CASE IN POINT
A Prologue
So, I stumble back into our campsite, numbed as much from boredom as from the wet cold of mid-December in the Ozarks. The ten surviving members of our original sixteen-man Combat Control School class have just spent the last two stultifying hours huddled around a field-portable TACAN—that’s a TACtical Air Navigation beacon—learning how to tote, assemble, and operate the huge God be-damned monstrosity under a day-long freezing overcast. As for me, the only thing I think I’ve gotten out of the whole miserable exercise is about an hour-and-a-half of a standing nap.
I am exhausted and utterly demoralized. The only thing that’s gotten me through this day at all is the fact that it’s the eighth day out of the final ten that we have to spend in the field before graduation. And even that is something I couldn’t possibly care less about anymore.
My feet are wet and frozen into muddy popsicles. My camouflaged fatigues are crusted and torn and damp—both sets—which makes changing my sodden clothes a completely useless gesture. I’m hungry, sore, cold, wet, and dead tired, and I’ve only taken a shit twice in the eight days we’ve been out here. All I want to do right now is get off my feet, and slip off into blessed oblivion, mentally reciting the last of my desperate mantras, “In three days this will all be a memory. In three days this will all be a memory. In three days…”
But it is not to be.
As I shuffle up to the dead coals of our abandoned fire, one of the instructors marches into our circle of tents. His weapons and web gear, canteens and ammo pouches clank and clatter proudly. His cammies still have their starched creases, for cryin’ out loud. Mine don’t look that good when I first pick them up at the dry cleaners.
Now, I’m about as low on the student food chain as you can get, and I am grateful for that anonymity at times like these. Apparently, one of our poor, abused student NCOs is about to get him a Grand Atomic Wedgy for some trivial oversight—one of us lower ranking slobs probably has his socks on inside-out, or something critical like that—and, as usual, it will be a public spectacle. I don’t have the energy to pay it any attention though, and I begin the slow, groaning, creaking descent to my sitting spot on the log beside the charcoal mud of our late great “campfire.”
But the instructor grabs my elbow just as I’m reaching the half-stooped phase of my hunker, and announces, loudly enough for anyone within gunshot range to hear, “Airman Stipp! Your frag! The truck leaves in twenty minutes! Better hustle!”
He stuffs a piece of paper into my hand—my Fragmentary Order, or “frag”—claps me hard on the back (everybody in gunshot range probably heard that too), and marches off into the mists again.
Wha’? Is this some kind of joke?
In the center of a slowly contracting circle of fellow classmates then, I stare dumbfounded at the dirty wad of Xerox paper in my hand. These are mission orders. The kind that high commanders hand to lower commanders, but commanders all! This is a clinical summary of a tactical situation that must be resolved immediately, by a team of “elite specialists”—namely, us—led by…who? Me? They’re giving me the frag? I look around like they’ve just dropped a dead rat into my palm. What am I supposed to do with this? A lowly airman. The lowliest airman in the bunch, in fact. I’m the class joke, the clueless FNG, the annoying deadweight that keeps pulling down the grade curve.
And now they’ve decided to hand this, the final and most difficult frag of the curriculum, to me?
Of course! That’s precisely why they’ve chosen me to hand it to.
“Well, what’s it say?” It’s Greg Dorn, one of the three rookies that came here with me from the McChord Team—my home base—trying to goose me out of my stupor. I mentally stumble back on track, and read aloud from the paper.
“Southeast Command advises: Green Beret team egressing from hostile territory with multiple prisoners and wounded. Will require mass evac at earliest possible time. Insert one ten-man Combat Control Team (that’s us) to Drop Zone Delta (map insert 1), ingress overland five kilometers to Rendezvous Point Echo (map insert 2). Make contact with friendlies, establish a secure perimeter, and set up a 3,500 foot LZ (that’s a Landing Zone—basically just a dirt runway), with full lighting and UHF comm for night recovery ops. CCT will direct and protect the C-130 extraction aircraft through landing, loading, and departure, then police the area and egress on foot. Action to commence immediately.”
I look up, my mouth hanging open. Most of the class—the other lowly airmen, at least—are watching me, waiting for words to issue forth. The four student NCOs (sergeants)—by rank, the official class leaders—just scowl at me, as if this was all some scheme of mine to steal their moment of glory. I am fully prepared to hand it over to them though, while I go trotting off into the woods to take my third crap of the week, which has suddenly become an urgent priority for me again. But that will not happen.
“Okay then,” says Greg, trying to jump-start me again, “Tell us what to do.”
God bless his enthusiastic little heart.
My mind whirls into action—in much the same way a helicopter might spin up to speed if none of its moving parts were actually bolted together—and I start fumbling through impromptu assignments. Fortunately, a couple of my fellow Little Fish are right beside me the whole way, offering suggestions.
“You’ll need two pricks,” says Goebler (by which he means PRC-77s… heavy backpack radios) “one primary, one back-up.”
“Uh, yeh,” I reply.
“I’ll take one,” says Torrero, volunteering from the back of the circle.
“Okay,” I answer, really taking the bull by the horns now.
I half-heartedly get everyone moving, rummaging through their gear for their standard combat loads while I formulate a rough outline of a plan. Greg says he’ll pack my stuff up for me, since I’m going to be real busy, then he disappears with the rest, leaving me standing by the dead campfire, scribbling notes on the back of the frag.
With five minutes left to go, and the big deuce-and-a-half truck idling noisily nearby, I finally complete my computations. Several of the guys have already tossed their gear onto the canvas-shelled bed of the truck, and are now hopping and stomping and chuffing great skirls of steam into the chilly air in front of me. I notice none of the NCOs are among them. Now, referring constantly to my notes, I send them running to gather up the mission-specific stuff. I’ve calculated exactly how many lights we’ll need to sufficiently outline a 3,500 foot runway, and figured out how many each man will have to carry in his own rucksack to get them all to the LZ without killing anybody. I know how many red and green lens covers we’ll need to mark the approach and departure ends of the runway. We’ll need extra batteries for the PRCs, pen flares, and some fundamental weather gear for the air traffic control part of the operation… defused Claymores, trip flares, and extra ammo for the perimeter defense part. As I call out each item—over the protestations of the impatient instructors waiting by the truck—someone darts out of the crowd, and rounds it up. Until, at last, everything on my list has been called and loaded.
