Airborne Jump Training
Heroes Remember
Airborne Jump Training
When you, when you do airborne training they, in those days they
had a, you did it in, we did it in rivers, in Shilo, Manitoba,
okay. Now in Shilo, they had a high tower 250 feet up eh and
they had arms extending from the high tower and the parachute
would be deployed and they'd take, and they take ya up there
and they, they'd stop you about two or three feet from the top
and they'd yell at you, "What are you doing up there? Why are you
up there?", you know , and you had to yell down "I'm in the
airborne" you know and all this stuff eh. Then all of a sudden
you hear this cable moving again and then you hear "clunk" and
then a parachute is deployed and you're in it of course and
"psht" you go down eh and I liked that, I didn't mind that. That
was 250 feet up. But what I didn't like was the mock tower which
is a tower you have to jump out of. It's 33 feet high, its
psychological height. You look at the ground and you say "Shucks
its too close to the ground." and then you think "Oh shucks at
the same time it's too high." and all you do is jump out and you
go down a cable, its almost like a clothesline and "psht".
That's the only thing that scared me. So when the first
jump, when I had to do my first jump, they noticed I was
hesitant on the mock tower so they put me, the last man in the
stick, you know when you line up in the plane they call it a
stick eh, so they put me as last man. So anyways, they thought
I was gonna chicken out. To put it bluntly eh and anyways...
when it came my turn at the door no hesitation at all, jumped out
and I enjoyed it because it was like going down a big slide eh
because you jump out and then the propeller blast hits you
and "psht" your gone and by the time you turn around and look at
the plane because you're supposed to look around, check your
canopy and all this stuff, the plane is way gone eh. And we
used to jump out of planes called boxcars, CC19, C119 eh and they
were so, oh, oh you were glad to get out of them because they
just vibrated they just shook eh. Oh God. Years later we jumped
out of the Hercules eh but that was a year and a half, two years
later, we jumped out of them. But my first jump, I enjoyed it.
And my sergeant, he's on the ground eh and the sergeant like
each, there was oh, shucks, about 300 of us jumping at the time
and each sergeant had a section, you know thirty men or whatever
in his jump platoon and I think amongst them they made bets,
"OK, so and so's gonna jump". It was almost like poker
eh. "OK, he's not gonna do it, he's not gonna do it". You know
and I think they had a bet on me chickening out eh. But anyways I
as I landed, he's yelling at me, "Nice that you didn't have
your feet together" and at the same time he winks at me and goes
( thumbs up), more or less to say "Way to go!".
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