bitches is to pull the linch pen in time to have the heavy drop tumble down just above the ground. Release, drop, land. Too early and you get dragged down. Too late and your legs get crushed.
Before loading the jumpmaster's briefing is given. Every detail of safety, hand signals for types of duress, and commands. All covered as if we had never heard them. Small groups then stand up. Into the jaws waddle the jumpers. The assistant jump master and master acting like a maitre de's at a good place to eat. They lead each of four single files or "sticks" into the bowels. From the rear. The tail of the C-130 can drop down like the jaw of a great steel dragon. In summer, feels like a hot cave. Both sides of the interior have narrow, aluminum and canvas seats. These are mirrored in the center. Faces now painted with camoflague. The thunderous roar of plane props in motion. Sixty warrior souls pack into a small space. Nothing but deafening sound. Something like crashing waves in a tropical storm. Maybe louder. Constant. Each brother faces another. Cannot move. Need to pee. Do it in my pants. The space in the aisles belongs to only the demi-gods. Jump masters. Thier turf alone until the door opens. A thousand feet in the air.
Imagine a prehistoric beast. Think of seeing a covey of these fierce looking, bizarre creatures coming over the horizon. Foreign. Revenging valkyries. Terror from the skies. Each the size of two and a half houses. The width of a large porch. Flying like monsterous, mythical dragons. Soft from the distant horizon the rumble of muffled thunder crescendos. Louder. Louder. In the blink of an eye, the lumbering, pregnant beings float just over a clearing. From the drop zone looking up you see small dots, then plumes, then strange canopies, streaming out of the bowels of these alien creatures. Hundreds of them. Death from above.
Back to the drama. The doors and rear of the aircraft slam closed. In the shady bowels there is a focused, boiling, raging, chaos slowly building. Each warrior locks into his own space. Some sleep, some silently sing, some just zone out. The tension builds. The jump master moves up and down the aisle prowling like a tiger. Looking for anything amiss.
Then, showtime. Twenty minutes out, the pilot relays this through the jumpmasters' headsets. The first jump sequence command is screamed out. "Twenty minutes!!!!" Twenty minutes till we fall from six hundred feet. The troops now ramp up. There are some hooowha's and barking then it settles again. Systole and diastole.
"Ten minutes." Now some screaming, and bizarre profanity. It gets real: the doors open. Think of standing next to a track as a monstrous train screams by. That's the sound. If its cold like night jumps in mid-winter, the wind cuts like a knife. All part of the deal.
Six minutes is the point things go faster. The command, "Six minutes" is followed immediately by "Get ready!!!". The light by the door turns on. Bright red. The energy mushrooms. It is palpable. Grown men in frenzy. Just near ready to peak. Then, "Outboard personnel stand up." Those near the skin of the craft stand. "Inboard personnel stand up." Now, "Hook up." The jumpers, each holding a clip in hand, connect to the static line. The large snap link anchors the static line in the aircraft to the chute. By jumping out, gravity and speed open the canopy. No thinking required. Just get to the door. Jump up and out.
"Check static lines." Everyone checks that the life line is not tangled and is securely fastened. "Check equipment." Each looks one final time at their gear and at the back of the troop just in front. Last chance to make sure there is nothing out of order. "Sound off for equipment check." The jumper just behind the man nearest the door shouts, "OK" if all is kosher with the equipment of the man in front of him. The "OK's" echo to the last man in the stick. He looks at the jumpmaster, points, and says, "All OK."
There is a time lapse between the "All OK" and the next command. It can last a minute or longer. But, it is the time when the door is open, the red light on, the adrenaline is gushing, and it is nearing a climax. It is a moment many of us look back on now and relish. I was young. I felt alive. The future was a jumbled matrix. What mattered was now. How magical. I was present for my own life. In retrospect: in real and esoteric terms, it was and is the reason I was born.
"Stand in the door". It is 10 seconds away. As the jumpmaster screams this out, he slaps the first man on the back. Juiced to the hilt, he scoots to a position with hands braced on the craft, just outside the door. In that 10 seconds, if you are lucky enough to be, "the man in the door", you look at God's earth flying by, you feel at one with the shrieking, vibrating plane. For the briefest moment it all slows down. The light flahes green. No thinking. Just reaction. Up and out. Up and out. Just like the first jump at Benning. Get up and out. The static line extends, out comes the chute. It's so very quiet. One second you are standing by a screaming train, the next, alone in your bed. I hear the voices of other jumpers. Dogs, I can hear the dogs going crazy on the ground. Relief. Fucking "A".
I locate the colored smoke on the ground from the drop zone cadre. Six hundred feet goes fast. Nearing the ground. Pulling hard now on the left riser. I steer into the wind. Nearing the ground. Pull hard, pull hard. The anterior lip of the chute lifts. Whosh! Plop! A good soft landing. An orgasm. Hit, do a PLF, stop. Get up, collapse the chute. Start rolling it up. Find where you are. Where your men are. Course, training jumps are one thing. With tracers and machine gun fire, that lazy time in the air is hell. 50% death rates were common with some of the jumps in WWII. That was before they even hit the ground.
That was the narrative of what that day at Hammelburg should have been. It was the story of my sixty nine jumps. It was the mantra of thousands of collective jumps from thousands of modern paratroopers. The guys marshalled at Wildflecken. Took off. They flew 40 kilometers south. It was a bright, clear day in July. Wind speed was not high. Not humid. Conditions on the DZ were good. Wide, clear zone, relatively soft ground. Large areas of no ground covering except thick grass. They went through the jump commands. And jumped.