And twenty-two minutes after receiving the frag, all ten of us, along with a small mountain of equipment, are huddled under the tarp canopy of the truck, and the tailgate is being slammed shut. The truck jerks into gear with a whistling diesel sound, and we pull out through the bushes onto the nearby dirt road.
It’s a forty-five minute drive from our field encampment to the airfield at Little Rock Air Force Base, forty-five minutes that I spend trying to finalize my calculations while we barrel down the road, rifling a fifty-mile-an-hour wind chill through the group. I am shivering violently, and my penchant for motion sickness is making it tough to look at my list for longer than a few seconds at a time while the truck is rolling. I finally give up, still about a half hour out from the base, and concentrate instead on fending off the razor-edged cut of the wind.
And that’s when it really hits me. I mean, I’d understood it before, but now it’s really starting to sink in. I, Airman Steve Stipp, the lowliest of the low in this hardcore, cutthroat class of ate-up warrior wannabes, have just been given a frag, the last frag of the course. And they’ve given me only twenty minutes to prepare for it—plus these forty-five nearly useless minutes of hurtling through the snow-dappled Ozarks on the way to the base. And that’s just plain unfair!
Granted, they had warned us at the beginning of this final field portion of the class that during these ten days, we would have to get in five combat-load parachute jumps in order to graduate, two of them night jumps. Each of these jumps would then play a component role in each of the five frag scenarios they’d be handing out during that time. And in each case, 24 hours before each scheduled jump, a frag would be issued to one of our class leaders—one of our valiant non-commissioned officers, or NCOs—who would then have those 24 hours to thoroughly plan their op prior to actually executing it the following day. Ten days, five jumps, two days for each.
But we only have four NCOs in our class now. You do the math.
We used to have five, but the senior and most team-spirited among them—Sergeant Cooper, our original “class leader”—self-eliminated when, in only his second week at the school, he went and played racquetball without goggles, but with his contacts in. Naturally—almost invariably—he took a shot right in the eye, damaged it, and was med-evac’ed home. And then there were four.
We had presumed that one of those remaining NCOs—probably Sergeant Haley, the next most senior among them—would just have to handle a second frag, whether he wanted to or not, just to meet our quota of five frags and five jumps. That had seemed reasonable. One of the few advantages of being the resident cannon fodder in a group like this is that you never have to worry about this level of crap. It’s all above your pay grade.
So much for that tonight.
In a fit of creative spite apparently, the instructors have decided that this last one should go to the dweeb at the bottom of the totem pole instead. C’est moi. The weather’s been bad all day, so probably no jump will happen anyway, and higher winds are expected with the fall of night. That should clear out the fog and the overcast, but will probably cancel the parachute portion of the program precisely because of the higher wind velocity. So, as long as the jump itself isn’t going to happen, wouldn’t it be fun to watch the class goober flounder and drown as the anvils are tossed in on him?
And why stop with a mere LZ establishment? Let’s make it a night drop! In surly weather! On short notice! Incredibly short notice—twenty minutes instead of twenty-four hours! And let’s throw in a five-mile covert overland march to get from the DZ (Drop Zone) to the LZ (the Landing Zone)! Just for the hell of it! Let’s really bury this dork! And that’s exactly what they’ve done… stood me at the bottom of the silo, and dumped in the fertilizer. Apparently they’re planning on filling it all the way up to the top too.
The gray sunset fades to darkness as we lumber through the base and onto the flightline. Our classrooms and parachute rigging tables are in a hangar right off the main parking apron. Everyone is frozen and stiff as the tailgate bangs open and we clamber down onto the pavement. I “order” a chain of men to pass the gear from the truck to the warm hangar, and the unloading passes quickly.
Inside, the instructors graciously allow us ten minutes to thaw out and take a leak, to fill our canteens and batten down our equipment. I spend this time furiously scribbling more notes, and allocating gear and tasks to each individual man, including myself. Greg nobly volunteers to prep my parachute for me. Just as well. Since I’m the one who originally packed it—seven weeks ago in the parachute-packing phase of the class—I’m probably going to die tonight anyway.
When at last the instructor bellows for silence and calls me up to the blackboard to give my briefing, I’m still scribbling as I walk up the aisle. But I’ve got a rough battle plan assembled in my head, and by the time I reach the podium, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Again I recap the mission, state our objectives, draw a little map on the board, and point out our landmarks.
At 2130 (that’s 9:30pm, for the unenlightened), our C-130 drop ship will put us out over this DZ (a big open field within sight of our camp). Once on the ground, we will form up and head out, southbound, through these dense woods, for about five klicks (kilometers), until we reach this little dirt road here. If our night nav is on-target, we should hit the road right about here, where it runs straight as an arrow for a little over a mile. We just need 3,500 feet of that straightaway. Here the team will spread out, forming a rough defensive perimeter around our runway-to-be, five men to a side.
Each man will have X-amount of Elco lights (the portable runway lights) that he will be responsible for placing at the appropriate interval down the length of the runway before assuming his defensive position. The lights will remain off until radio contact has been made with the inbound aircraft, at which time, in sequence (so as not to completely abandon all our defensive positions at the same time), each man will return to activate his assigned lights.
I address each man on the team individually, one by one, by name, telling him specifically what he’ll be carrying, what he’ll need to do with it when he gets there, and where his defensive station will be. I lay out our order of march, assigning a point man, a rear guard, two flankers, a second radioman, a compass man, and a pacer (the guy who counts our steps, and keeps track of the distance we’ve traveled on foot).
It takes just under fifteen minutes to deliver my little oratory. But when it’s done, I’m actually feeling pretty damned good about it. It’s a viable plan—downright brilliant, considering the absurd time constraints on my preparations—and everyone seems to have absorbed it well, if not a little grimly. Even the instructors have nothing to say when I’m done except, “All right ladies, let’s mount up.”
I let out a shaky sigh of relief, and head back to my seat. Greg claps me on the shoulder, and hands me my readied parachute. Good old Greg.
For most of another fifteen minutes then, the room fills with all the snapping, clicking, bonking, shuffling, stomping sounds of a military machine assembling itself, as the gear is disseminated per my instructions, and each man packs it up and dons his individual battle armor.
