Jump Course (Part 2)

The second week of the jump course consists of 5 jumps. One jump during the day without any gear, three more day jumps with gear, and two jumps at night with gear.

Sunday was a review day. We spent the day doing a lot of rolling, which I tried to skip out of as much as possible. The week before, when practicing our landings from the swing, I fell about 5 feet and landed on one of the metal clips from the harness when doing my roll. It left a pretty big bruise and made all subsequent rolls extremely unpleasant (It is actually a little bit funny, because the jump course is the one place that people try to hide their injuries. Any other week there are people complaining about injuries left and right in order to get out of things that we are doing. However, at the jump course being injured means that you don't get to jump). Anyway, I made it through Sunday and our first jump was Monday morning.

We were the first group to jump on Monday, so we woke up extremely early, around 3:30, and got all of our gear together (the first jump was without our vest or weapon, so it wasn't too much gear). We got to the runway, put on our parachutes and reserve 'chutes, sat down and waited for the plane. We ended up waiting for about an hour and then the plane pulled up. We jump out of a Hercules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-130_Hercules), and when it pulled up you get a sense of where the name comes from.

My group was assigned to the right door and we all lined up and entered the plane. They broke us into three groups of 8 people. I was told I would be the first person to jump in the 3rd group. They closed the ramp at the back of the plane where we had walked up and within a few minutes we were in the air...

A quick side note on my state of mind at this point. There was a time when I had a pretty significant fear of heights. There was the time at Lake Martin when I spent 15 minutes getting up the courage to jump off Chimney Rock, or the multiple times I backed out of various other height-related activities (i.e. - when my mom and sister did the bungee swing or on spring break when everybody went bungee jumping, etc.). Anyway, there was a time when I think this would have been a problem, but in actuality I think the week of drills made it a lot easier. Having jumped so many times from the different machines made it seem somewhat routine. By the time I was on the plane I really wasn't scared at all.

...We jumped from 1,200 feet, which is relatively low. To give you an idea the normal sky dive is done around 13,000 feet. When we reached the right altitude the first group of eight stood up and moved to the door. I watched as they all made their way out the door. When it came time for the second group to jump things did not go as smoothly. There were two people who decided that they couldn't jump, they were too scared. Instead of what I assumed would happen, the instructors would push them out, their parachute lines were removed from the cable and the first two people from the 3rd group were asked to join the second group. I stood and took my place as the 6th person in line. When it came time to jump things moved very quickly. The red light comes on, the first person moves into the doorway and after the green light it is like lemmings. There is maybe 2 seconds inbetween each person. All you hear is, "Jump!...Jump!...Jump!"

As I approached the door I put my hands outside and bent my knees I felt a hand on my shoulder (the signal to jump) and started to make my way out the door, when the hand suddenly pulled me back in. At first I had no idea what was going on, then the instructors pointed to the light which had changed to red. Apparently, the people in front of me had taken too long to jump and we had left the jump zone. The plane circled back around and this time I was first to jump. Being first you have a long time to stand in the doorway as the plane gets back in position. We flew over a small town and it gave me a chance to really appreciate how low we were. To give you a better idea they said that if your parachute doesn't open you would have 12 seconds before you hit the ground (not very comforting when you're think about that in terms of how much time you would have to open a reserve 'chute).

When it was finally time to jump everything went according to plan. I jumped out and the parachute opened after about two seconds. After that I floated to the ground and landed after about another 45 seconds. The landing was actually a little scary because you hear a lot of stories about people breaking their legs, and as you get close to the ground it starts to come up at you pretty quick (I later learned that a lot of the rolling upon impact is not necessary, the only thing that is really important is keeping your legs together).

I actually have to go get ready to go back to the army tomorrow (I broke my watch when I was practicing the rolling and I have to go to the mall and get a new one), so I'll have to finish the rest of the story in two weeks when I get home again. I hope it doesn't spoil the next post, but I finished the course and there is a picture of me with the pin you get at the end of the course, a picture of me, my instructor, and the other five guys who finished the course with me, and two pictures I took from the air (if you look closely at the parachuter in the picture you can see the gear that we jump with in the later jumps hanging down).

Jump Course (Part 1)

Two weeks ago I started the army's two week jump course. The course entails a week of training and week of parachuting, at the end of which you receive your "wings."

I was expecting it to be something of a break and a nice chance to get out from under our commanders for a while, unfortunately, I was mistaken. We were broken into groups of 8 and given an instructor who we would work with for the two weeks.

