Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

What kind of person jumps out of a perfectly functional aircraft loaded with over 150 lb/68 kg of weapons, explosives, and other assorted supplies and equipment strapped to their body? This is the basic question that most folks ask when they first consider the idea of being a paratrooper. Personally, I only know that my personal answer is, “Not me!” For other people, though, they find the concept of jumping into a war zone intriguing enough to ask some other questions. Sometimes, the answers are so fascinating they can send an inquisitor off on a quest which will ultimately lead down a road in Georgia to a place which will change him into a special breed of American warrior: a paratrooper.

When a soldier signs up to go into airborne training, he or she is telling the world and their fellow soldiers that they are cut from a different cloth, and are taking a different path in life. One that will mark them as part of a small and elite group, which does something difficult and dangerous, just to go to work! The paratroopers are clearly a breed apart from their Army brethren, and I hope to be able to show you why.

Most special forces claim a unique ethos.[13] Many other branches of military service have tried to claim their own code: one that is special to them. Trust me: In most cases, the people doing the claiming are full of crap. In the whole of the American military, only a handful of groups are truly worthy of such a distinction — the Marine Corps, certain special forces units, and of course, the airborne.

The airborne ethos is at the very core of each paratrooper’s being. The undeniable heart of the airborne philosophy is toughness. It’s essential that each member of the airborne must be both physically and mentally tough. If you try to make an animal such as a dog or horse jump into water or over a wide ditch, they balk. The natural instinct of any animal, including humans, is to avoid danger. The human animal is different, however. Only we can rationalize and assess risk. In short, we have the mental capacity to overcome instinct, and do things common sense tells us not to. Things like jumping out of airplanes, and going to war. The type of person who can rationalize such ideas has to be more than just physically qualified. They must also have a mental ability to set aside the danger, and see the rewards of parachuting behind enemy lines into a combat zone. Some might call it cavalier, or reckless. I think it’s just plain tough.

Now, it may be that I am oversimplifying the mentality of paratroops just a bit, but the central theme of almost every part of their lifestyle is toughness. From their early training to how they actually deploy and fight, they do so with a mental and physical edge that is frankly astounding.

It also can be a little frightening. You notice their collective will when you talk to people like General Keane. A lieutenant general (three stars) and in his fifties, he still jumps in the first position from the lead aircraft whenever he can. He is hardly unusual, though. There is a popular notion in the American military that paratroopers are short little guys with bad attitudes. Actually, they come in all shapes and sizes, and in both sexes.

In the 82nd Airborne Division, every person assigned must be airborne qualified at all times. This means that everyone in the division, from the commanding general to the nurses in the field hospitals, must have a current jump qualification, no matter what their job is. In a worst-case scenario, every person assigned to the 82nd, as well as every piece of their equipment and all supplies, might have to be parachuted into a hot drop zone (DZ), since air-landing units would be difficult or impossible. Let me assure you, everyone with a jump qualification in the U.S. Army is tough, because just getting through airborne school requires it.

There is one other basic characteristic you notice about paratroops as a group: They are in incredible physical condition. Being in shape is an obsession with the paratroopers. Not just hard like the Marines, but a kind of lean and solid look that you expect in a marathon runner. In addition, there is a dash of raw power to a trooper’s body, mostly in the upper body and legs, where paratroopers need it.

Physical strength comes in handy, especially during drop operations. An average 180-1b/81.6-kg trooper getting ready to jump from an aircraft will likely be saddled down with a load equal to or exceeding their own body weight. Consider the following average loadout for a combat jump. The trooper’s T-10 main/reserve parachute/harness assembly will weigh about 50 lb/22.7 kg. American paratroopers then add a rucksack (backpack) loaded with food and water (for three days in the field), clothing and bedding, personal gear, ammunition (including two or three mortar rounds and possibly a claymore mine or two), and a personal weapon (such as an M16A2 combat rifle or M249 squad automatic weapon [SAW]), with a weight of up to 130 lb/60 kg! They must walk (more of a waddle, actually) with this incredible burden up the ramp of a transport aircraft, if they are to even begin an airborne drop mission. Later, they have to stand up, and jump out of that same airplane flying at 130 kn, and land with much of that load still attached. Once on the ground, they drop off their load of heavy munitions (mortar rounds and mines) at an assembly point. Finally, they must heft what remains in their rucksack (probably loaded with more than 100 lb/45.4 kg of supplies, equipment, and ammunition) around a battlefield. All the while fighting their way to their objectives, whatever the opposition. If that is not tough, I don’t know what is!

The number of people who have both the physical strength and endurance for such exertions is small, and the mental toughness needed to go with it is rare. That’s why there are so few folks who wear the airborne badge in an army of almost 500,000 soldiers. So why go to all the trouble and risk to select and train a group of people like the paratroops? The top airborne leaders like General Keane would tell you that we need paratroops to establish American presence, and to win the first battles of our conflicts.

The basic objectives of airborne training are defined by these goals: to successfully parachute into enemy territory, and to fight to the objectives. The first challenge, to teach people to throw themselves out of an aircraft, into a dark and empty night sky, to enter a battlefield hanging from a fabric canopy, is the easy one. The second challenge is to teach the troopers to fight until their objectives are taken no matter what the odds. This is perhaps the most difficult set of training tasks that any school in the U.S. military has to teach. Lessons like this require a special school with the best teachers available. In the airborne, it is called Jump School, and is located at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Fort Benning: The Cradle of the Airborne

Fort Benning is located in the southwest corner of Georgia — an area nobody just passes through. You have to really want to get there. You start by flying to Atlanta’s miserable Hartsfield Airport, though I highly recommend that you not do it on the last night of the 1996 Summer Olympiad as I did! Then, after renting a car, you head down Interstate 85 toward Montgomery, Alabama, and the heart of the old Confederacy. At La Grange, you take a hard turn to the south onto I-185. Fifty miles later, after you have passed through the town of Columbus, Georgia, you hit Route 27 and the front gate to one of the U.S. Army’s most important posts. It is literally at the end of the road, but it’s the beginning of the journey for those who want to become airborne troopers.

Fort Benning is a relatively old post, dating back to just after World War I. In spite of its age (some of the buildings are more than fifty years old) and remote location, it is the crossroads for the Army’s infantry community. Located on the post are such vital facilities as the U.S. Army Infantry Center and the School of Infantry. This is the institutional home for infantry in the Army, and the primary center for their weapons and tactical development. If a system, tactic, or procedure has anything to do with personnel carrying weapons into battle, the Infantry Center will in some way own it.