And when I’m done, I’m one heavy little bastard myself.
In addition to my fifty pound parachute, harness, and reserve, I’ve got all my web gear hanging from its own belt and harness, including a red-lensed flashlight, a K-Bar combat knife, two pouches of .22 blank ammunition (three banana-clips of thirty rounds each to a pouch), a compass and med kit, plus a canteen that I don’t notice (until too late) is empty. In addition, almost thirty pounds of runway lights, lens covers, and flares fill my rucksack to bursting.
My GAU-5 (which rhymes with “cow-drive,” by the way)—the chopped down Special Forces variant of the ubiquitous M-16 assault rifle—is slung over one shoulder, barrel-down, flash suppressor pointed down my leg and tied to my rigging with what amounts to a thin shoestring. And because I’m to be the glorious commander of this ship of fools, I also get to carry one of the two PRC-77s, which will ride on my back like a car battery once I’m on the ground. And don’t forget the layers of cold weather jackets and thermies, plus my field cap, jump helmet, and goggles. I’ve also painted my face to look like a freshly tossed salad.
If nothing else, I certainly look the part of a real Action Jackson field commander.
I’m exhausted and dazed and nervous, but I’ve got a tenuous feeling that I actually might have pulled this one off, despite all their efforts to overwhelm me, and despite the fact that nothing has actually happened yet. And when, at last, we troop out the doors, through a sharp and stiffening wind—under abruptly clear skies, studded with stars and fast moving cotton puffs of clouds torn from the previous overcast—I’m marching, with no small amount of pride, at the head of this column of noble lunatics.
My noble lunatics, at least for the next couple of hours.
It’s the only good moment of the day for me. And the last one of the night. Unbeknownst to me, one great fistful of Cosmic Shit is, at this very moment, hitting one huge Karmic Fan somewhere. And guess who’s standing downrange, innocently looking the wrong direction.
As I tromp up the C-130’s troop ramp, that all too familiar stench of JP-4 jet fuel wafts out of the windowless cargo hold, and reminds me to take some Dramamine before the flight. This is when I discover that my canteen is empty. I’d been too busy back in the hangar to fill it up. So I toss the vile things down my throat now, dry, bitter, and sticking to the back of my tongue.
Only the beginning, my friend. Only the beginning.
One by one, the flight crew cranks over each of the four propellers, and soon the open cargo bay is reverberating with their heavy turbine roar. Escorted by one of the instructors, I make the rounds of “my men”—most of whom are still glowering impatiently at me—checking their straps and connections. I feel ridiculous.
At last I am back at my end of the troop seat—an appallingly uncomfortable cloth-and-pipe “bench” that runs the length of each side of the compartment—and belted in. We start to taxi, the ramp whines closed, the lights dim to red, and I close my eyes (yet another defense mechanism to fend off the inevitable motion sickness). We trundle and bump over the uneven pavement for several minutes, then we rock to a stop, run the engines up through their final checks, and taxi into position on the runway.
For some reason, we sit there an inordinately long time. But I don’t care. My eyes are closed, my earplugs are in, and I’m breathing deep and slow… until two of our instructors burst into the middle of the compartment, screaming for everyone to get up and out. Now!
Did we take-off already? No, but we are abandoning ship, right here, right now.
I don’t feel quite as bad about my own stupidity when I see nearly every other man on the plane bouncing up and down in their seats for the next several seconds. For we’ve all managed to release at least one wrong buckle in our haste to unbelt and evacuate. We’re covered in buckles after all, and just about everyone seems to be getting repeatedly yanked back down into their seats as they pop connectors, only to discover that it’s not their seatbelt clasps they’ve released. After several embarrassing failed attempts to stand up, I finally release myself, snatch up my rucksack from the center pile, and join the queue for the exit door.
But there are no inflatable slides on a military aircraft. No ladders or rolling stairs either. Just a six foot drop to the concrete, wearing over a hundred pounds of gear, in the dark, and on legs (and arches) stiff from the cold. I crunch to the ground next to the guy in front of me, and we both limp off the runway into the grass. Fire trucks are already wailing their way out to us.
What the hell?
They sit us in the grass with our backs against our chutes and rucks, and we watch as the little Keystone Kop parody plays out in front of us. It lasts for more than half an hour, until they declare the aircraft safe enough to be towed back to the parking apron. A blue “bread van” pulls up, and takes the flight crew back to the ramp to crank up another C-130. We, on the other hand, are left to chill even further in the tall wet grass.
A tug drags the first plane away—smoke in the cockpit, they finally tell us—the fire trucks pack up and leave, and we’re left alone under the stars. The wind is brisk and uneven, almost hesitant, but still full of frigid bluster. And the grass is wet. But it’s now after 10:00pm, and no other aircraft are due in or out, so they leave us right where we are to await our new aircraft.
Eventually, a new C-130 thrums and drones over to us, stopping, once again, in take-off position on the runway. I stagger to my feet, and join the others in their slow shuffle over to the lowered cargo ramp. I don’t even pretend to be interested in my team’s snaps and buckles this time, and plop down immediately into my rearmost seat.
At something like a quarter till eleven then, we finally lumber into the sky, and turn toward our drop zone. It should be a ridiculously short flight—after all, it only took forty-five minutes to drive it in a loaded deuce-and-a-half—but the repercussions from that cosmic collision of feces and fan have only just begun to reveal themselves.
As predicted by our resident pessimists back at the camp, the wind has stiffened yet again, ricocheting through the mountains and chopping up the skies into turbulent pockets of twenty and thirty mile an hour gusts. The legal wind “speed limit” for jumping with the standard round parachutes that we are wearing is thirteen miles an hour. And the winds are way over that. But the instructors are yet hopeful, and decide to keep circling until some magical lull presents itself. Our tactical static-line jump altitude is only 1,500 feet—barely above the dark mountaintops, and plowing right through the worsening turbulence—so the ride has now not only lengthened, but it has noticeably roughened as well. And there’s only so much my closed eyes and a pair of dry Dramamine can handle.
