21st birthday

[willia in tex.]

hi all i don't post very often can't think of anything to say. but i was sitting out side this morning and remembered my youngest son is going to turn 21 next month. i'm sure at 12;00 a.m. he will be at the bar to buy his first beer,first legal beer.

anyway i got to thinking how i celebrated my 21st birthday. i was stationed at fort bragg with the 82nd airborne. we got up did the usual pt, breakfast, ect. we were on the support cycle so we weren't doing much, details guard duty that sort of stuff. also if you were on support cycle you got a half day off on your birthday.

i went to 9;00 formation thinking i was going to have a easy day. the first sgt. goes over what were going to do today and then asked for volanteers to make a jump that night, well nobody volenteers so the sgt's pick who is going to jump, and i get picked. all of a sudden this day isn't going to good.
Some national guard pilots out of little rock ark. needed some training dropping paratroopers, so we were their guinea pigs. now we didn't mind jumping if we knew a day ahead of time, we had time to get mentally prepared, but thinking you're going to have a goof off day and then having to make a night jump that's a big emotional swing. i'm thinking it's my 21st birthday what is going to happen this is not good.
anyway that afternoon we prepare to jump and i can't get all of these doom and gloom thoughts out of my mind. we get on the trucks and they take us to green ramp where we chute up and get on the planes, by this time i'm fed up with all these thoughts and i get back to the regular butterflies in the stomach feeling.

we get on the planes and after awhile they start to taxi around the airfield to there takeoff position. the plane starts off down the runway and i think we take off,i really wasn't paying any attention because i hadn't eaten all day and had started to get motion sickness. i knew our flight was only 40 minutes before we jumped but i knew we had been in the air for over an hour, or so i thought, i turned to the guy next to me and asked how much longer before we jump, he say's we haven't even taken off yet, what? it felt like we were in the air but these guy's were just riding around pope airforce base in a c-130, don't know if they were lost or what but this went on for 2 hours, i was getting sicker by the minute.

finally we took off i just wanted to get this over with and get out of that plane. if this wasn't the first time these guy's ever flew an airplane it was the second. these guy's were bad, the worse they flew the worse i felt and didn't have anything in my stomach to throw up which was a good thing. finally after 3 hours we get the 10 minute warning, then the 6 minute warning when we stand up and get ready to jump. we got ready and the jumpmaster gives the 1 minute warning, and we wait and wait and wait i said to the guy next to me this sure is a long minute and the next thing i here is 10 minutes, what? they missed the freaking drop zone. they not only missed it on there first run, but also on there 2nd and 3rd run. missing the dropzone once is bad enough, but 3 times with 64 jumper that didn't want to jump in the first place, having to stand up for so long with all that equipment and were already in a bad mood ( except for me i was to sick ) the comments directed at the pilots didn't do anything for there confidense either.

after the 3rd run i was so sick i couldn't stand up anymore i was on the floor of the plane my static line was 3/4 of the out and when they gave the 1 minute warning for the 4th time, i just laid there i wasn't getting up until i seen people going out the plane. they finally started jumping and i got up and stumbled to the door and just fell out i never was so glad to get out of a plane. i was still sick after i hit the ground but at least i was out of that plane. this is how i celebrated my 21st birthday, it was the worst jump i ever made in 4 years with the 82nd. for me and everyone else who was on that jump, the fist question we asked when we ever had to jump again was, are the pilots from the arkansas national guard. hope you enjoyed the story

 

[Ron J]

n/t

 

[Rob/Windsor Ont.]

Got any more stories about some of your jumps ? It's a most interesting adventure to read about. Especially for yellow bellies like me. Not sure if I could ever do that !

 

[Wayne in BC]

i am sure the gang will be also! That was a cool funny description of your big 21st
Thanks!

 

[Kelley (Texas)]

It must have really been miserable being stuck within that aircraft for that length of time. Thanks for posting this interesting story and please post some more in the future. Please have a great day! Kelley (Texas)

 

[Arkie John]

...I thought they told me they were native Texans.

(just kiddin')

Hey, I really liked the story. I've never jumped out of a perfectly good airplane, but I have been around some really dud pilots.

Thanks for the read.

aj

 

[Sunny]

was probably something my ex had to do with!

PS Still isn't easy watching your child turn 21 thinking they are invincible though! Boy do they still have things to learn!

 

[Sunny]

went to jump school this last summer! He sure is proud of the medal he gets to wear on his uniform, too. He loved it. Not something a mother dreams her son will do someday!