The Center’s responsibilities have ranged from developing the specifications of the M⅔ Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the development of tactical doctrine for the employment of the new Javelin antitank guided missile. Fort Benning is also home to a number of training facilities, including the notorious U.S. Army School of the Americas. Known ruefully as the College of the Dictators (Manuel Noriega of Panama was one of its more notable graduates), it has provided post-graduate military study programs for officers of various Latin American nations for decades. Fort Benning is a busy place, and it is here that our look at airborne training begins.

In the middle of the post is a large parade area with a number of odd-looking pieces of training equipment. These include three 250-ft/76-m tall towers that look like they were plucked from a fairground (they were!), as well as mockups of various aircraft. Tucked over to one side of the parade ground is the headquarters of the 1st Battalion of the 507th Airborne Infantry Regiment (the 1/507th), which runs the U.S. Army Airborne Jump School.

There are ghosts here, though you have to know more to see them. Close your eyes, and travel back over half a century to a time when America had no airborne forces.

It was 1940 and America was desperately trying to catch up with the astounding combat achievements of the Germans, Russians, and Italians. Already, the Nazis had used airborne units to take Norway, Denmark, and the Low Countries of Western Europe with great success. This was one of many German innovations that had been demonstrated in the first year of World War II, and the leadership of the U.S. Army had taken notice. There was a smell of war in the air, and more than a few Army officers knew that America would eventually be part of it. The question for them was whether airborne forces could prove useful for the growing American Army that was beginning to be assembled. It fell to a small group of visionary Army officers on this very field to prove that America both needed and could develop airborne forces. At the heart of the effort was a man who, though he himself never saw combat with the American airborne force, would be honored as their institutional father: Bill Lee.

Major General William Carey Lee, USA, started life as a native of Dunn, North Carolina. A veteran of service in the Great War, he was a citizen soldier (a graduate of North Carolina State University, not West Point) in the tradition of officers like J. J. Pettigrew.[14] Lee was an officer with a vision for the possibilities of warfare, and was always looking for new and better ways for technology to be applied to battle. After World War I, he served in a variety of posts around the world. At one point, he was the occupation mayor of Mayen, Germany. Later he would serve a tour of duty in the Panama Canal Zone. It was in his service as a lieutenant colonel in the Office of the Chief of Infantry in the War Department (the old name for the Department of the Army) that he rendered his most valuable service to America and its armed forces.

During the inter-war years, he had taken a great interest in the idea that aircraft could deliver troops to the modern battlefield. Such thinking was hardly popular at the time, especially after the court-martial of Billy Mitchell for speaking out against the Army’s lack of vision on the uses of airpower. Army generals were more concerned with holding on to what little they had in the way of bases, men, and equipment than exploring the crackpot ideas of airpower zealots like Mitchell. Still, Lee watched the development of the airborne forces of Russia, Italy, and Germany with great interest, and he began to think about how Americans might use paratroops in their own operations.

Then came the German assault on Scandinavia and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940. The parachute and air-landing troops led by General Kurt Student were the spearhead of the Nazi invasion in Western Europe. This made everyone in the U.S. Army take notice, and Lee was well positioned to make use of the excitement. Less than two months after the Germans attacked in the West, Lee was assigned to start a U.S. Army project to study and demonstrate the possibilities of airborne warfare. By late 1940, he had formed a small group of volunteers known as the Parachute Test Platoon at Fort Benning. Their job was to evaluate and develop airborne equipment and tactics, and do it in a hurry. This small group of airborne pioneers was to do in just a few months what had taken countries like Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union years to develop. In those few short months, the test platoon demonstrated almost all of the key capabilities necessary to effectively drop combat-ready units into battle. Numerous parachute designs were tested and evaluated, along with lightweight weapons, carrying containers, boots, knives, and a variety of other equipment. They were racing against time, since Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the Second World War were just months away.

Along the way, they frequently applied a bit of Yankee ingenuity to their problems, with sometimes surprising results. When several of Lee’s officers saw towers with parachute-drop rides at the New York World’s Fair, they felt that the towers might be of value in training paratroopers. So when the fair closed down, the Army acquired them, and moved the 250-foot /76.2-meter-tall towers to Fort Benning. Today three of them survive on the parade ground, and are still used by trainees who attend Jump School.

The results from Lee’s early tests were so promising that by early 1941, he had been authorized to enlarge his test group to 172 prospective paratroopers. His leadership abilities were so well respected that he had over 1,000 volunteers for the enlarged group. Bill Lee was a man with a vision who recognized the qualities of the men who would be his first paratroopers. He encouraged their swagger and dash by his own example, leading from the front and never asking them to do anything that he himself would not do. That was why, at the age of forty-seven, he made his first parachute jump. At an age when most other Army officers might be thinking about retirement, he was building a new combat arm for the nation.

By 1942, the Army had seen the worth of Lee’s ideas, and was endorsing them fully. Now a full colonel, he helped stand up the first two parachute regiments (the 502nd and 503rd) in March of that year. Three months later, he was a brigadier general coordinating plans with the British for future airborne operations. Then, in August of 1942, the real breakthrough came when the U.S. Army decided to form two airborne divisions from the shells of two infantry divisions, the 82nd and 101st. Command of the 101st fell to Lee, now a major general. Over the next year and a half, Bill Lee worked himself and the 101st into combat shape. Seeing the need for the division to have heavier equipment, he added gliders to the 101st, and laid out the basic airborne plan for Operation Overlord, the coming invasion of France. Unfortunately, ill health kept General Lee from fulfilling his personal dreams of leading the 101st into combat. He suffered a debilitating heart attack in February of 1944, and was sent home to recover. Disappointed, he handed over command of the Screaming Eagles of the 101st to General Maxwell Taylor for the invasion. In his honor, though, when the troopers of the 101st jumped into the night skies over Normandy on June 6th, they replaced their traditional war cry of “Geronimo!” with “Bill Lee!” Though Bill Lee never fully recovered, and died in 1948, he had created a lasting legacy for the airborne forces. It’s still out there, on the training ground at Fort Benning, where new young men and women still use the tools that Bill Lee built for them half a century ago.

For today’s student paratroopers, very little has changed since Bill Lee and his test platoon first jumped at Fort Benning. Surprisingly, most of the course and equipment at the U.S. Army Jump School would still be familiar to those early airborne pioneers. For the young men and women who come here to be tested, it is a journey to someplace special in the Army. On this same parade ground, all the great names in airborne history have passed: Ridgway, Taylor, Gavin, Tucker, and so many more. The students know this, and realize that they have started down a difficult road. Three weeks on the Fort Benning training ground at the hands of the 1st of the 507th frequently breaks men and women who truly believed that they had the stuff to be a paratrooper. Some do, and it is their story that we are going to show you now.

