Do you know the points of performance for when you ETS?
As soon as the light turned green the anchor line cable began to hop up and down as troopers jumped from the C-130 Aircraft. I was in the middle of the stick, so I really couldn’t see much except the parachute of the guy in front of me. The whooshing of the cold winter air was already enveloping the plane and I could hear the distinct roar of the planes engines. Finally we started to move forward.
I had my fist firmly in the pack of the guy in front of me as we shuffled towards the back of the plane. Even though we were in the dead of winter, being rigged up for so long, I had beads of sweat collecting around my eyes. I blinked furiously to keep the salty water out of my eyes since one hand held my static line and the other was on my reserve.
I was already looking past the guy in front of me at the safety when he stopped. I tripped and bumped into him, feeling the tug of my ruck on my waist as the rhythm I had going was halted. It had been a while since this guy jumped, and apparently he had a last minute second thought…didn’t last long though, only about a second and he jumped.
As I handed my static line, I shot a fleeting glance to my left as I turned to my right and jumped out the door.
“Shit.”
I jumped almost at the same time as the other door. As soon as I buried my chin into my chest, my helmet fell forward and covered my eyes.
“Shit.”
Any of you familiar with the ACH helmet know that the pads are hard as a rock when it’s cold, then as you warm them up they get soft. My chin strap was no longer tight, and my dumbass didn’t fix it in the plane.
“One Thousand…Two thousand…Three thous…”
I felt the opening shock and lifted up my helmet to quickly check my chute. All I saw was canopy in my face. I was directly on top of another guy’s parachute.
“Shit.”
I tried to stand up and run off his chute, but I couldn’t get my footing with my ruck and I began to slide off the center towards the edge of his chute. Then his canopy began to taco around me.
“Shit.”
I reached frantically for the edges of his parachute and pushed myself off. He was already pulling slip as I got under canopy again. I looked up and realized quickly that I was drifting backwards towards him again.
“Shit.”
I spread eagled as wide as I could and bounced off of his risers. It worked! I bounced off and was about to be on my merry way when it felt like someone cut my chute off. When I bounced off, I lost all my air and began to free fall again.
“Shit.”
Instantly I went from spread eagle back to tight body position and wrapped my hand around my reserve handle. A millisecond before I pulled it I felt a second shock. Without letting go of the reserve handle I looked up and saw I was under a good canopy. The other guy was more than 100 feet above me vigorously pulling slip when he yelled down, “You ok?” I responded, “Yeah, you?” “Yeah, get the fuck away from me.” I smiled as I looked down, the ground was already less than 50 feet away, I released my ruck and realized I was hauling ass backwards.
“Shit.”
When I jumped that day, a lot of shit went wrong, but I was trained and prepared for every scenario. All of that happened in probably less than 30 seconds; I needed almost no time to react. I can also guarantee that probably every paratrooper that read this knew exactly what to do as he read the story as well.
Being prepared is the difference between life and death.
Knowing that, you still have no fucking plan on what you are going to do when you get out?
You need to have your finances in order, know why you’re getting out, know where you want to live, and know what you want to do, and you need to do that at least six months out.
I’ve seen far too many soldiers think that getting out of the military is going to magically solve all their problems, it’s not. You need to get yourself ready before you become another statistic…you need to be prepared for that shitty jump.
-LJF