The third and final week, or Jump Week, finally came. I had become more and more apprehensive about it. I'd get off training in the evening and walk around outside, only to see a bunch of guys stumbling about with bandaged or casted legs and crutches, people who'd had horrible accidents when they'd jumped out of the plane and landed. I had dinner with one guy before Jump Week who landed wrong on his third jump out of five. He knew he busted his ankle when he landed, and when a medic cut his boot off, his foot just fell over with nothing stopping it. But when he went to the hospital, x-rays concluded he'd already broken the end parts of his right fibula and tibia! Encouraging for me!
Most of Jump Week is spent in an ominously named place called the Harness Shed, which sounds like a fucking Iraqi prison and seems to come close at times. All of us would don our chute harnesses and reserve chutes and sit for hours and hours until it was our turn to get on the C-130 to jump. During that waiting time, you're not allowed to drink water, go to the latrine, or touch any of your equipment, since it's been inspected by a sergeant airborne and you touching it might mess something up. The sergeants' airborne inspections are called JMPI's and they consist of a lot of holding things, checking snaps, arching your back, lowering and raising your chin, and bending over. In typical military fashion, this activity invites a lot of homophobic humor.
If you don't adjust your leg straps correctly, your harness will be too tight and your testicles will be smashed against your groin. Ever seen otherwise tough brickhouse guys buckle in pain and want to cry? I have! The harness also cuts into your collarbone because of all the weight. You can't stand up straight sometimes.
The day of our first jump, my stick waited ten hours (!!) to jump. We were the last stick of all to go, and this was after a two hour rain delay. It was an agonizing wait. Everyone would be trying to stay awake, my ass would get sore from sitting on saddle straps on a wooden workbench, and not being able to talk also made time pass slower. Not to mention a sergeant airborne watching the room from above and making cruel and demoralizing demands of us the whole time.
My stick's turn to jump finally came and we were guided out behind the parked plane outside. Its prop blast buffeted us with hot jet fuel fumes which made us want to hold our breaths and close our eyes. We'd be packed on the plane, hip to hip, looking at each other not with fright, but with apprehension and nervousness about performing all our points of performance correctly. I don't think many guys were scared to jump out the door -- they just didn't want to get banged up against the plane, or fucked up on the landing. We'd heard stories about one guy who smashed his face against the side of the plane because he didn't jump out far enough. And then there's the person the week before us whose chute was right above someone else's: he entered the vacuum above the lower person's chute and free-fell 50ft to the ground. Broke a lot of shit. There's also a story of a beheading of someone because the guy before him didn't pass his static line off properly, so it got tangled around the next guy's neck. Don't know if I believe that. I believe the story about the severed bicep muscle from the same thing though.
As soon as the plane takes off, we're already getting ready, .....