The Schoolhouse: The 1st Battalion, 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment

For over fifty years there has been a paratrooper Jump School at Fort Benning. While some elements of the training have been altered in the course of a half century, the core curriculum is essentially unchanged from World War II. The course is taught and maintained by the 1st Battalion of the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment (1/507th). The staff of the1/507th acts as the Army’s parachute schoolhouse, maintaining a training curriculum that has trained paratroops from all over the world. Also,1/507th provides these training services for more than just the U.S. Army. Since other parts of the U.S. military require parachute-trained personnel (Navy SEALs, Marine Force Recon, Air Force Special Operations, Coast Guard Air-Sea Rescue, etc.), the 1/507th provides the training to certify their personnel as jump-qualified. As an added responsibility, numerous other nations frequently send their soldiers to Fort Benning to become paratroopers.

The 1/507th is currently commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Steven C. Sifers, with Command Sergeant Major William Cox as his senior enlisted advisor. The 1/507th is composed of a headquarters company and four training companies (Companies A through D). Within the headquarters company are branches which control the curriculum for the Basic Airborne course. These include ground tower and jump training, as well as separate curriculums for the jumpmaster and Pathfinder courses, which are also managed by the 1/507th. There is a separate support unit (Company E) which provides maintenance and packing services for the battalion’s pool of equipment and parachutes. The 1/507th also controls a command exhibition parachute team (the Silver Wings), does off-site (non-resident) j umpmaster and Drop Zone Safety Team Leader (DZSTL) training, certifies airborne instructors, conducts airborne refresher training, as well as writing and maintaining the Army’s standard airborne training doctrine. The 1/507th has the enormous job of training up to 14,000 jump-qualified personnel every year. That’s a lot of work!

At the core of the 1/507th’s mission is the Basic Airborne Course (BAC) program of instruction, what the Army and the students call Jump School. The course of instruction is short and to the point. It teaches the students how to jump safely out of the two primary classes of cargo aircraft, and then how to land safely with the basic T-10-series parachute system. Jump School also is designed to test the physical and mental toughness of the prospective paratroopers.

The class runs over a total of 125 classroom hours (not including physical training) over just three weeks. Week 1 involves training on the ground, familiarizing the student with their new equipment and the basic physical skills required to operate it safely. Week 2 has the students training on a variety of towers, including the 250-foot/76.2-meter-tall World’s Fair units. Finally, Week 3 involves the students jumping a total of five times each from actual Air Force transport aircraft, and obtaining their final jump certification.

All this is in addition to a rigorous regimen of physical training or PT (that’s Army for running in formation). A lot of running! In fact, it is the PT that usually results in a student failing or being dropped from Jump School.

Each year, the 1/507th runs a total of forty-four Basic Airborne School (BAS) classes, each of which currently contains some 370 students. This could create, if all of the students programmed were to graduate, a pool of some 16,200 new paratroopers per year. A number fail to do so, through dropouts and rejections, so this generates the approximately 10,000 jump-qualified personnel that are needed each year. This number is going down, though, as budget cuts and personnel drawdowns take their effect. Current Army plans have the number of students per class going to just 307 in FY- 1998, dropping the number of possible paratroop graduates to just 14,300. Surprisingly, most of the students who report for Jump School actually pass. Over the past two years (FY-1994 and -1995), of the 31,976 personnel who reported for airborne training, 27,234 successfully completed the course, an average of over 85 percent.

Still, the staff of the 1/507th continually worries about the ones who don’t make it. If you are wondering just how the dropouts are distributed, the following table shows the tale of just who makes it in Jump School, and who does not.

As the table shows, women students are three times more likely to drop out than their male counterparts. This may be skewed somewhat by the fact that the male students outnumber females by about fifteen to one, though. The various reasons for the dropouts are quite obvious when you look at them.

As the table shows, the vast majority of the dropouts are a result of medical problems. These range from simple sprains and fractures, to the heat injuries that are so common to Fort Benning during the terrible months of summer. Failed PT runs and administrative problems cover the majority of the remaining dropouts, with other causes (failed landing fall and jump qualifications, etc.) making up just 5 percent of the rest. Therefore, the high overall rate of graduation from Jump School is a tribute to the professionalism of the staff of the 1/507th.

That professionalism is most embodied in a small group of noncommissioned officers (NCOs) who make up the basic instructor cadre of the 1/507th. These are the Black Hats, the NCO drill instructors (DIs) who perform the drilling and generally care for the welfare of the Jump School students. While their headgear is less imposing than the Marine Corps DIs’ Smoky Bear campaign hats (they wear black baseball caps), they are just as caring and protective of their charges. Like the Marine DIs, the Black Hats provide an institutional memory and glue to the Jump School. The Black Hats are the tribal elders of the paratroopers, and the keepers of their traditions.

Jump School: Three Weeks at Hell’s Gate

Nobody in the U.S. Army can be ordered to go to jump school, and everyone who does is a volunteer. Still, Fort Benning has an excess of qualified volunteers for the spaces at Jump School, so coveted is the airborne badge within the ranks of the U.S. military. Strangely, the qualifications to get in are not that tough. You start by being in the Army, and must have completed basic training or have been commissioned as an officer. A potential airborne trooper must also have their first specialty/technical school, which defines your basic Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) code. This means that a student could be a brand-new private first class (PFC) who has just completed training as an infantryman or a communications technician and then goes immediately to Jump School. Other than this, the qualifications to become a paratrooper are surprisingly easy. There are no particular job specialty requirements, nor is rank a consideration.

Student Handout (SH) 57-1, the basic Guide for Airborne Students, lays out the following requirements that must be met by a soldier for entry into Jump School:

• Volunteer for the BAS course.

• Be less than thirty-six years of age.

• Pass the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT).

A passing score on the APFT is almost absurdly easy to achieve. It involves successfully completing just three events (a timed 2-mile/3.2-kilometer run, push-ups, and sit-ups). A healthy person in even moderately good shape can pass this test with ease. The following table summarizes the minimum passing scores. The run times are expressed in minutes and seconds, with the push-ups and sit-ups in numbers of repetitions:

Other than these basic qualifications, nothing else is required to enter the paratroops. Prospective paratroops make an application to the school, and are selected on the basis of merit and their need for a jump rating in their current or projected billet. As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, the 82nd Airborne is made up of thousands of personnel with hundreds of different MOSs. While most are line infantry and artillery personnel, there are also cooks, doctors, truck mechanics, and clerks. All of them must be jump-qualified. Generally, though, most applicants tend to be fairly young, and probably a bit more career-oriented.

Once soldiers have been selected, they report to Fort Benning for the three-week course of instruction that is the Basic Airborne Council (BAC), or Jump School. With forty-four such classes per year, there is a lot of overlap between classes, and we were able to see BAC students in all three weeks of their course. Each Jump School class is composed of some 370 candidate students, though this number will drop to 307 by 1998. Most arrive a day or two early to get used to the weather (which can be wicked in the summer!), and are housed in the huge group of visitor-billeting dormitories on the eastern side of the base. These are Spartan little rooms, though it hardly matters. The BAC students will spend very little time in their rooms.