 

[willia in tex.]

after i got to the 82nd we preferred being pushed out, we carried so much equipment it was hard to actually jump. you usually just kind of lunged out.i remember my first jump like it happened yesterday. we went into hanger and got chuted up and we sat there until it was our time to get on the planes. i can still remember thinking, have you got no sense. there are a million other things you could be doing right now instead of waiting to jump out of some stupid airplane. it came our time to load the planes so we get up and waddle to the airplane. we were going to jump out of a c-123 this is the loudest plane ever built. the noise is deafening. we take off to make our jump nobody says a word, i don't think any body even moved a muscle during the flight. we were all in our own little world " probably all thinking what did i get myself into". it came time for the jump master to open the door and when he did i knew this was the end of my short life. i just thought the plane was loud, when they opened that door it really got loud. i wasn't worried about my chute not opening anymore i was thinking i was going to get shredded into little pieces. we were at 1500 ft and when we stood up i looked out the window and it didn't look like we were all that high. my being terrified drooped down to just being scared. i had done convinced myself that the wind wasn't going to hurt me none so now i could concentrate on my chute not opening. the jump master has the first guy stand in the door the green light comes on he says go " damn the bad luck he actually jumped" and so was every one else in front of me. i was shuffling to the door counting down the number of jumpers before me 5,4,3,2,1. me? i get to the door my mind goes totally blank, jump master says go and i jump. complete silence, you don't here anything. amazing going from the loudest machine man ever made into complete silence. i count,chute opens, I'm floating around in the sky. I'm looking around wow this is great. i look down at the drop zone it was nice and green it looked so soft. " this would later turn out to be deceiving ". my joy ride was then interrupted by a black hat (airborne instructor) with a megaphone. slip to the right, slip to the right, not you dummy, the other dummy. like we actually know who he's talking to. i looked around and nobody was close to me so i didn't pay no more attention to him. as i started getting closer to the ground i thought it might be a good idea if i could figure out which direction i was going. i looked at the ground and i was going backwards " this would turn out to be the usual " I also noticed that drop zone that looked so green and soft from 1000 ft. was actually 1 blade of grass per 6 square inches, and where did all of them little rocks come from. i was now getting ready to land which was going to require a backwards PLF (parachute landing fall) no problem i had become extremely effect at plf's ,i had done thousands of them in training, i hit the ground, this is where i learned plf training is a waste of time. i hit feet,butt, and stopped, i hit hard. but i was happy i had made my first jump, the rest would be easy "not so good at predicting future events". i rolled up my chute, turned it in, and was going to relax the rest of the day. all we had to do was make 1 jump today. well the army wasn't as impressed that we just jumped out of a plane as we were, and they thought fort benning was to dirty, so we spent all afternoon doing police call. I'd rather been doing plf's.

 

[Sunny]

relaxing. But think about all the parents on the ground, watching their children jump out a perfectly good airplane! Nathan had said, I'll be number 4. There were about a dozen in his plane.I was terrified, but then attending the pinning ceremony and graduation exercises, by heart swelled. ( But my number one job is being a mom. I told him to tell the Army he didn't want to play anymore, and I would talk to that big mouthed Sarg! Nathan was mortified that I really say something to him...

Again, I am glad there are people like him, you and thousands of others that keep our country free!

 

[willia in tex.]

i posted a story about my first jump in a response to sunny

 

[VT Dave]

Sorry your 21st turned out the way it did, but you'll never forget it!
Good story!

Dave

 

[Royal]

jumping out of a dang plane is scary. I have always wanted to do it but never have. I am not sure I would have the guts but still think about giving it a shot before I am too old.

My 21st birthday was spent getting smashed outside of Green Bay Wis. I had already gotten out of the Marines and still was not old enough to drink! I sure did that night.

There was a farm girl by the name of Sherry. She was as strong as an dang ox and twice as mean. I was my usual loudmouth self and had a couple guys that were gonna kick my arse. In my conditiion I probably had it coming and those two oxen could have done it but Sherry busted one along side of the head and saved my arse. She was nobody to mess with but she liked me for some reason. It was not a boy girl thing but maybe a boy mule thing but I could not have helped her if she could not handle them because I was a setting on the dang bar rail.

Now I have not thought about that in 46 years but the only thing that is clear about the night is me setting on the dang bar rail and looking up at Sherry coldcocking that loudmouth. Well, I was the loudmouth but could not stand up.

It is hard to believe that I was once an Arsehole isn't it?

Don't be bashful now and visit us any time. You dun good and anyone that would jump out of an airplane is not scared of no dang Arkansas girly thing :