A Long Time Falling

A few days ago, some of my buddies and I were wondering who holds the record for most jumps by a US paratrooper, and generally, what that record might be. I'm not sure whether he holds the record or not, but CSM Jeffrey Mellinger's over 3,700 jumps has got to be close. 33 cumulative hours spent in freefall. Incidentally, CSM Mellinger is, as far as anyone knows, the last draftee still on active duty in the US military.

Cherry Jump

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of completing my "cherry jump" with the 82nd Airborne. I'm not finding much online explaining the tradition of the cherry jump, so here goes:

Here in the 82nd Airborne Division (and elsewhere), a new soldier to the unit is known as a "cherry" (I'm assuming you can follow the connotation), and his first jump in Division is known as his "cherry jump" or "cherry blast". While this part of the tradition has now been gutted in an ill-targeted crackdown on "hazing", the cherry soldier used to be given a cherry-red helmet cover to single him out (which would also, to my mind, rather helpfully alert the jumpmasters to his inexperience). The cherry is also given a cherry pie to carry in his pocket during the jump, which he then eats on the drop zone after his landing. Complicating this process, however, are his fellow paratroopers who, through much good-natured punching, ensure he lands with nothing but a charleyhorse and a pocketful of cherry goo.

So that's the tradition, but I missed out on most of it. One of my buddies had indeed bought a full cherry pie (instead of the usual Hostess single-serve pie) for the three cherries in our platoon, but I ended up in a different "chalk" (a single planeload of paratroopers) and so managed to jump without my pocketful of pie. Oh well. I've got that out of my way, and got my first precious scrap of Airborne credibility.

Which is not to say the jump went off without a hitch. After a shockingly early wakeup call and zero-dark-thirty manifest formation, we arrived at the drop zone to find that, in all-too-classic fashion, our unit had failed to procure both parachutes and working aircraft for the day's jump. One could be forgiven for incredulously exclaiming that these are, in point of fact, the two sole necessary elements of an airborne operation. But, you see, you would be applying sense, and the fact of the matter is that, particularly in garrison training operations, the Army rarely makes any. Eventually, though, 'chutes were scrounged and a bird was summoned, and we jumped. And I'll never understand what makes a sky full of paratroopers such a beautiful sight, but maybe I've drunk just a bit of that Airborne Kool-Aid, because this is awe-inspiring:


Next time I jump I'll try to post a good short video of the jumpers coming out of the bird. It's awesome.

All aside, it was a good jump and a safe landing, even if it was a bit harder than textbook. It's well and good to angle your body to adjust for your direction of drift, but they never really tell you what to do when you're falling straight down. Land like a sack o' potatoes, apparently. Oh, and the green patch that looks thick and soft from 200 feet up? Yeah, that's blackberry briar and it's nowhere near as soft as it looks.

Battle Hymn

For Memorial Day, John Hinderaker over at PowerLine posted a nice recording of his children's school choirs singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. I imagine it would be pretty moving except that whenever I hear that tune, thanks to the Airborne brainwashing they play over the loudspeakers every morning in Braggistan, all I hear are the words to "Blood on the Risers":

There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the chute,

Intestines were a'dangling from his Paratrooper suit,

He was a mess, they picked him up, and poured him from his boots,

And he ain't gonna jump no more

Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,

Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,

Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,

He ain't gonna jump no more!

The Airborne has ruined me.

What Beats a Full House?

Four Aces, Baby!

All-American

Well, the day has come. After over two years in training, I've finally inprocessed my first real unit. And not just any unit, I'm now part of the 82nd Airborne, the All-Americans, America's Guard of Honor, and our nation's Quick-Reaction Force. Oh yeah, I'm already drinking the Kool-Aid. I know full well that every unit in the Army probably talks itself up, tells their new soldiers how they are so much better than every other unit out there. But here, I actually believe it, though with obvious qualifications. I'm sure that there are units out there that are better at their particular missions than the 82nd would be, just by dint of specialization, but as far as traditional big-Army conventional-warfare operations go, I think we're probably right to brag that nobody can match the 82nd.

I think I'm going to be very happy with my time here. In one afternoon of inprocessing my brigade, I've already had the chance to be impressed by the leadership of the rear detachment. Which is telling, because it's not not exactly the cream of the crop who generally get left behind to hold down the fort while the unit is deployed. Also, it's very refreshing to get a sense of how much difference there is in the atmosphere in the real Army, versus in a training environment, particularly regarding political correctness. I couldn't count the number of times someone briefing us said something along the lines of "and if anything I've said today has offended you in any way, well, you can kiss my ass". Ahh, it's like a breath of fresh air.

A few choice quotes from our in-briefings:

• "Other units deploy their troops to places; to Iraq, to Afghanistan. We send our troops to War" (capitalization inferred).
  
• "We don't go to Iraq, we don't go to Afghanistan. Wherever we are, we're in Braggistan."
• (Responding to a new soldier's troubles obtaining on-post housing). "No, you're not going on a waiting list. We're the 82nd Airborne, our needs are simple. All we demand is special treatment."

Nice. As I said, I think I'm going to like it here.

Back In Army-Land

It's a bit of a shock, after nearly a month of leave, to be brought back to the (sur-)reality of my life by a sign like this one:



Awesome, huh? The acronym, by the way, is shortened a bit, and pronounced "swick". Why not "swicks"? Who knows. The same reason BNCOC is pronounced "bee-knock", probably.

In other news, turns out I reported early for no reason. Today we had a formation to turn in medical and personnel records to start the process, but they called out 20-some names to the side. Turns out they just took the last people to have checked in, and we won't be inprocessing until next week. So this week we'll just be sitting around doing casual details and such. Which is pretty frustrating. I had been consoling myself with the fact that I'd only be stuck in the replacements company for a few more days, but apparently that is not to the be the case. On top of that, we don't have any wall lockers in our barracks room, because the barracks is so full with all the people inprocessing. So I'll basically be living out of my car for the next two weeks. Awesome. Welcome back to the Army.

