Killed in Action - A Spy School Story

Chapter 17: Airborne

Fort Benning, GA

Nov 25, 2018

1400R

There's an old saying about Jump School: "In Ground Week, they separate the men from the boys. In Tower Week, they separate the men from the fools. In Jump Week, the fools jump."

And now, I was one of those fools.

We loaded up into a C-17 at Lawson Army Airfield and were flying for our drop zone: the Fryar DZ, named after Private Elmer E. Fryar, a soldier of the 11th Airborne Division during World War II. He single-handedly held off an enemy platoon that was trying to flank his company, helped a wounded man to the rear, took a sniper's bullet meant for his platoon leader, then killed the same sniper with a hand grenade before succumbing to his wounds. His actions would earn him a posthumous Medal of Honor, along with Fryar Field, which was our DZ.

All in all... a bonafide badass.

Anyways, we were about to execute the first of five jumps that would be occurring during Jump Week: four day jumps and one night jump. The pilots were going to get us up to a little over 1,200 feet (1,250, I think) at around 113 knots (130 mph for you non-aviators or sailors). Once the crewmen squared everything away, our jumpmasters would get us up and out of the bird.

The "Black Hats," our instructors, were wearing their Kevlars (er, helmets) like the rest of us, not donning the covers (hats) that they were generally known for. They helped us get prepped for the jump, checking our rigs after we checked each other. And of course, they had a hilarious sense of humor.

"What if our main and reserve fail?" one student asked.

"You've got the rest of your life to figure it out," Staff Sergeant Malkovich, one of the Black Hats, quipped.

It took every bit of bootcamp discipline I had to not bust out laughing like a clown.

They also loved picking on everyone, especially non-Army boys. While it's formally known as Army Airborne School, it accepts personnel from all branches, even allowing ROTC students and allied military personnel to join in. My class didn't have any foreign exchange or ROTC students, from what I could tell, but we did have quite a few non-soldiers: myself, a dozen other Marines, fifteen PJ candidates, and a half-dozen SEAL candidates.

You're probably not batting an eye at the PJ and SEAL prospects: they definitely end up jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. So what were the Marines doing there? Well, I got lucky—I put in a packet and it made it through. The others were Recon Marines that were slotted into joining their platoons' jump teams.

Curious... I'm just an infantryman, and our main aerial insertion thing is vertical assault—or like the Army calls it, "air assault..." for reasons I can't figure out—so how the hell did my freakin' packet make it through? The extra pay is nice, so I ain't complainin' but...

In the end, I could only chalk it up to some craziness outside of my control. Remember, I managed to get back-to-back deployments (without going home) and transferred between I to II MEF in the scope of two years thanks to some paperwork errors, so getting a slot in Jump School as a lowly infantryman wasn't too surprising.

There was one problem though: you didn't hear this from me, but me and heights... we don't get along too well. Yes, I was able to pick up skiing decently well during the Colorado op, but... now that we were up in the air, I realized the severity of the situation: I was entrusting my life to a big ole piece of military-grade canvas. And for those that don't know: military-grade gear is oftentimes crap.