Now, as time stretches out, and the ten-minute flight slowly elongates to twenty, then thirty, then forty minutes, “matter” finally triumphs over “mind,” and my scrumptious lunch decides to return for an encore (I’d missed dinner in the scramble to set up this glorious mission). I am prepared for this, at least. And after about ten minutes of my usual futile attempts at resistance—which really only drags out the misery while things rise to their inevitable conclusion—I toss my cookies into the requisite bag and lean back, sweating and pasty faced, but at last relieved of that burden. We are required to carry our barf out the door with us though, so I spend a moment securing my little treasure so that it can be easily reached at jump time.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re still battering our way through the invisible moguls with no end in sight, and I’m begging the loadmaster for another bag. Having witnessed my previous performance, he is able to locate several more, and gives them all to me.
I use one almost immediately. A little liquid, but mostly dry heaves. The effort leaves me weak, dizzy, and thirsty though, and all I can think about is how much I’d really like the instructors to just give up on this one. Let’s just turn around and land. Either that or shoot me. Give me some live ammo, and I’ll do it myself.
But no. If they put off this mission until tomorrow night, I’ll have too much time to perfect my dazzling marching orders, and what kind of fun would that be?
Twenty more wretched minutes jostle by as this blind, stinking, droning machine blunders through the bumpy skies. And I am audibly moaning now. Though the vibration of a good gentle moan is usually fairly therapeutic in the quelling of an upset stomach, tonight it’s doing nothing. But the fact is, I just don’t care anymore. I am miserable with a capitol F, and I can’t believe my gut is boiling yet again, preparing for yet another reprise of its trademark Technicolor Yawn®.
This time it’s all dry heaves and spastic abdominal muscles. I twitch and convulse for another couple of minutes, and finally collapse with my empty barf bag in hand. I am utterly drained, sweating like a triathlete, and tumbling at the nexus of a world that is now spinning wildly around me. I want to weep, but I haven’t got the energy. Or the fluids.
So, naturally, this is when the more malicious of our instructor cadre marches into the middle of the bouncing cargo bay, and, holding up three fingers on one hand, and a closed fist on the other (to show us what 13 looks like), announces that the winds are now at “thirteen knots!” His sinister grin belies the rather amazing coincidence that the winds should just happen to be at exactly the maximum allowable jump velocity—because, of course, they aren’t. They haven’t lessened a single knot. We’re still slamming through the same twenty-mile-an-hour buffets we have been for the last hour-and-a-half. Our instructors have simply tired of the circling, not to mention the re-runs of me blowing phantom chunks into that same empty bag, and have opted to just get this over with.
“Hook up!” he yells.
I swoon to my feet, somehow fumble my leaden rucksack onto its hooks under my reserve chute, tighten my helmet strap, snap my static line onto the anchor cable overhead, collect up my barf bags, and lurch my way down the bucking floor to the side jump door.
The lead instructor hauls the door open as I approach, unleashing a raw shaft of hurricane-force wind into the compartment, and thrusts his head out into the thundering slipstream. Hands clutching both sides of the combing, he scans the pitch black universe outside. I watch him as if in a trance. The freezing torrent of air seems to have placated my stomach somewhat, but the dizziness is slow to subside.
The instructor waves me over to the door beside him.
Since I’m the dashing designated leader of this motley crew, this is the part where he shows me how to sight and time the exact moment of exit. The standard technique is for me, as the Head Honcho here, to wait for just the right instant, then signal my men to “Go! Go! Go!” I’ll stand on the opposite side of the doorway—right where the instructor is now, in the core of the wind tunnel—and usher each man out, following the last man into the void myself. Such was our teaching.
Still bleary-eyed and dopey though, I wobble into place next to the instructor, and follow his pointed finger out into the darkness. He’s shouting something about lights, but I lose most of it in the maelstrom. I can see what he’s pointing at though—a broad rectangle of four red lights, sliding through the solid black nothingness out there—the four corners of our drop zone, marked out by the instructors on the ground. It’s interesting to watch, but right now I’m mostly fixated on the revivifying effect of that screaming Arctic slipstream tearing past me in the doorway. It’s slowly clearing my head and scouring away the deep nausea. I do notice, however, that the drift of those four points is not bringing them any closer. Rather, they seem to be floating past us, like cars on the opposite side of a freeway divider. I’m puzzling this over in my swirling brain, when the instructor smacks my shoulder and shouts “Go!”
By this he means, “Get your men going!”
In my fading delirium however, I take it quite literally. And in a mindless lunge, I hurl myself bodily into the freezing ether. I am now, officially, a complete fucking idiot.
What the hell did I just do?!!
Rather than being the last out the door, I am the first.
For three seconds, I tumble through the hard, slick, icy air. Then I am hoisted upward, abruptly but smoothly, by the risers above my shoulders and the straps between my legs (never underestimate the importance of proper testicular placement prior to any jump). The savage roar of the wind is instantly snuffed, replaced by the snap, pop, and ruffle of an unfurling parachute canopy overhead.
And just like that, I am cured of all maladies and imbalances. I am invigorated, breathlessly alive, clear-headed—and most of a damned MILE away from the four red lights to my left! A mile! Okay, maybe a kilometer. I’m barely a thousand feet up in the air by now, sinking at 22 feet per second, under a chute that will contribute only 10 mph of forward speed to my travel over the ground. And I’m over the frappin’ Ozark Mountains and forests at nearly midnight, a kilometer from the damned DZ!
I am dead! And the rest of “my men” are probably all crowded around the jump door right now, laughing and pointing, drinking champagne, and watching my lonely, unbelievably stupid parachute recede into the abyss by itself.
Well, the least I can do is turn myself toward the distant drop zone, and try to get as close as I can before plowing into some invisible cliff face in the dark. I line myself up with the little red lights—which seem to be mysteriously winking on and off now, as if something were passing in front of them—then turn my attentions to my pack release (the so-called “Red Apple,” a big, red, wooden knob located under the reserve chute on my chest). I find it, and give it a vigorous heave upward. It releases, and my 75-pound rucksack falls away, jerking to a stop at the end of its 20-foot tether.
I am looking straight down, watching it plunge into the inky blackness below, when something huge whooshes by my feet going the other way… fast. I twist around in my harness to see what it was. And in the feeble starlight, I barely make out the soft, tree-studded swayback of a ridgeline, backing away and rising steadily above me.