To show us around, Ms. Monica Manganaro, the Fort Benning Public Affairs Officer (PAO), hooked us up with Major Rob Street, the Operations Officer (S-3) of the 1/507th. They took me to see the various phases of Jump School, while doing their best to keep me alive in the killing heat of August 1996.

Each BAC class starts early on a Monday morning. I say early, since the students must be ready for their first PT run of the day by 0600 (that’s 6:00 AM, folks). BAC students are expected to show up in exceptional physical shape, and are tested from their first moments with the Black Hats. Earlier we told you how easy the physical qualifications to enter BAC were, and they are. But the physical strength and endurance to stay in and finish are something completely different.

Each day starts with a grueling run, which every student must complete if they are not on some sort of medical waiver. Some of you might think that starting the day with a nice run is a wonderful idea, but at Fort Benning, it is anything but. Most of the year, but especially in the summer months, the sunrise temperatures are above 80° F/27 °C, with humidity frequently in the 80 to 90 percent range. Heat indexes in excess of 100° F/38 °C are not only common, but expected. This makes the morning runs a thing to be dreaded by every student. If you fall out of even just one mandatory run, you are out of Jump School. Just that quick! The runs start out at 2.4 miles/3.86 kilometers in length, and are gradually lengthened over the course of the three weeks training to 4 miles/6.4 kilometers. Each is done in formation, with the Black Hats setting a nine-minute-per-mile/five-and-one-half-minute-per-kilometer pace through a chorus of cadences.[15]

BAS students hate the PT runs for good reason. Even in the pre-dawn hours, that half-hour run soaks the trainees with sweat. Their muscles begin to ache and bind up. The really bad news is that if you don’t fold up one day, you may do so the next day. The runs are an extremely high-impact form of exercise that is very tough on joints and muscles. The pounding is progressive, and it either tends to build a person’s body up, or wreck it. As you saw in the table earlier, failed PT runs account for almost 20 percent of the dropouts and are a secondary cause of many other injuries. Running in the high heat and humidity of Fort Benning is a cause of frequent heat injuries, including rapid dehydration and possible heat stroke. In particular, if students suffer a jump injury in another phase of training, like a sprained ankle or foot, there is no way that they will be able to hide it on the following day’s PT run. If the students submit themselves to the infirmary, and they receive a profile (a doctor’s order limiting physical activity), depending on the severity of the injury, they may be dropped from the course or recycled (sent to another training company).

While this may sound rather unfair, the PT runs serve a variety of purposes. First, the runs verify that the students are in proper physical shape for the challenges that they may face in the airborne. The runs also provide the Black Hats with a gauge for measuring the physical toughness of the future paratroopers. The airborne lifestyle is rough on a person’s body, and it is best to find out one’s durability early. Since an airborne recruit is only allowed to miss one run (unless they present themselves as injured to the medical department), those who are brittle or weak tend to fall out early. The Black Hats like to say that if you can survive BAC and your first few years of airborne duty without a major injury, you will probably stay that way for your whole career.

Right after each morning’s run, the recruits are marched over to the mess hall, where they are given their choice of breakfast, and a few minutes to catch their breath. As might be expected of an Army post in the heart of the old Confederacy, the menu contains such favorites as grits (yuk!), biscuits and gravy, and other “classic” Army fare such as “SOS.”[16] There also is lighter fare, acknowledgment that times and dietary preferences are changing. Whatever their choice, the BAC students wolf down their food, eating hearty and drinking all the coffee they can hold. They will need the energy and fluids, because they are headed back outside, into the heat and humidity, where most of Jump School takes place.

After breakfast each day, the BAC class is marched over to the parade ground for training. On the first Monday, though, the class is marched over to the parade area mentioned previously, for their first introduction to the paratrooper world. Seated in bleachers, they are then given a combination pep talk and primer on what will happen to them in the coming three weeks. Called the “Airborne 5,000,” the presentation shows the BAC students all of the skills that they will be required to learn and demonstrate.

In addition, they are given a good dose of what the Black Hats call “HOOAH” talk.[17] This is delivered by both the commanding officer (Lieutenant Colonel Sifers) and command sergeant major (Sergeant Major Cox) of the 1/507th, and is both inspiring and daunting. Using the good cop-bad cop method of communication, they tag-team the new BAC class with the good news (most of them will be airborne troopers soon) and the bad news (the rest won’t) about the coming three weeks. In particular, the sergeant major drills home the point that there are many ways to flunk out of BAC, most of them just plain stupid. Failing to follow orders, ignoring a safety regulation, not completing a run, or just getting drunk on a day off are all reasons for being expelled from BAS. In particular, he makes the point that just making all the runs and completing five jumps does not make a student a paratrooper. Only his say-so and that of the Black Hats give Jump School candidates their airborne certification.

The whole presentation is like something out of the opening of the movie Patton, and is designed to have the same effect. There is a positive air of excitement and esprit in the air, even in the way students are expected to respond to the Black Hats. Whenever addressed by a BAC cadre member, the appropriate affirmative answer is “Airborne, Sir!”

Following another healthy round of shouted “HOOAHs,” the class is shown a series of demonstrations of various airborne techniques that they will have to master. Skills like parachute landing falls and exit tucks are shown to the trainees to give them some idea of what is to come. They are also shown some of the training apparatuses that they will use during the following few weeks. These include everything from swing harnesses and stands to teach aircraft exits and landings, to the 34-foot/10.4-meter and 250-foot/76.2-meter drop towers. It is an exciting presentation, and you can feel the growing enthusiasm in the young men and women as they sit there, watching intently. You also see them sweat, which is going to be one of their primary occupations in the days to come. That’s not surprising since most of the BAS classrooms are merely open-air sheds, with little more than a wooden roof to keep the sun and rain off their heads. During all of my tour of the BAS facilities, I saw no air-conditioned classrooms. This is a truly brutal way to learn, but what you have to endure if you aspire to the airborne.

Following the Airborne 5,000, the BAS students and their Black Hats get right down to business. The first class has the student learning to do mock exits from a simulated aircraft fuselage. Other drills and classes follow, and don’t let up until graduation, three weeks hence. The BAS course generally follows the curriculum shown in the table below for the rest of the first week of BAS:

Basic Airborne Course Training Schedule — Week 1

Week 1 has the BAC students becoming familiar with their new equipment and with basic exit/landing procedures. Their training focus, other than the grueling program of PFTs, are the various PLFs, or Parachute Landing Falls. These are essentially tumbling exercises designed to allow a loaded paratrooper to safely land in a variety of different conditions and terrains. For example, the proper PLF for landing on soft dirt or grass is to land with your legs bent, and to roll into the direction that the parachute is drifting. The PLFs are necessary to a safe and successful landing. Attempting to land straight and rigid will only result in broken bones and useless casualties, burdening an airborne task force in their LZ.

