"Strap Hanger" This section covers 325th AIR and Jump School [Feb-Sept 1955]
I was very glad to leave Fort Jackson for the Eighty-second Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I thought it couldn’t be any worse than basic training. As we pulled into the Eighty-second Airborne Replacement Center area the paratroops in the area all shouted, "You’ll be s-o-r-r-y!” This was not exactly an encouraging welcome, but as it turned out, it was accurate. We had to process through the Reppel Deppel first and the sergeants there played games with us. It seemed that some paratroopers like to harass the new recruits who had not yet completed jump school who are referred to as "Straight Legs" or just plain "Legs.” [A short time later, I learned that this is a very old term from the early 1940s when our paratroops were first formed. It refers to the trousers not being tucked into the top of boots, instead they just hang straight down to the cuff like normal people. Also back then all airborne rejects were automatically sent to Military Police duty because they both had the same minimum physical standards. This caused the airborne qualified troops to have a very low opinion of MPs and a strong animosity has existed between paratroops and MPs ever since. It’s a time-honored tradition. No one has to even mention it, much less train you for it. It just seems to come naturally.] Screwing with the new recruits seemed to be the favorite pastime of these particular sergeants. One day, they roared through our barracks and ordered us to place our low-quarters and flying saucers [a bus driver-type of cap with a leather bill] on our beds. As soon as we had these items laid out, they came back through and started collecting them and threw them into the Dempsey Dumpsters just outside our door. They said, "Paratroops don’t wear these items and they are no longer needed.” These items were not taken off of our records so we were still legally responsible for them. If an officer ordered us to produce those items, we would have to buy new ones. Over the next fifteen years of service in the paratroops, no one ever required me to produce the items that we threw away. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the guys who washed out of jump school had to pay for those items out of their own pocket when they reported in to their next unit. I was assigned to Easy Company, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment and again as we unloaded from the 2 ½ ton trucks the enlisted men who witnessed our arrival shouted the standard army welcome, "You’ll be s-o-r-r-y!.” And as usual, they were right. Sooner or later, they were always right. The Three-two-five turned out to be a big let down. As I recall, Easy Company got three recruits besides me, one of whom was a Private Newton who was also from East Tennessee and who later became known as "Big-Un.” Newton was quite a bit taller and heavier than me. We reported in to First Sergeant Hart, who immediately put us into the front leaning rest position [the starting position for doing push ups] on the company street and left us there while his company clerks processed our paperwork. After what seemed like an eternity, they notified us which platoons we were assigned to and told to draw our bedding and field gear from the supply room. The supply room and orderly room shared the same fairly small one-story building. Newton was assigned to the weapon’s platoon and I was assigned to the second platoon. Right away, I carried my personal gear to my new barracks and threw it on an empty top bunk. Four soldiers were playing penny-ante poker in one corner of the first floor of my barracks. A black poker player approached me and asked me for a loan so he could continue playing poker, but I refused, "Sorry, but I’m almost busted myself.” I immediately left and went to the company supply room where I drew my field gear and carried it back to my barracks. It took me two trips to haul all of my gear to the barracks. While I was unpacking and storing my clothing and field gear, I discovered that someone had stolen the air mattress that the supply sergeant had just issued me. I was certain that it had been in the first bag of field gear that I had hauled back to the barracks. I suspected the black guy that had approached me about the loan, but I had no proof so I did not confront him. Maybe I should have, but I was more concerned with just getting along at that point in my very short military career. [Later, I learned that one sign of a bad unit was a barracks thief. If you had just one barracks thief, you would have a bad unit. We definitely had a barracks thief and I was to learn over the next few months that we also had a bad unit.] The Three-two-five had a very high percentage of black, Puerto Rican, and Cuban troops and an even higher percentage of "goof-offs" and "eight balls" or at least Easy Company