I have just swooped over the top of a ridgeline separating our drop zone from the next valley over! They put me out over the wrong valley! Couldn’t that pilot see how far away the DZ lights were when he hit the “Go” button?
Jesus, I am really screw…
Then it dawns on me. The speed with which the ridgeline shot past me has given it away.
They put me out “over there” because the winds are still howling at over twenty F’ing miles an hour! They put me out way upwind to allow the winds to carry me back to where I was supposed to be. That ridgeline flashed by me so fast because my chute’s built-in 10 mph forward speed was being added to the wind’s twenty- to twenty-five mph velocity. I have to slow the fudge down, right now, before I slam into the ground at over thirty horizontal miles an hour!
Quickly, I haul down on my right toggle-line, and the parachute responds with a languid turn to the right. And once the red lights are at my back, I let go of the line. I’m traveling backwards now. The wind is still shoving me towards the DZ at at least 20 mph, but my chute is now countering it with its own 10 mph. Which means I’m still going to hit the invisible ground at more than 10 mph, dropping at 22 feet per second, and going backwards!
Oh, this is going to leave a mark.
But I’ve now done all that I can do, and I look back down between my frozen feet in one last desperate effort to forewarn myself of the impending impact. It’s just darkness down there though. I can barely make out my toes, and with a little imagination, I think I can see my rucksack swinging like a pendulum twenty feet further below.
Suddenly, I hear a distant crunch, and my attention is momentarily transfixed by my rucksack, which is now bouncing away ahead of me—behind me—pulling its line taut in the process. It has found the ground first. Of course! I should have…
WHAM!!! My heels catch something, and an instant later, my ass and head (apparently interchangeable on this night) smash into it in turn. With a bone-jarring crash and a bounce, I smack the ground like a great big camouflaged sack of loose change.
I hit and roll onto my side, most of the air bashed from my lungs. Ahead of me, I see my chute still fully and firmly inflated, dragging me towards the dark trees. My heavy rucksack is acting like an anchor though, furrowing its way along behind me, and slowing me down. And as I drag along between them, my stunned senses return enough for me to fumble for the riser-release buckles at each of my shoulders. They’re always such sticky sons-of-bitches, especially when there’s any tension on them. But tonight, the one on the left lets go right away. My chute goes limp, and flutters to the ground.
So do I.
“Oh… God… damn,” I gasp.
I don’t tarry long, though. One thing that’s been thoroughly hammered into us since the start of this school is to “Never Be The Last.” There are a hundred push-ups waiting for the last man to the rally point—for the last man to do anything, really. And even though I suspect I may well be the only person from that C-130 that is not still on board it right now, well… a hundred push-ups is a hundred push-ups.
I struggle to my feet, assessing my every ache and pain as I start to disconnect things. First, my chute. I withdraw the folded B-4 bag I’d stowed among my crotch straps, and drop it on the ground. I unhook my rucksack tether, and toss the cord into the bag. Then, swooping one arm under the chute’s risers, I start to march towards the deflated canopy, alternating the swoops until the entire length of suspension lines and silken folds are daisy-chained around my arms, from pits to wrists. I’m only halfway through the process though, when I hear a curious sound wafting across the grain of the wind. A snapping, fluttering sound, followed by a discreet “oh shit,” and that flaccid bag-o-meat ka-flump! that goes along with a body slamming to earth. A string of “ow’s” and “shits” and other gut-punched four-letter utterances accompany a bumping, scuffing, scraping sound, all of which implies another arrival—comparable to mine—of another gallant sky-trooper. At least it looks like I didn’t leap alone.
I hurry my post-jump ministrations, dump my gathered chute into the B-4 bag, break the shoestring moorings of my GAU-5 and set it aside, then shuck my harness and helmet, and zip them up with the rest of the parachute paraphernalia in the bag. Only my reserve chute—a tight little “loaf” of green bundled material, about the size of an over-stuffed shoebox—remains outside the bag. I take it now, and hook its two clips onto the handles of the loaded B-4 bag.
Thump! Crunch! “Aw Christ!” Scuffle, drag, bump. “Son of a…”
Ah, another valiant ally. I shrug my way, painfully, into my bloated rucksack, slap my field cap on my head, chamber a round, and sling the GAU. Then I heave the stuffed B-4 bag over my head, with the connected reserve chute pulled down under my chin, and begin the long tromp over to the instructor’s jeep, idling at the rally point.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh…” Ka-flump! Bump-da bump! “Ouch! Mother…!” Draaaag.
Just six more heroes to go. I accelerate to a jouncing, jangling, flopping trot. Don’t want to do no push-ups. Not tonight. Everything hurts enough as it is.
The continuing arrivals fade in volume as I near the cluster of vehicles, where they sit purring steam into the frosty breeze. A jeep (for the instructors), a deuce-and-a-half (to carry off our bags), and the obligatory Meat Wagon or “Field Ambulance” (in case of injuries). It’s the rules.
Whump! “Ah, fuck!” Somewhere behind me.
Swish! Crunch! Ba-wump! “Aaauurrgggh! Shit!”
Oh yes, the professionals are on the job tonight.
I jog right up to the deuce, and heft my B-4 bag onto its bed. And suddenly, the remaining weapons and bullets and canteens and coats and radios and rucksacks still hanging on my body don’t seem so heavy anymore. Just to impress the observers with my mission focus then, I immediately drop to one knee, shed the ruck, unlatch its top-flap, exposing the PRC, and begin to set it up. A distant “son of a bitch!” trickles through the engine noises, and another “shit!” or two.
Yes indeedy, the gang’s all here.
The radio powers up, and once its little foot-long antenna has been attached, I find our mission freq and make a little signal check, knowing that no one’s going to answer it. Then, demonstrably satisfied with the state of my communications, I hook the handset onto a D-ring on my web gear, package everything back up, and pitch it all back onto my aching shoulders again. As I do, a thin and lonely shout filters in from the outfield.
“Medic! Medic!”
Damn! And things were going so well.
Cigarette embers arc out of the Meat Wagon’s windows as they drop the thing into gear, and trundle off into the darkness. Its headlights come on a moment later.
In the meantime, a couple more of my guys jog into the rally point, heave their bags onto the deuce, and plod over to me, trying gamely to stifle their puffing and panting in front of the instructors. Nobody says a thing about my premature ejection from the aircraft.