Along with the PLF training, the BAC students spend a lot of time on the 34-foot/10.4-meter training towers. These are three-story towers much like the ones used by U.S. Park Service Rangers to watch for forest fires. The 34-foot/10.4-meter towers are used to familiarize the students with some of the forces and feelings that they will experience when they start jumping out of actual aircraft.

All kinds of jump techniques are practiced from these towers. These include everything from single-person exits to getting a full stick of troopers (up to eight) out as quickly as possible. The students’ performance in these exit drills are scored, and become a part of the qualifications that they must pass if they are to complete BAC.

My researcher, John Gresham, volunteered to give the 34-foot/10.4-meter tower a try, and Black Hats started by fitting him with a six-point harness and set of risers. The harness is a tight fit, especially around the crotch area. This tight fit is essential to avoid a debilitating personal injury to the male students, if you get my meaning! Once John was fitted, he waddled up several flights of stairs to the top of the tower. There, the Black Hats attached the risers to a special wire, which runs from an exit door on the tower to the base of a large steel pole approximately 100 feet/30.5 meters away. The Black Hats now told him to step off, not to jump from, the edge of the platform, while focusing on a landmark in the distance.

Looking a little nervous, John approached the door exit, and stepped off into space. As we all watched, he dropped about 10 feet/3 meters; then the risers snapped onto the guy wire, and John was off on a rapid ride down the wire to the base of the steel pole. He was bouncing like a minnow on a fish line, but rapidly stabilized and reached up to grab the risers, as he had been instructed by the Black Hats. My immediate relief at his not having fallen over three stories to the ground was rapidly overtaken by the realization that he was headed straight toward the steel pole! Before I could voice my concern, his risers hit a stop in the wire, swinging him high in the air, but stopping him before impacting the pole. As he swung back down, two Black Hats were at the ready to grab him and get him down.

A few minutes later, I joined him at the base of the tower to hear his impressions of the ride. He confirmed that things had happened so fast that he was almost to the pole before he knew what was going on. He also confessed that the harness, while tight and somewhat confining, was highly effective in spreading the loads of the risers evenly over his body. This is just one of the many experiences that BAC students have in their first five days at Fort Benning.

The end of the first week comes none too soon for the BAC students, most of whom spend the coming weekend sleeping and healing from any minor injuries that they might have acquired during the week. By this time, they have probably made a few major realizations about Jump School. One is that BAC has very little do with combat. Those skills will come with their assignment to an airborne unit later. Right now, toughness, endurance, and the ability to work with equipment that will kill them if used improperly are the keys to finishing BAC with the coveted paratrooper’s badge.

For some students, though, the weekend can bring the packing of bags and the beginning of a long drive up the road to Atlanta, and back to wherever they started from. These are the BAC trainees that have failed to make the cut somehow, and have been forced to drop the course. Most dropouts occur in the first week of BAC, and those who do drop out are bitterly disappointed. For those who have survived the first week, though, Week 2 brings a whole new series of experiences.

Monday of the second week brings a new start, and new challenges. By now, the PT runs are 3.5 miles/5.6 kilometers long (by the end of the week, they will be an even 4 miles/6.4 kilometers), and the tower jumps are almost eight times higher! The students also spend a lot of the week in swing harnesses and other devices to teach them about the dynamics of descending to the ground under a parachute canopy.

Along with the tower training and endless PT runs, there also are some indoor academics during Week 2. These are geared toward getting the students ready to handle an actual parachute rig. Things are rapidly getting serious now, because the following Monday will bring with it the first real jumps from aircraft. It is something to think about as they enjoy their second weekend at Fort Benning. Week 2 is a busy time, and the following table shows its curriculum:

Basic Airborne Course Training Schedule — Week 2

Along with more work on the 34-foot/10.4-meter towers, the students get to do a drop from the big 250-foot/76.2-meter towers, to teach them about the feelings of falling free and then descending under a nylon canopy. These towers have been used for over five decades to teach the skills and sensations of a parachute opening and then descending to the ground. Getting the students comfortable with these things is essential, because the following Monday will see them putting on a live parachute rig and jumping from an aircraft for the first time.

For the BAS students, a 250-foot/76.2-meter tower drop begins by being strapped into a harness/riser ensemble, which hangs from a fully deployed parachute. This parachute is held above the student by an umbrella-shaped mesh fitting, which hangs from one of four metal suspension arms at the top of the tower. When the student is firmly strapped in, and the Black Hats are satisfied that all is ready, a signal is given to the tower operator, and the whole assembly — student, harness, and parachute — is hoisted up some 250 feet/76.2 meters. When the assembly reaches the top of the tower, one last safety check is made. This done, the operator releases the assembly, and down the student goes. Since the parachute is already deployed in the containment cage, the student descends at a comfortable sink rate to the ground in almost total safety. About the only thing that the student has to do right is a proper PLF on the plowed-up area around each tower!

The third Monday of BAC is a watershed for the students: their first jumps with real parachutes from aircraft. By this time, though, whatever terror there might have been for the students is probably gone. Daily 4-mile/6.4-kilometer PT runs and the training of the previous two weeks have begun to make them feel untouchable, and their bodies are becoming like rocks. It is amazing what just fourteen days of heavy physical activity can do to a person. When they arrived at Fort Benning, they were just soldiers. Now they are within just days of achieving an almost mythical status within the Army: airborne. The curriculum for this third and final week of Jump School looks like this:

Basic Airborne Course Training Schedule — Week 3

As you can see, the entire schedule for the third week of BAC is designed to provide at least five opportunities for each student to jump from actual aircraft. The jumps must include drops from both C-130 Hercules and C-141B Starlifter transport aircraft. The jumps must also include a mix of day and night jumps, with single and mass jump scenarios mixed in. All BAC jumps are done with the basic T-10 parachute system at a nearby DZ just over the Alabama border.[18] Known as Fryar DZ, it is a fairly large DZ (over a mile/almost two kilometers long) that is both wide and soft (the ground, that is!). It also is less than a five-minute flight from the airfield at Fort Benning, minimizing the turnaround time between training missions.

The third Monday, Week 3 of BAS, begins with the now-standard 4-mile /6.4-kilometer PT run, followed by an indoor academic period to prepare them for their first jump. This includes a particularly terrifying safety film on how to deal with parachute malfunctions. While unusual these days, such emergencies do take place. With the finish of the safety film, the students are bused over to the equipment shed for the issue of their parachutes and other equipment.

