About now, jumping had become a real pleasure. Many times Jack would take pictures on the way down. Some guys would hold a roll of toilet paper and let the loose end stream to the ground. Jack never did this; couldn't see wasting good toilet paper.
This antic cost one of his good friends , Jimmy, dearly. After Jimmy jumped he was so engrossed in his paper streamer that be didn't notice the faulty condition of his parachute! Had he looked up instead of down, James would have seen the nylon cords that had entwined his only safe passage to terra firma.
But alas, despite the desperate screams and arm waving from all the guys, Jimmy crashed hard. It was a plain case of not so much the falling but that terrible sudden stop. Jimmy was very fortunate to live.
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The Long Ride
The only thing Jack really hated about jumping was the long flight.
Most of the pilots seemed to be Air Force Reserves and flew merely for adding to their flight time hours. This qualified the pilot for a cushy commercial job later upon discharge. The long flights had a strange and often comical effect on most jumpers. The planes flew at about two thousand feet, and turbulence was at it's highest. This and the ever present fear caused many to vomit into the wax lined bags provided for just that purpose. The putrid odor pervaded the aircraft causing more to become sick.
One day a trooper so sick, so
worried, simply spit up his partials and not realizing twisted the bag and threw it
out. Jack had solved the problem of spewing his guts but hadn't solved the piss
problem.
In the male anatomy fear has a shrinking effect on the male member. What was once a
proud protruding appendage, is now a peanut sized pinkie.
With the plane lurching back and forth and needing to pee, they would hook up and wait
their turn. The target is a four inch funnel leading out to the bottom of the
aircraft. The once proud, now shrunken tube is trying to direct a stream toward the
funnel.
Piss sprayed everywhere,
hands needed wiping. Zipping or buttoning the fly was a problem all by itself.
In the blind hoping that the tiny thing that had just dampened boots, clothes and fingers
now had to avoid the dreaded zipper.
Any male ever getting his loose skin caught in a zipper knows exactly what I mean.
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The
Dreaded Short Timer's Jump
It was nearing the end of his enlistment period , and as most troopers know it was taboo to jump in your last month of service. Despite this fact Jack found himself listed on jump manifest five different times.
The company had been chosen to jump for armed forces day. Coincidentally it was also Mother's Day, May 9,1956.
Jack was so close to discharge he had begun wearing his "Shortimers" cap in favor of the division's favorite, the Ridgeway cap. Imagine his shock when he found out he had been included in the trip to Norfolk.
The jump area was to be a parade grounds. Jack naturally, was used to the relatively soft, plowed DZ's such as Sicily or one of Fort Bragg's other spacious drop zones. There were so few people on board that on one of the jumps Jack was afforded his best exit and body position ever. In fact he stood in the door and felt an exhilarating feeling like never before.
So many times before he and his fellow jumpers, despite being briefed at the sand table and being told that they were jumping on a 20 plus seconds drop zone, the man would unload the airplane in less than 15 seconds. This dangerous act would cause dislocated shoulders, parachutes opening in each other's faces and other things that would not have happened with the normal one second spacing.
Someone once said that the best laid plans of man often go astray, or something like that. On Jack's plane there was a portable TV camera. This was supposed to, for the first time, while in flight show the emotions of men about to jump. There were interviews of several of the men. One cameraman had been fitted and was supposed to take pictures on the way down.
As far as Jack was concerned the 5 jumps went off without a hitch. He felt good about himself, having survived and having overcome the terrible taboo.
Little did he know it wasn't over. As usual, the fly jocks, all Air Force reserves with their overnight bags and golf clubs still had time to screw things up. On the way back to Fort Bragg, Jack and his fellow troopers were laughing it up. First of all, rarely if ever, do paratroopers come back in the same plane that they left in. Perhaps that is why the pilot couldn't get it right.
The laughter in the airplane suddenly halted with the loud sound of screeching brakes accompanied by the sudden thrust of the two straining engines. From his seat Jack saw the tops of the trees scant inches away.
Back on the ground the Air
Force guys were teasing the Captain. They were all laughing and joking but Jack did
not join in their hilarity, he saw nothing funny. The tires on C-119 were so worn,
the white nylon threads showed through the rubber. The pilot had landed somewhere in
the middle of the length of the runway, realized that there was not enough room to stop,
gunned the engines and barely made it back into the sky again.
Guess it just wasn't Jack's time yet!
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