This is where something goes terribly wrong. How I saw it: from the ground, the planes are in trail. The ribbons of chutes opening fill the sky. But from the third bird back something hurtles to the ground. It looks from where I am like a chute on a piece of equipment. It comes down with violence, speed and force.
I know this. When something completely catastrophic happens, the mind can refuse to compute. In years of jumps, not one cigarette roll. Ever. When a chute wraps around a jumper, he's a dead man. And the mechanics to cause such a thing happening are at best, remote. Odds: thousands and thousands to one. But, others nearby see it happening. In the seconds that I hear shouts of "pull your reserve, pull your reserve" it registers. This is a paratrooper falling to his death.
In the army, in good units, deadly crisis brings out steady calm in the pros. This is what we do. My platoon sergeant and the DZ safety officer are close to the impact. They rush over. I just hear one of them say, "Oh my God. There's two of them." Two men, not one, have plunged to death. A twisted lump. Tangled together, in some horrible and bizarre fatal dance of Fate. Years later, someone said that they remember the perfect circle of blood and fluids which ring the impact area. 20-30 feet in diameter. The cadre seals off the area. They all for the Medivac. People do their jobs.
Word spreads like fire. "Who was it?" "Oh shit, oh shit!" "Who bit?" "No fucking way!!!" There are some moans, sobs. Some drop to their knees to pray. For a minute: chaos. Then order. Teams go to rallypoints. Squads link up. Platoons make head counts. In short order, it is known by subtraction who has gone down. The paradox: in time of war, two casualties in a combat jump is a miracle. Secure the bodies, move on. This is not combat. No one expects such blunt trama. It is so.... unfair. So.... wrong. This just can't be.
Colonel Dean Darling is the commander. He is near six foot, grey bushy, short cropped hair. His nose and Adam's apple out of proportion to an honest, angular face. He talks in a clipped sort of way. Barks a sentence, left face, stop, sentence. He won my vote that day. Handled a shitty, shitty hand like a real ace. He tells us who has died. Nothing yet is clear about the why. He is honest. He acknowledges the grief and disbelief. He has the chaplain pray. Things calm a bit. He then gets back up and says this, "We will not rest until we jump again. We will march back to Wildflecken, the riggers will repack our chutes. We will get back in those C-130's and do what we are paid to do."
It is forty kilometers back as the crow flies. Fifty by the route we make. Must be 1500 by the time we have a prayer service and get the order of march together. We roll. I remember it like a dream sequence. At that fresh point it still does not register. Years later, I can see the road, hear the troops talking softly, feel the cool as the sun sets. But, now I am zoned out. Present, not present. We head into the woods. Each person now deep within his own thoughts. Not much talk. Stop for water and some chow around 0200. I am miserably sore. So tired. But it just doesn't register in the way my body processes. This is another man walking. Not me. It is another life in which something tragic and unexplainable have happened. Not me. This could not be me, it could not be my life. This is not happening. Years later I learn that denial is a first defense in grieving. Amen.
It is the day after. A cloudy day. Some scattered rain clouds build on the horizon. All pissy, all dead tired, we are strangely focused. We do the jump sequence, load, fly back, and jump. There is mostly silence in those spots where chaos and screaming always prevail. An exit out that door offers us each a gift: catharsis. It is the final prayer of a ritual pilgimmage honoring our two dead comrades.
Piecing together what happened in the plane that day was never easy. Urban legend took over early. But, it appears that one or the other of Capps and Rohrer was early in the stick. For some unknown reason, he did not get a good exit from the door. Anathema to all paratroopers: hung jumper. That means the man is tied to the plane. The chute is not fully deployed. The jumpmaster saw the static line bow. He leaned out and looked to confirm. Textbook response. Two or three jumpers continued out the door. They were unaware of the drama unfolding. The hung jumper is not conscious. He does not respond to the jump master's hand signal. Before anything else can be done, the second in the doomed pair jumps. Again, the odds of poor exit and hung jumper are so very, very, very small. One jumper in a hundred thousand and it happens twice in one stick of fifteen men. Rough odds: ten billion to one. 10,000,000,000 to 1.
The other bizarre and tragic occurance: the angle of each hung jumper is such that as one swungs toward the aircraft tail he slams against the plane and ricochettes back like a ball on a teather. The odds then of the other hitting that moving target are insanely low. The two young men hit nearly face to face. There is enough force with the violent contact to snap the static lines. These lines are tested to thousands of pounds of tensil strength. They just never, ever snap. Odds of it happening: slim and none. The lines then whip around the two like cord from a spool. They are instantly enshrouded in the canopy trying to unfurl. Someone said they thought one man gained enough consciousness to try and pull the reserve. I did not see that. I hope not, because it would have been the last several seconds of a life, and would have been full of a terror. One that I hope never to know.
So, in the blinking of an eye, two good men died. That has been thirty nine years this summer. Here told the locals erected a monument of sorts in memorium. That sounds good. I hope it is true. But, for me, I still carry a fragment of that odd and fatal day deep in my bones. There is an old Linda Ronstadt song that I ran upon a while ago. It seems pretty solid to what I feel:
If life is like a candle bright
Then death must be the wind
You can close your window tight
And it still comes blowing in
So I will climb the highest hill
And I'll watch the rising sun
And pray that I won't feel the chill
'Til I'm too old to die young
Let me watch my children grow
To see what they become
Lord, don't let that cold wind blow
'Til I'm too old to die young
I have had some real good friends
I thought would never die
But all I've got that's left of them
Are these teardrops in my eye
Hooowah, my Airborne Brothers.