These are supplied by Company E of the 1/507th, which provides packing and maintenance services for the Jump School. These parachutes are lovingly maintained in a shed near the airfield by an expert staff of parachute packers. Inside the shed are a series of long tables, where enlisted technicians lay out the T-10s, fix any problems, and hand-pack every one. This matter of hand-packing is important, since a fabric device as complex as the T-10 simply cannot be assembled and packed by a machine. Only human hands and eyes have the sensitivity to feel inconsistencies in the canopy folds, or note wear on shroud lines. Parachute packing is not so much a skill as an art form, and the personnel of Company E know that.

Packing a T-10 main canopy starts with the rigger taking a previously jumped parachute from a recovery bag, and spreading it along one of the long packing tables. Once the chute is spread and inspected for wear or tears, the rigger makes sure that there are no tangles in the shroud lines, and begins to fold it. Folding the T-10 main canopy takes only a few minutes, with the rigger basically doing the exact reverse of what the slipstream does when the parachute deploys. The packing involves a lot of folding, kneading, and tying off cords to get the parachute down to a tiny fraction of its inflated size. One of the oddest things about parachute packing is the practice of securing various flaps and parts with what looks like shoestrings and rubber bands. These are frangible ties, which are used to hold parts of the T-10 in place until they are subjected to specific loads upon release of the static line. Once the static line yanks the T-10 canopy free, the cords and bands break, releasing various parts of the canopy system, allowing it to inflate safely. This assumes, of course, that the riggers have done their job properly. It only takes a skilled rigger a few minutes to fold a T-10 and secure it to its backpack bag. Once the packing job is completed, the rigger signs the parachute log, certifying that it is safe to use and ready to be issued. This is done regularly because a T-10, properly packed and maintained, is good for up to one hundred jumps.

We were invited to watch a group of Week 3 BAS student go through their first jumps, and were excited at the opportunity. Around noon, Monica Manganaro and Major Rob Street drove us down to the flight line to follow the students through what would probably be one of the most memorable experiences of their lives. When we arrived, the BAS students were already getting ready for their jumps. Dressed in standard battle dress uniforms (BDUs), Kevlar “Fritz” helmets (also called “K-Pots”), and jump boots, they would jump today without any loads. Jumps later in the week would have them carrying simulated loads, similar to what they would carry on operational drops. Once the trainees were in their harness/parachute rigs, they were bused to a dilapidated old shed on the edge of the airfield to wait their turn to walk onto an aircraft for their first jumps. The shed, which dates back to World War II, has no air-conditioning, and was blazing hot and deathly humid. We watched the first group of students waiting to walk out to their assigned aircraft, looking a little nervous. Only large fans did anything to keep the air moving, and the students sat on long benches, sweating and checking each other’s gear as they waited.

At 1400 (2:00 PM) it was time for the student paratroops to load up. Out on the ramp were a C-130 and a C-141. The BAS students were led rapidly out to their respective aircraft, and the plane engines started soon after. Watching the lines of young troopers marching up the ramps of the transport aircraft was impressive. This day, Major Street would himself make a proficiency jump (to help keep his jump qualification current) from the C-141 with an MC1-1 steerable parachute. He would be the first one out of the Starlifter.

As the two aircraft taxied off towards the runway, Ms. Manganaro, John, and I hopped into our car (thankfully air-conditioned!), and headed over the Alabama state line to the Fryar DZ, to watch the drops.

On the lead aircraft (the C-141 Starlifter), the short flight to the DZ gave the jumpmasters and loadmasters just barely enough time to go through an abbreviated pre-drop checklist. As the flight crews established an orbit around the DZ, they gave the jumpmasters a warning to get ready, and the jumpmasters went to work. At ten minutes to drop, the BAC students were ordered to get ready. First the personnel sitting on the outboard seats were ordered to stand up, followed by the inboard group. Once everyone was standing, the student paratroops now formed into a pair of 16-person lines (called “chalks”) running down the port and starboard sides of the aircraft. Ordered to hook up the static lines of their parachutes to a wire (the anchor line cable) running the length of the cargo compartment, they each did so, then gathered up the slack and began the short wait until the jump. At five minutes to go, the students were ordered to “check static lines” to make sure that they were clear of obstructions, and then to check the rest of their equipment. This done, the jumpmaster had each jumper sound off an “OK!” signal. By now the jumpmasters had opened the side jump doors, and the flight crew had slowed the aircraft to 130 knots and had begun to watch for the DZ. At this point, the aircraft started the approach leg to the Fryar DZ.[19]

It was almost 1430 (2:30 PM), the planned time-on-target (TOT) for the first stick of students, by the time we reached the Fryar DZ. The sun was blazing down viciously with the temperatures near 100° F/37.8 °C. With the humidity over 80 percent, this gave us a heat index of over 115° F/37.8 °C. That is a killing heat which can cause heat stroke or exhaustion in a matter of minutes. To protect us, the medical corpsman assigned to the DZ safety vehicle immediately gave each of us a plastic water bottle, and ordered us to start drinking it as fast as we could comfortably do so. He also told us that when it was empty, we were to refill it from a large cooler and keep drinking. So rapidly were we sweating off moisture from our bodies that it was almost impossible to avoid at least a minor case of dehydration. Along the DZ, several dozen Black Hats were getting ready for the first jumpers of the afternoon.

Then the Drop Zone Safety Officer (DZSO) called, “Five minutes!” meaning that the first stick of student troopers would jump shortly. The aircraft steadied up at an altitude of 1,000 feet/305 meters, and dropped speed to 130 kn/240 kph. About this time, we heard the four jet engines of the Starlifter heading into the DZ. Up in the C-141, the jumpmasters ordered the jumpers at the head of the lines to stand by. First up would be Major Street with his steerable parachute. Standing in the starboard side door, Rob watched as the DZ came into view, waiting for the signal light to go green. At the same moment that the light flashed, the jumpmaster yelled, “Go!” and Rob was out the door in a flash. His static line deployed, opening his MC1-1 steerable parachute, and he was on his way down to the DZ. Back in the aircraft, the jumpmaster was yelling “Go!” to the student jumpers in each chalk at a slow, regular pace designed to provide a good separation between student jumpers. The idea was to minimize the chances of a midair collision. Tighter mass jumps with loads and at night would come later in the week for this class. For now, though, this jump was being conducted in daylight with extreme safety margins for all concerned.

This turned out to be an excellent idea, because we got a chance to see one of the more bizarre anomalies that can occur in the world of the airborne. Earlier in this chapter we discussed the huge loads that tend to be carried by combat jumpers. During early training jumps, though, some jumpers can actually be too lightly loaded. Some of the smaller students, particularly the female ones, are so light that their parachutes can actually rise in a strong updraft! We saw this happen several times in the horrible August heat, and were amazed that it took sometimes five minutes for these jumpers to reach the safety of the ground.

