The calm after the storm In the summer of 1999, I was assigned to attend Airborne school at Fort Benning, GA. Contrary to popular belief, Airborne school does not teach you how to jump out of airplanes. Anyone can jump out of an airplane with the proper motivation. Airborne school teaches you how to land without perishing, that requires a little more finesse and training. I remember Airborne training as being a lot of fun, but it nearly killed me. On day one of the darkness, I was taking on the journey of becoming a killer from above. Before I got to jump out of an airplane, I first had to learn how to land on the ground safely. The Tactical-10C is a round-shaped parachute that static-line paratroopers jump with. I had to learn the skills required to safely transition to landing and absorb the downward force preventing injury. My jumpmaster taught me how to wear the parachute harness correctly and how to use the special training …show more content…
I violated every one of those rules and a few others and walked away virtually unscathed. By all rights I should have hit the ground as a whimpering mush of broken bones and displaced flesh. The problems all started when I was shuffling slowly towards the exit. As I moved forward, my static line worked its way out of one of the loops. The man behind me noticed and brought it to my attention. I was attempting to compensate for the extra loop when I reached the end of the line and turned to exit the door. When I turned the loop passed under my elbow and now traveled over my arm. I was now frantically trying to get my arm out of the loop my Jump Master began yelling at me. “Go, go go!!” he screamed. I desperately attempted to explain my situation to him over the roar of the engines and the open door. He either did not hear me or did not care. Before I could extricate myself from the static line, he applied a size fourteen motivator to my ass and quite literally booted me out the