“Son of a bitch,” a somewhat less than reverent shadow gasps, “There’s no way that was thirteen knots of wind up there.”
“Thirteen?” the instructor behind the wheel of the jeep chuckles, “More like twenty-three, probably twenty-five when you went out that door. What the hell’s wrong with you dumbasses?”
We all stare at him, dumbstruck and speechless, while the steam chugs from our mouths. Like it was our idea or something! Clearly he’s kidding, in a cruel kind of way, but I know he’s seriously testing Rocky’s self-restraint. Little Rocky—Ricky Spradlin—our class’s designated feisty runt. Barely five feet tall, wired and wiry, fun but volatile. It figures he’s one of the first to the rally point. But right now he’s glaring at the instructor as if debating between decapitation, castration, or just a good old country ass-whoopin’. Trained, experienced, or not, I’d be hard-put to give the instructor even odds against a wound-up-and-wailing Little Rocky.
Another heavily burdened figure lumbers out of the darkness, and collapses against the truck’s tailgate. It’s Percy Hackett, my designated pacer, and the class’s official bitcher.
“Jesus… Christ,” he wheezes, “That about t’ killed me.”
“Almost,” somebody behind me sighs, evidently disappointed.
In the distance, twin spears of red light flare to life and begin to spin. The Meat Wagon’s emergency lights. Uh-oh. The instructor in the jeep’s right seat fumbles with his own radio for a moment, then mumbles something into the mike that’s buried deep in the meat of his huge fist.
“What’s up?” Hackett sniffs.
Silence for a moment, while the radio squawks and crackles behind us. Then Rocky speaks up for the rest of us. “What? You think we know something you don’t?”
“Looks like Torrero broke his leg,” the big instructor mutters disgustedly, tossing the radio mike onto the floorboard. Then, turning to face me, “Better figure out what he’s carrying, and start divvying it up among the rest of you.” His compassion is just breathtaking.
I don’t have to say the word “shit.” Hackett does it for me. Then he slaps the side of his GAU-5 in frustration, and fires a round into the dirt.
BANG!
Everybody jumps. Even the horse-with-no-name sitting in the jeep.
“What the…! Awww…” Hackett knows what’s coming next.
“Well now, that was just fucking brilliant,” the instructor—now standing—barks. “You know the drill, airman. Drop!”
“But… I…”
“Drop! And give me four-hundred!”
“Four-hundred?!”
“You heard me. You’re number eight. Now drop. And count it off, loud.”
“Shit.” Hackett snatches the errant GAU off his shoulder, and, thinking better of it only at the last second, refrains from spiking it into the ground, choosing instead to prop it delicately against one of the deuce’s tires.
“For some reason, I just don’t think that safety’s on, airman!”
Hackett stops, halfway to the ground, and swivels to snap the weapon’s safety on. You can hear his teeth grinding from clear over here. Then he’s on his hands and toes, pumping and counting.
“One, two, three, four, five…!”
Four-hundred push-ups. Jesus. But everybody knows the CCS Prime Directive: “There’s no excuse for a weapon going off unexpectedly. It’s loud. Bad guys can hear it. Good guys can get shot. So you will never, ever allow it to happen.” The first man to cap off an unscheduled round owed fifty push-ups, and each subsequent bonehead thereafter had to add fifty more to that of the one before (on the presumption that the only thing stupider than a moron banging one off like that, is another moron doing the same thing after he just saw somebody else doing a million push-ups). Hackett is the eighth bonehead in as many days to accidentally do it.
I was the second bonehead of the class, back on the afternoon of the second day in the field. Looking back on it now, it’s a trade-off I’m only too happy to have made—the humiliation of being one of the first to screw up, in lieu of being one of the last, and having to do push-ups for the rest of my military career.
From out of the midnight gloom comes an impossible silhouette; what appears to be an eight-foot-high mountain of luggage, swaying up to the deuce, and crumpling onto its bed. It turns out to be good old Greg Dorn, staggering under the burden of his own load plus a second B-4 bag bloated with Torrero’s discarded jump gear. He’s breathing hard, but still radiating enough gung-ho calmness and bottled energy to carry it all right back out there again.
“… twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two…” says Hackett.
Greg doesn’t even look down as he steps towards me around Hackett’s pumping form. He straightens his field cap—God forbid he should appear mussed after the diversions of the last two hours—and drops his gloved hands to his hips. “Torrero landed right after me. Landed with the wind. Almost overshot the whole DZ in the dark. Hit hard, and headfirst. I could hear the bone snap from clear over where I was standing. They’re gonna’ have to evac him to Little Rock General.”
“Shit,” we all reply in unison.
“Forty, forty-one, forty-two…” says Hackett.
Great. I haven’t even started the night overland portion of the frag, and I’m already down to 80% of my original force. One guy’s getting a bumpy ride off the DZ with his leg in a splint—and, as luck would have it, he’s the guy that volunteered to carry the other damned prick—and another’s just begun an hour’s worth of push-ups. The mission clock’s about to start ticking as soon as the last ambulatory member of the team reaches the RP and finishes his push-ups for being last. I’m freezing, and hopping back and forth on clubfeet. It’s after midnight in the shivering depths of an Arkansas December, and I can no longer remember why I’m here.
Dammit! Right now—at this very moment in time—I’ve got friends, going to college down in Gainesville, Florida, that are probably getting laid, right now, even as we speak! Well, truth be told, knowing them, they’re probably playing Dungeons & Dragons or something equally geekish. But that’s not the point. The point is that they—and the rest of the world, for that matter—are comfortable right now, zoned out in front of the TV, rolling dice, or making the bed springs squeak—whatever—even as we wage our miserable little pretend-war out here on this wind-whipped field, debating alternatives to my brilliant mission plan and ignoring Hackett’s push-ups as they slow and quiet behind us. He’s barely finished his first fifty.
Fuck me.
Two more human pack-mules stagger out of the darkness, shrug their bags onto the truck, chuckle at Hackett’s fading exertions, and approach our huddle with Torrero’s rucksack carried between them. The divvying up begins—his lights and lens covers, the anemometer, and of course, that goddamned prick. As if everyone’s loads were not absurdly heavy enough already.