The C-141 was able to drop thirty-two students during the first pass on Fryar DZ, then banked left to set up for another run. With a capacity of over a hundred jumpers, it would take at least five runs to empty out the back end of the Starlifter. But before the C-141 could return for another run, the C-130 we had seen on the ramp zoomed down and dumped about half of its load of student troopers onto the DZ. Other C-130s began to enter the pinwheel of airplanes around the DZ. For the next hour or so, a big Air Force transport would lay down another stick or chalk of students for the first jump of their Army Airborne career about every two minutes.

Down in Fryar DZ, we watched as Major Street and the student jumpers came down along the road that runs down the centerline of the DZ, which constituted their aimpoint. Major Street was the first down, hitting the ground within yards/meters of the personal point of impact near the DZSO’s HMMWV. Once on the ground, he reported to the DZSO to let him know about the wind conditions as well as the vicious thermal that was creating severe updrafts for some jumpers at the lower end of the zone. Along the road, Black Hat instructors were coaching the students down during the final phase of their descent. As each student neared the ground, Black Hats urged them to set up for a good PLF position. Most seemed to do well, and no injuries were suffered by the almost three hundred jumpers who would hit the silk that afternoon for the first time. This is not always true, though. Landing injuries are common in the airborne, and a loss of 3 to 5 percent of personnel to broken legs and sprained ankles and backs in a combat jump is common. Today’s jump was perfect, except for the heat. As soon as they hit the ground, each student gathered up the parachute canopy, stuffed it into a large green aviator kit bag, dropped it at a collection point for return to Company E, and cleared out of the DZ to board buses back to Fort Benning. For all concerned, it was a good day.

In the four remaining days of BAC, the students would jump four more times. Each jump would be progressively more difficult, requiring more of each student to complete the exercise successfully. By Thursday night, except in the event of a weather delay or physical injury makeup, the students would have all but finished Jump School. They would have turned in their equipment and practiced for their graduation parade, and would be packing their personal gear for the trip to their next assignment post. All that is really left at this point is the graduation parade and ceremony. At this celebration, each BAC graduate is awarded the paratrooper wings that are so prized by their owners. Later that same day, they will head down the road to their new life in the airborne. They will have joined an elite few in the military forces of the United States and the rest of the world. And no matter what they may do, or what their future in the Army is, they will always be paratroopers. However, from the point of view of the 82nd Airborne Division back at Fort Bragg, the job of making the paratrooper is only half done when they graduate from BAS. While Jump School teaches skills and hardens the mind and body, it does nothing per se to make the students better warriors in their chosen MOS. The rest of what makes a paratrooper tough happens when they come through the gate to Fort Bragg.

To the 82nd: Duty on the Line

Since there are relatively few jump-capable units left in the post-Cold War U.S. Army, it is likely that any newly frocked paratroopers will start their airborne careers at 82nd Airborne. The 82nd, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is the one division-sized unit of its type still left, and every paratrooper spends at least some time assigned there. Most new paratroopers going to the 82nd wind up at one of the division’s three airborne brigade task forces. These three units, each built around a reinforced parachute infantry regiment (the 504th, 505th, or 325th), comprise the bulk of the 82nd’s mass and strength, and are where most airborne troopers choose to spend their careers. It is in these three brigades that the final job of polishing and finishing new paratroopers is accomplished. Jump School may teach the skills of how to enter a battlefield by parachute, but the esprit de corps that makes an airborne trooper a lethal weapon of national policy is instilled by the various units of the 82nd. All too often, people fixate on the delivery method of airborne troops, and forget that they need to fight once they are safely on the ground. Often alone, cold, hungry, and scared, these troopers must fight to their objectives, no matter what the odds. In short, they need to be taught the meaning of “All the Way” (the official paratrooper motto), and LGOP (little groups of paratroopers).

Now, let us suppose that a new paratrooper (in this case an infantryman) has joined one of the infantry units of 1st Brigade/504th Parachute Regiment. Following in-processing, the young man (only males are currently allowed by law in front-line combat units) will probably be assigned to an infantry platoon within one of the brigade’s three battalions. Once settled in his new home, he’s thrown into the fire of airborne life with the 82nd. This includes the eighteen-week alert cycle, as well as a lot of training and numerous field exercises.

It is these last two points that the 82nd uses to help make a new paratrooper into a useful device of war. Train and exercise. Train and exercise. Train and exercise. By the time a paratrooper finishes his first tour of duty with the 82nd, he’ll probably both love and hate these words. Love because these are the things that a soldier goes into the Army to do. Hate because they take that soldier away from his home and family. However, these are the things that they do to get and remain combat ready.

The training schedule for a combat paratrooper is impressive. The morning PT runs that started at Jump School are still there, and running at Fort Bragg is just as challenging as at Fort Benning. General Keane (who we met in the previous chapter) has made a point of emphasizing the need for more physical fitness within the units of XVIII Airborne Corps in general, and the 82nd in particular. Every morning and evening, either in formation or alone, you see troopers running to cadence around the post to stay fit and tough. Along with staying fit, there is weapons and tactics skills training. It is a matter of some discomfort to the Army leadership that the Marines tend to establish and maintain their combat skills earlier and at a higher level than comparable Army units. The one real exception to this rule is the airborne. Because of the necessarily high level of readiness associated with their forced-entry missions, they must be trained as well as, or maybe even better than, their Marine counterparts. This means that shooting skills, always a weak point in average soldiers, is heavily emphasized in airborne units. Rather than hosing down a target with bursts of fire from an M16 or M249 SAW, the airborne prefers their troopers to focus on single shots or short bursts to conserve vital ammunition that might have to be resupplied via airdrop.

The leadership within the 82nd is similarly fanatical about developing other combat skills ranging from land navigation in darkness and poor weather, to cross-training on heavy weapons like machine guns, mortars, and antitank missiles. There also are plenty of assault drills in Fort Bragg’s combat town (an urban-warfare training facility) and field simulation areas, as well as all-night forced-march training.

Somewhere in all of this training, the new paratrooper is also indoctrinated with something of the tradition, history, and folklore of the unit that he has joined. Each of the brigades has a proud airborne combat history ranging from World War II to Desert Storm. Before long, the new trooper will have bonded with his fellow paratroops, his units, and the legend that is the airborne. He is now one of them.

All that’s left now is to test the new trooper. Seeing that combat is both a rare and potentially disastrous way to do this, the leadership of the Army sees to it that the 82nd (or at least some part of it) is included in almost every major field exercise being run around the world. From the Joint Task Force Exercises (JTFEX) supervised by U.S. Atlantic Command (USACOM) to the annual Bright Star multi-national war games run in Egypt, the 82nd is almost always there. In fact, a new 82nd trooper can probably count on being involved in at least three to four such exercises each year. These exercises are the closest thing to actual combat that a typical soldier will experience in his or her Army career. Tops among these exercises is a trip to the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Structured much like the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, it is designed to give the infantry the same kinds of force-on-force and live-fire training experiences that armored units get at the NTC. All this is in addition to the other training and alert duties that the young trooper will be involved in.