The Best Skirt You'll Ever Look Up...

...is the skirt of your parachute.

Airborne!!

Wind

No jump today. Too windy :(

That doesn't mean we didn't still spend a 12-hour day getting into harnesses, sitting around, getting our harnesses checked several times, getting cleared to jump, loading the first ranks on the C130s, then getting out of it all when they decided it wasn't happening. Kind of frustrating. We're trying again tomorrow. It's supposed to be clear with low winds, so we ought to get both jumps in, which will only set us back a day, then. If we miss another jump, though, we'll have to jump on Friday, which means we'll have our graduation ceremony right on the drop zone. Honestly, as frustrating as being delayed is, that'd be kind of cool ;)

Getting Real

Yesterday we got lined up in our final jump manifest formation. As in, the lines we'll be in when we load the planes and the order in which we'll jump out of them. So yeah, it's finally getting real that I'm going to be jumping out of a plane on Monday. I'm remarkably unperturbed by that thought, though the fact that I'm not worried now makes me concerned that I'll be more nervous than I now expect when I get on the plane. If that makes any sense at all. In any case, there are concerns, but mostly realistic, manageable ones. The course averages about five injuries (serious enough to prevent finishing subsequent jumps) per class of 360 or so, and that's in five jumps. So each jumper faces a 0.2% chance of significant injury per jump. Pretty minimal, and since most injuries are jumper induced, and I'm performing somewhat above average at the basic tasks, I'm confident I won't be one of those five.

Jumping the 250

The highlight of Tower Week, the second week of Airborne School, is jumping (well, being dropped) from the 250-foot parachute training tower, which I did today. You can see the historic towers in these pictures; they haven't changed much, though one of the four was blown down in a storm in 1988. I hadn't been particularly enthusiastic about the tower, since it struck me as kind of silly and just one more chance to get injured before Jump Week. I became less enthusiastic after seeing multiple malfunctions on the tower over the course of the day, though the safety precautions worked in all cases and there were no injuries. The tower isn't a requirement of the course, see, and often many soldiers don't get the chance to do it anyway, due to weather conditions or whatnot. But nonetheless my turn came up and I was hoisted aloft and dropped, and boy I wished I could have done it again. It was a lot more fun than I expected, and I was surprisingly at ease. I'm not really bothered by heights in any case, but I was expecting the hoisting and the long moments of waiting at the top to be rather nerve-wracking. Not the case, apparently, because I just sort of relaxed and enjoyed the view. And then I dropped, and I was more focused on manipulating my parachute for a soft(ish) landing. It takes less than 15 seconds to drop 250 feet, so it's really over before you know it. No lollygagging about in the sky like a civilian skydiver's parafoil, the Army's parachutes are designed to get you on the ground quickly, and for good reason. If you've seen Band of Brothers, you'll remember that in a real Airborne insertion, the sky isn't exactly a safe place to be. Not that any Normandy-style invasions are anywhere in my likely future, but that's the idea. Tomorrow we should have a short day with just a few classes, and then I'll be off for my one real weekend of Airborne school. I really have no idea what I'll do all weekend, since during the week I generally just hit the Internet for an hour and go to bed early. I'm sure I'll figure something out. And then next week is Jump Week! Five successful jumps (including two with combat gear and at least one at night), and I'll be fully Airborne qualified!

Ground Week

Finished Ground Week of Jump School today. Well, yesterday, actually, since we didn't do any training today, just cleaned up and got released for the long Thanksgiving weekend. It was a lot of fun, overall. I'm certainly encouraged, since Ground Week is by all accounts the most difficult portion, and I didn't think it was particularly hard at all. Which isn't to say I'm not more sore than I have ever been in my life, because even though it's not exceptionally difficult, Airborne training is brutally punishing. This video gives a good idea what I've been up to, despite the rather frenetic editing:



Ground Week mainly consists of practicing proper exits on the 34-foot tower and proper PLFs (Parachute Landing Falls) on the LDA (Lateral Drift Apparatus). We spent one full day on the tower, and nearly two full days on the LDA, which you can see at work in the video when the narrator mentions practicing PLFs until you get them right. And it's kind of funny, PLFs are terrible and you dread each one you have to do. Until you start getting them right, that is, at which point you feel like could do them all day, because they don't hurt anymore. But then you're done, because you're doing them right. Boy, you really do pay for the ones you do wrong, though. Last night when I was laying in bed, I had to use my hands to lift my head off my pillow to get up, my neck muscles were so exhausted from PLFs. Having a long weekend for Thanksgiving after Ground Week was perfect timing, really.

I have a lot more thoughts about Jump School, particularly regarding the remarkable pedagogy at work, but I'll probably get to that later this weekend or perhaps after Tower Week.

All The Way

I report for Jump School tomorrow. Needless to say, I'm really excited and a little bit nervous. I really oughtn't be, since I'm confident I'm ready for it physically, but it's still a bit intimidating. I guess my biggest fear is that I'd be injured and not be able to complete the training, in which case I wouldn't be able to go to my assignment at the 82nd and could end up who-knows-where. And there are few things I hate more than facing an uncertain future over which I have no control. In reality, though, there's little reason to suspect that three weeks from tonight I will be anywhere but in the belly of a C-130, waiting for that red light to turn green.

And while I certainly appreciate any thoughts and prayers, these concerns of my own definitely pale in comparison when I'm reminded that S and K, two of my closest Army buddies, are headed to Iraq on Saturday. That's where my thoughts and prayers will be this weekend.