Hackett is on his hands and knees, cursing and gasping furiously—he hasn’t quite reached eighty yet, and this is already his third pause—when the last two guys finally barrel out of the darkness, racing each other to avoid the ignominy of being the dreaded Last Guy. The Head Instructor decides they’re both a couple of losers, and now we have three exhausted people counting off push-ups together.
As they’re pumping, another instructor announces that the mission clock has just been started. We now have two hours to be completely set up and lit up on our anonymous little stretch of dirt backroad, which is still five klicks away. I sigh, and call for everyone to saddle up and start moving. We’ve got several minutes of marching just to get to the edge of the DZ where I’d designated our overland to begin. Our two last-place pusher-uppers can catch up to us before we reach the trees. Hackett is just going to have to be a write-off. We can’t wait for him.
Rocky, my point man, takes the cue, and immediately starts trotting towards the DZ’s southeast corner. The rest of us are hard-pressed to even keep him in sight, as it’s always been throughout the entire course whenever Li’l Rocky has taken the lead. Behind us, the two Last Guys finish their respective fifty each, and scramble back into their gear to follow us. Hackett is a limp rag, paused yet again and gasping, his own count stalled at just over a hundred. The instructors though, taking all things into account, decide to waive the rest of his calisthenic debt, and release him to join us.
And so begins the overland odyssey.
The last two arrivals catch up to us before we’ve even moved fifty yards. Hackett comes wheezing up to our little parade just before we reach the tree line, and slumps into the number four slot, right behind me, puffing, panting, and cussing up a storm. In a hushed tone, I interrupt his fuming to remind him that (a) this is supposed to be a covert move, so keep it down—the instructors are still with us—and (b) here’s the edge of the DZ, so start your pace count now.
It’s the latter point that re-focuses his seething energy, moreso than the former, and the profanity fades into the darkness along with the rest of us.
We seem then, for the moment at least, to finally be on-track. Everybody together—well, all but one, anyway—everything in place. Nothing to do now but cover the distance discreetly, and call it a night.
Sometimes I can just be so naïve.
For starters, I now see that I have “over-tacticalized” the move. What can I say? This is the first tactical overnight land march we’ve done since the class began. I have no precedent to follow. Considering the distance to be covered, and the time constraints under which we’re operating, it’s overkill to keep nine heavily burdened men in a tree-to-tree half-crouch the whole way. Probably not accomplishing much with those two flankers that I’ve got paralleling us either, about ten yards out on either side of the column. Just begging to lose them somewhere along the line. But right now, with three instructors strolling among us in the pitch black of the forest, and so little time to get where we want to go, I can’t think of a good “tactical” way to undo what’s been overdone. So we forge ahead as is.
Then Hackett starts to bitch again. Despite the silence we’re all striving so hard for here, not to mention the omnipresence of the instructors, he’s just at the end of his tether. He’s so pissed off, so exhausted, and now so utterly beside himself, what with the frustration of not being able to keep a current pace count with all the stopping and starting, ducking and darting, circumnavigating low hills and clambering over invisible fallen logs, that he just can’t help himself. But I’m feeling battered enough myself—so sore, cold, shaky-kneed weak, and deeply bone-tired—that I’m no longer willing to let that kind of shittiness go unchecked. And after a couple more sharp whispers at him to keep it down, I finally rap the side of my weapon twice—the signal to drop and freeze—and scamper back beside him.
One of the instructors ambles up next to us like a curious cow.
“What’s the count up to right now?” I ask Hackett.
“I don’t know,” he fusses, “Somethin’ like nineteen-fifty.”
Good. 1,950 paces. At roughly 11 paces per 10 yards—my own personal measured standard—that’s roughly a mile. 1.6 klicks out of 5. That’s good enough for me. “Fine. You’re fired.”
“What?”
“You’re fired. I’ll take the pace count from here. You go relieve Sgt. Donado at rear-guard.”
“What the hell do you think you’re…?”
“Shut up. I’m sick of your bitching. Go to the rear… now.” Then, without waiting for his next response, I stand up, rap my weapon again, and signal a forward march. Nobody else says a word. Even Hackett’s receding outrage is subdued. I’ve never done anything like that before in my life, and I’m too mentally obliterated to take any pride or relief from it right now. But the rigors of the evening finally feel a little less trying without the incessant sparks flying off the man behind me. The march itself doesn’t get even a little bit easier.
We cross several dirt roads along the way. In each case, Rocky brings us to a stop, and silently signals me with the nature of the problem. I invariably signal him to do a quick reconnoiter, then make the crossing once he’s sure it’s clear. We all know there’s not going to be anybody out on these roads at two in the morning, but you never know what the instructors might pull. Maybe I’m not being too tactical about all this.
Then one by one—with each of us acting “terribly intent” about not being observed—we dart across the road into the far side scrub. It takes a few minutes to get everybody across this way, and that’s annoying for everybody, including me. But I’m not willing to drop our guard now, just because we’re all dead exhausted and fed up with this nightmare deployment. After all, the instructors are with us for a reason. If they weren’t, we could all just be crashing through the woods, flashlights waving all over the place, shouting dirty jokes at one another, and it wouldn’t make any difference, as long as we made the LZ in good time. So there’s a legitimate purpose to all this super-stealthy play-acting.
A couple of small clearings break up the march as well, but we can’t just blithely stroll across the open areas just because it’d be easier. People get killed when they make themselves an easy target. So we have to circle each clearing, just inside the trees, and that delays things even more. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at estimating distances, even when they’re not line-of-sight. I’m also pretty adept at picking a notable landmark on the far side of each clearing from which to resume our straight march, and this precludes me having to “estimate” when we’ve circled far enough. And as a final bonus, I’m the only one in the group who seems to understand “celestial navigation” on night maneuvers, which means I don’t have to keep my eyes on my compass all the damned time. The result of all this is a strong inner confidence that, despite the detours and diversions, we are still on-track, and accurately on pace. I have a very clear picture in my head of the map from which this mission was derived, and I’m certain I could pinpoint our exact location on it at any time.