It probably takes between twelve and eighteen months for the brigade to get a new trooper fully combat ready. But when they are finally finished, it is time to do something to enhance the career of the paratrooper. Sometimes this means promotion to a higher rank or position of responsibility. Most times, though, the process of enhancement involves sending the trooper off to school somewhere to improve professional skills and chances of promotion. From the standpoint of airborne operations, the most interesting of these schools are the Pathfinder and jumpmaster training schools, which teach advanced airborne warfare skills.

Advanced Schools: Pathfinder and Jumpmaster

When looking at airborne warfare, some folks focus upon the airborne delivery of paratroopers at the expense of fighting skills. This is not without reason. If you cannot get a unit and their gear safely on the ground, then the whole exercise of a combat airdrop will have been wasted.

Unfortunately, the individual skills taught at Jump School are just the beginning of the equation for putting airborne units safely on the ground. When the BAC students we watched at Fort Benning made their first jumps into the Fryar DZ, they did so into a well-controlled and surveyed area which is used regularly. Wartime drops are hardly like those into the Fryar DZ. If experience tells us anything, it is that the process of an airborne unit jumping into combat is barely organized chaos. From the German assault on Maleme Airfield on Crete, to the 82nd and 101st Airborne fighting in hedgerows behind the Normandy beachhead, DZs have been places that few paratroopers look upon with fond memories. It therefore makes sense that you need professionals to minimize the problems of jumping out of aircraft and into a DZ. The folks who make this happen are known as jumpmasters and Pathfinders.

Jumpmasters supervise both the loading and rigging of personnel, equipment, and supplies onto aircraft, and the actual jump/drop operation. They work closely with Air Force loadmasters and Army logisticians to maximize the effectiveness and safety of each airdrop sortie. On the flip side, Pathfinders are the folks who go into a field or other open space, and then survey and set it up for a parachute drop or air assault by helicopters. The Army maintains special schools for both jobs at Fort Benning, and we took the time to look at them both during our visit. Run by the 1/507th, both courses are designed to train officers and NCOs to become the supervisors or middle management of airborne operations. The folks who attend these schools already tend to be highly proficient in the technical aspects of airborne warfare, and want to know more. In particular, they are soldiers that understand the necessity of a small cadre of airborne troopers being able to internally run their operations, without outside interference or influence that might prove disastrous in some dark DZ on the other side of the world. You need special training to be able to coordinate activities like this, and Fort Benning is the place for those classes.

Actually there are two Jumpmaster Schools. The 1/507th runs one at Fort Benning, and the other is located at Fort Bragg. Both utilize the same course material. The Jumpmaster Course is run over a two-week period, and includes some ninety-four hours of classroom and field exercises. Each year about 1,200 personnel enter the course, though only 60 percent actually graduate. It is a tough course, with a lot of supporting academics and documentation required to complete it successfully. Each class is made up of between 26 and 50 students, though this number is dropping, much like BAC class size. In fact, only 1,000 students per year are programmed to take the class from now on. It is an exciting and cerebral kind of class. One that appeals to the academic and tinkerer in many paratroopers. I really like this course!

The core curriculum teaches the students how to package, rig, and load personnel, supplies, and equipment onto aircraft for delivery into a DZ. This may not sound overly difficult until you consider the variety of stuff that an airborne division like the 82nd can take with it into combat. Everything from food and water, to field hospitals and, of course, paratroops. All of these things need to be delivered safely, and the Jumpmaster School is where one acquires the knowledge. For example, there are over a dozen personal weapons containers that can be jumped by paratroops into battle. These are padded container rolls, which help protect a trooper’s personal weapons load during a jump and landing. The most common one fits the basic M16A2 combat rifle that is issued to most of the personnel in the 82nd. There are others, though. These include containers to carry mortars, light machine guns, and even guided missiles. In fact, the newest container, for the new Javelin antitank missile, was just being qualified for use during one of our early visits to Fort Bragg. The largest and most difficult container to handle is the one for the Stinger man-portable surface-to-air missile (SAM). You have to be at least 5 feet 10/1.75 meters tall to jump with it. Each container, pallet, and load is a different loading and rigging challenge, though, and a qualified jumpmaster must know how to handle them all.

While the Jumpmaster Course sits at the technical extreme of airborne warfare, the Pathfinder program teaches more in the way of field skills. Back in World War II, Pathfinders were the elite of the airborne, dropped in prior to combat jumps to mark the drop zones and provide scouting. Today they do a similar job, though their tools and procedures are far more advanced than those of their World War II brethren. It should be noted, though, that not all the Pathfinder students are paratroopers. In fact, a large percentage of Pathfinders are assigned to airmobile and air cavalry (helicopter) units, since they also use landing zones (LZ) for their operations. Overall, the Pathfinder Course teaches the following skills:

• The technical expertise to plan and execute air movements, air assaults, airborne and air resupply missions for either fixed- or rotary-wing aircraft.

• Preparing air mission and briefing documents, as well as being able to support theater-level air tasking orders.[20]

• Controlling and executing DZ and helicopter LZ operations.

• Performing sling-load and other loading/unloading operations.

• Acting as part of an Air Force Combat Control Team (CCT).

• Conducting DZ/LZ area surveys.

• Controlling and certifying other personnel as DZ/LZ support personnel.

The Pathfinder Course is taught in 165.6 hours of instruction at Fort Benning over three weeks. While a BAS certification is not required to take the Pathfinder Course, it is a busy and highly physical curriculum nevertheless. A great deal of field work is carried on during the course, and severely taxes the endurance of even veteran paratroops. Only 618 officers and NCOs are allowed to take the course each year, though the graduation rate of around 82 percent means about 540 new Pathfinders each year for the Army. Each class (there are thirteen each year) is made up of between 24 and 48 students. It is a tough class, but the high graduation rate tells a lot about the professionalism of the “Black Hats” that run the course.

Conclusion

The training that we have discussed in this chapter is really just a small slice of what the people within the 82nd Airborne receive during their careers as soldiers. Nevertheless, I think that we have focused on the specific things that make paratroopers unique in a world crowded with folks who wear uniforms. Airborne troopers are special, much like the Marines and other elite forces that I have spent time with over the years. As part of the small group of personnel entrusted with forced entry onto hostile shores, they have a special trust in the minds of the National Command Authorities and the hearts of the American people. This is why you almost always see paratroopers there first when a crisis erupts overseas. It’s what they have trained to do.