*Interesting side note: We were given a female commander, but they broke the groups up according to those who are more strictly religious and those that are not, because the soldiers who are religious can not be touched by girls and therefore were given male instructors.*

Not being particularly religious my group had one of the few female instructors, which turned out to be something of a problem because we had trouble taking her seriously and as a result we were often punished (which was also something of a joke because we are so used to be punished by our commanders that her punishments were laughable).

Our schedule was not as laid back as I had hoped it would be. We started every day around 5:30, but our commanders had us wake up earlier to meet with them before meeting our instructors, and we finished every day around 6 at night. For some reason we did the jump course extremely early in our training. At the same time that we were there there were two other groups who were also particpating in the course - the Anti-Guerilla Warfare unit and the Elite Combat Engineering unit (both of which have been in training now for at least a year). For the other units, who have finished most of their training, the jump course must have been a welcomed break. Whenever they were not with the instructors they were given free time to do as they pleased. My team, on the other hand, was at the will of our commanders, which usually meant a lot of running in gear or various punishments that they deemed necessary.

The course itself can essentially be broken down into various machines or drills that they use to simulate various parts of parachuting. The first thing we learned, and my least favorite, was how to land. We spent hours in a giant sandbox practicing how to roll in every possible direction. When we finally reached a level where everyone could roll to our instructors satisfaction we graduated to platforms of different heights that we would jump off and then roll. Just so we are clear on this, aside from the monotony, this was multiple hours of sweating in the sun and then rolling in sand...not what the grand mental image I had when I heard the words "jump course."

Some of the machines we used were somewhat fun, but the emphasis is on "somewhat" because after doing it once or twice the novelty begins to wear off rather quickly. I took a few pictures of some of the machines because I am sure my descriptions won't really do them justice. Here is a quick rundown of some of the drills we did:

The Little and Big Swing (pictured): The little and big swings are used to simulate all of the different steps from jumping out of the plane until the landing. There is a harness that connects to you and after jumping you feel the straps become taut after two seconds (because there is no actual "skydiving" the parachute is deployed as you exit the plane). On the little swing we practiced jumping with gear and how to deploy the reserve shoot. The big swing has a function that enables the instructors to release the straps so that you will fall to the ground from about 5 or 6 feet up, which is how they simulate the landing.

The Omega (pictured): The Omega is essentially a zip line that they use to simulate landing while drifting to a side or backwards. While on the zip line they tell you to drop and practice your roll in different directions.

The Fan (pictured): The fan is a tower, about 45 feet tall, that serves two purposes. The first is that it can be used to practice landings if there is no wind. However, because there is almost no situation in which there will not be wind the instructors mainly use the machine as a test of courage to see who might have a problem jumping from the plane. (It is called "The Fan" because the fan at the top is connected to the wire that lowers you and the fan helps to slow your descent)

The "Little" and Big Jump Towers: I didn't have the opportunity to take a picture of the jump towers, but the purpose of the towers is to simulate jumping from the plane and to practice releasing your gear and your reserve shoot. The two towers are constructed the same. They look like the section of the plane where the soldiers jump out and have zip lines about 50 yards long. The little tower is about 30 feet high and the big tower is about 50 feet high. After jumping out you zip down the line on a harness and release your gear.

The Negev

Three weeks ago was a week called "Professions" week. The idea being that there are different positions, or professions, in each team and the commanders assigned those positions to the soldiers they felt best suited each one. Of the possible positions there are 4 sharp shooters, 2 people with a grenade launcher attachment to their gun, 2 people who are given a light machine gun called the Negev, and one person is given a general purpose machine gun.

So I will cut to the chase, I was given the Negev, and I will tell you now that there really is nothing light about the "light" machine gun. If you are interested I found this article when I was trying to explain to my dad what it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMI_Negev

We spent the week in the shooting range learning about the gun and also being put through some pretty rigorous training. The first day was pretty standard, we were in the classroom learning about the weapon specifications, how to deal with malfunctions, and how to assemble and disassemble the gun. Then the tone of the week took a turn...

As I would come to learn through out the week it is expected of the "Negevists" (as they refer to those who carry the Negev) to be the most aggressive. When the team is storming the enemy, the Negevist is expected to be the first one so that he can spray the enemy with automatic fire and give the rest of the team time to move forward. I soon learned that the commanders' idea of instilling aggression is directly connected to crawling.

When we were at the shooting range we crawled to check our target, when we weren't at the shooting range we crawled up hills, and then for good measure they made us do relay races which were a mix of crawling and running. By the end of the week I was pretty beat up and I threw in a nice picture of the bruise I had on my elbow.