Crossing the open strip beneath a promenade of high-tension power lines confirms all this for me. We’re a little later getting to it than I’d presumed, but I know right where we are, and it seems there’s finally a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
On the pro side of the ledger, my navigational confidence pays off when we finally break out of the woods right at the beginning (or end) of the straightaway portion of our target road. Our “LZ.” On the con side, thanks to all my hyper-consciousness on max-tactical movement, it has taken us an hour-and-fifty minutes just to get here. And the instructors had only given us two hours in which to finish the entire mission.
Time to scramble.
I call the team into a huddle, set up a quick, close, temporary perimeter, and have the guy carrying Torrero’s anemometer take a fast wind reading. While he’s doing that, I have another guy shoot a quick compass bearing down the edge of the road. And when both of them give me their findings, the numbers vary by only ten-to-fifteen degrees. The road is running northeast-to-southwest, with us hunkered down at its northeast end. And the wind is slicing through us from behind, running almost straight down the road itself. So the decision is easy.
“Okay, this is the departure end of the runway,” I whisper. “We’ll deploy in reverse order from this point, heading that way.” I refer to the pencil markings on my map, waving my red-lensed flashlight at it. And based on our pre-planned runway placement—which takes into account the positions of the tallest trees relative to the aircraft’s approach and departure routes—I determine that our approach end lights will wind up right about where our fictional Green Beret team is supposed to be waiting.
“Command Post will be down there, at the approach end, on this side. Corbin, since you’ve got Torrero’s ‘prick’ now, you switch with Haley, and drop your lights here, on the far side of the road. Over there. Haley, you just drop yours further down, in this area. Just follow the obvious sequence.” Haley grunts disgustedly. He’s the senior-most of the four remaining NCOs, and is clearly pissed at having to take my orders. Right now though, I just don’t give the intercourse of a flying rodent. “I’ll call for lights-on on team channel five as soon as the aircraft calls ten minutes out. Any questions?”
Nothing but sulking and heavy breathing. “Okay. Let’s go.”
With the instructors moseying casually right down the middle of the road then, we head out. Half the team scampers across to the far side of the road, while my half parallels it on the near side. Every so many hundred feet, one of the guys appears at the road’s edge, drops an Elco light in place, then ducks back into the shadows. And after so many lights, with his own supply depleted, he drops off from the moving pack altogether and waits in the weeds, watching over his lights. It takes almost fifteen painstaking minutes to work our way all the way down to the opposite end of the LZ this way, but when we finally get there, it’s just Sgt. Donado, two instructors, and me. I hustle to set up my radio and establish a defensible position, while Sal drops a perpendicular line of three lights, stepping away from each side of the runway, and caps them all with green “approach end” lens covers.
One of the instructors—clearly as eager as the rest of us to call it a night already—walks up to me, and immediately starts talking like an inbound pilot calling on my radio.
“Padlock Control, this is Coil Zero-One on point-seven, radio check, over.”
I feel pretty danged stupid talking into my dead handset and pretending like it’s not my instructor I’m addressing, but I do it anyway. “Coil Zero-One, this is Padlock Control. You’re loud and clear. Go ahead.”
“Padlock,” the instructor answers, “We’ve been holding out here about fifteen minutes now. What’s your status, over?”
This is bullshit, of course. If an aircraft had actually arrived in our vicinity before we were fully set up, its pilot wouldn’t have waited until now to contact us. This is just a jab at me personally, pointing out the fact that I’ve already blown the deadline by five minutes. And right now, that just pisses me off. I act as though he never said anything about it at all.
“Coil 01, LZ and assets are in place. Runway zero-five in use. Wind zero-six-zero at one-five, gusting to two-zero. Altimeter unknown. Ready for lights-on at your call.”
“Roger that, Padlock. We’re three minutes out, on wide downwind to runway zero-five right now. Lights on, please.”
This instructor is definitely ready to get this night over with. I am only too happy to oblige. I quickly rechannelize to Team Channel five, and make one short transmission. “Lights on, lights on.” Then Sal and I both hustle over to our own Elcos, and one by one, start snapping them on. At the far distant end of the runway, where Airman Corbin has heard me on the other PRC, lights begin to wink on at the same time. And shortly thereafter, one by one, the lights in between start to fill in.
I’m too preoccupied at first to notice it, but by the time Sal and I are hunkered down around the radio again, our weapons aimed outward as if we’re actually thinking about defending our position, it becomes apparent that something’s gone wrong.
All the runway lights—with the exception of the lines of green approach lights next to Sal and me, and a single dim red light at the departure end—are white. Uncapped. There should be two strands of red rollout lights, similar to our green ones, running perpendicular away from either side of the runway’s far end. But there’s not. The lights are all there, but with that one dull red exception, they’re all white.
Shit. The instructor has noticed it too. Where are the colored lights?
I call Corbin on the PRC, and he says he’ll go check. More time passes. In fact, six more minutes transpire, running us further and further over the deadline. But no one can find the missing red lenses… until someone goes and looks at that lone red-capped light on the far left. And there they find all six of the red lenses, stacked atop that one light. This explains why the light had appeared so dim, but doesn’t explain how anyone could have not noticed an eight-inch-tall stack of lenses towering above a single light.
Everybody’s pissed. The instructors are downright abusive. But the lenses finally get distributed, and our runway is officially declared operative… two hours and eleven minutes after the clock started.
We have failed. I have failed.
Now I’m depressed. On top of everything else, now I’m feeling like whale shit too. No longer just cold, aching, dog tired, and overwhelmed by the sudden leap in my responsibilities, I am now mortified and weighed down by guilt as well. Because, bottom line, I have dropped the ball. For everybody. Which means we’ve all failed, and will have to do the whole damned thing all over again.
Shuffling around like zombies, we gather up our scattered equipment, and haul it back to the deuce-and-a-half that has magically appeared on our runway. Everything is dumped aboard, the exhausted team clambers up after it, and I find my own seat among them, silent and alone in the gloomy crowd. We are trucked back to our dark campsite, somewhere between two and three o’clock in the frigid, blustery morning, and retreat to our individual tents.
I don’t even undress. I just claw my way into my sleeping bag, coats, gloves, and boots still soaked and frozen to me, and collapse into the death sleep of the emotionally riven.
Remind me again—what the hell am I doing here?
Welcome... to the site, the blog, the book(s)-to-be, entitled "A Sheep In Wolf's Clothing." 