did. The Hispanics pretended that they could not understand English. Half of them were not jump-qualified and had no intention of going to jump school. They were kept there as fillers so we would have somebody in formations and to pull details. About the only English they claimed to understand was "ten minute break," "chow," "mail call," "fall out," and "dismissed.” That reminded me of what my interests had been as a high school student/prisoner. We went on a field training exercise [maneuver] the first week that I was there. Our entire company could only field about twenty five percent of its assigned men. The rest were on Sick Call, Light Duty, TDY [Temporary Duty], SD [Special Duty] or just plain goof-offs. This was normal for garrison also, but dumb me thought everybody would have to go on FTXs [field training exercises]. If anything, the opposite was true. Usually, you had fewer men on FTXs than we had that fell out for formations in garrison. But some of those would drop out of formation and return to the barracks or to their special duty job when the rest of the unit was marched to training or work details which were commonly referred to as "shit details.". At that time, each rifle company had three rifle platoons, a weapons platoon and a company headquarters. Each rifle Platoon had four squads, three rifle squads and one weapons squad. Two of the men on a rifle squad were armed with BARs [Browning Automatic Rifles] and the rest carried M-1 Garands. The weapons squad had two A-6 light machine gun crews and I believe one or two 3.5 inch rocket launcher crews. Anyway, the unit organization changed every now and then and the allocated strength of a rifle platoon varied from 43 to 50 men. The weapons platoon had two squads of sixty millimeter mortars and two squads of fifty-seven millimeter recoilless rifles. While in Easy Company, I learned how to spit-shine my footgear until they looked like mirrors. During jump school, I also learned to disassemble my brass belt buckle and shine it inside and out, even though no one seemed to know why a belt buckle had to be shiny inside. Also, I learned that I was not allowed to dye my boots black. My boots had to remain the same baby-shit brown color that they were when the Army issued them to me. At the time, I did not own any jump boots, just the boots Uncle Sam had issued me. Easy company had several "professional privates" assigned to it. A professional private was a career soldier that was almost always a habitual screw-up. They tended to be an alcoholic, a member of a minority group, and/or a combat veteran. The Professional Private could usually keep his nose clean until payday, but then you might not see him again until he ran out of money. Since his monthly pay was $72 plus $50 jump pay, this usually only took about three days. A Professional Private seldom held any rank higher than Private First Class [one stripe] and was happy to have that. Some of the Professional Privates were the sharpest soldiers in the company as long as you kept them in the field or at least restricted to the barracks. It wasn't unusual for a Professional Private to have almost twenty years of service, mostly as a Private or Private First Class. The only members of Easy Company of the Three-two-five that resembled the paratrooper that had been depicted on that recruiting poster was the First Sergeant. [The army stopped tolerating professional privates in the late 1950s. Now [1997], if an enlisted man in special forces gets so much as an Article 15 [company punishment] on his records, he will not be promoted and most likely will be forced out of the army. If it is that way in SF, I can only speculate how bad it is in conventional units.] First, they made me a rifleman and shortly thereafter they made me a BAR man. An M-1918A2, BAR with an empty magazine weighed slightly less than twenty pounds. We went to the rifle range before I was a BAR man and I fired a very high Expert score with the M-1, so they had me fire the BAR. During the rapid fire exercise with the BAR, we had to empty three magazines into the target at 300 yards within just a very few seconds. As I recall, each magazine for this drill only contained five rounds. The purpose of this exercise was to test your ability to change magazines under pressure [the time limit] and still shoot accurately. I believe that the time limit was fifteen or twenty seconds. After you finish each firing exercise on the rifle range, the men in the pits pulled the targets to find your hits. Then they mark your hits with pasteboard disks and run the targets back up to display your hits. On the rapid fire exercise my target was the only one that had just one marker on it. It was a white disk in the center of the bulls eye and that disk indicated where all of my shots had hit. The Range Officer called my position number over the bullhorn and asked me, "What’s your name soldier?" "Private Valentine, Sir!” "What company are you in?" "Easy Company, Sir!” "Where the hell are you from boy?" "East Tennessee, Sir!” "Hell, I might have known!” That’s when they gave me that big-ass BAR for keeps. That’s the only smart thing that I can recall that company did while I was there because I dearly loved that BAR. Most of all, I loved to fire the BAR, but it did get heavy on speed marches. For some reason, none of the goof-offs could ever fire a qualifying score with any of the heavier weapons. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. If you did well with that weapon, you just might end up carrying it. We periodically went on nine and twelve mile speed marches with full field gear. We usually did the speed marches at nights for some strange reason. The goof-offs either traveled light on speed marches or they went on sick call. If they were forced to carry a BAR or Light Thirty [A-6 .30 light machine gun], they emptied its guts and left them in the barracks. They also stuffed their pack with towels and rolled up a partially-inflated air mattress to replace their sleeping bag in their horse-shoe roll. My part of the Eighty-second Airborne Division was something else. Yes sir, they were truly "America’s Honor Guard.” Believe it or not, that was the Eighty-second’s Number Two official nickname. That was pure horse shit then and it still is now. Their Number One official nickname was "The All Americans.” Back then, the Eighty-second may well be the "worst" division in our entire army or at least it probably was then. America, I sure hope you slept good during the fifties because your "Honor Guard" was on duty. The Eighty-second Almost Airborne was supposedly the best that we had standing between us and the commie horde. If that was true, every American should have been wearing flak jackets and sleeping in underground bunkers because the Eighty-second Airborne Division was just a Paper Tiger, at least Easy Company of the 325th was. It was about this time that I discovered that the recruiting sergeant had neglected to tell me what the specific "qualifications" for the paratroops were. Well, I figured that he probably didn’t know what the requirements were, him not being a paratrooper, right. I also learned that the army paid enlisted paratroops $50 a month extra. ]They later raised it to $55 and and many years after that they raised it very high.] For a buck private [Private E-2] who was only making $72 a month at that time, an additional $50 every month looked pretty darn good. [Later, I learned that they paid paratroop officers $100 extra per month [it was later raised to $110]. Much, much later I learned that a corporal who had completed jumpmaster training could be in charge of an entire parachute operation from the time the jumper’s names are placed on orders until they land on the ground. This same corporal may also be responsible for an entire planeload of paratroop officers of all ranks, possibly including a general, yet that corporal still only got paid $50 per month. The army did not pay paratroops according to their parachuting responsibilities and parachuting experience. They only paid them according to their rank and that is limited to enlisted pay or officer pay. The day that I became aware of this policy was the same day that I threw away my jump log book and stopped counting my jumps. From that day forward, I also was not concerned about qualifying as a Senior Parachutist, Master Parachutist or Jumpmaster: it simply didn’t pay.] In order to qualify for the paratroops, I had to pass a special physical examination and a special PT [Physical Training] Test with pushups, pullups, situps, squat jumps, and a twenty minute run and each exercise had its own minimum standards. In the regular army, if you are weak on one part you can do extra on another part to compensate. Not in the airborne PT Test. In the airborne test, you have to do a minimum of each exercise and every repetition has to be performed absolutely perfect. Part of the physical examination was an eye exam. My vision without glasses had to be no worse than 20/40 and if corrected by glasses, it had to be 20/20. Unfortunately, at that time, my vision, without glasses, was 20/50. I knew that I had a problem. Pullups are done with your palms facing away from you, chinups are done with your palms facing you. Chinups I had done before, but I had never done a pullup until I joined the army and I wasn’t good at pullups. In fact, I stunk at pullups. During basic, I had compensated for pullups by doing extra in everything else. Now that made two problems and I was getting a little angry because my recruiting sergeant had neglected to inform me of all these requirements. The company sent me to the main post hospital to take the Airborne Physical. I only remember the blood test and the eye exam. They lined us up in our GI shorts to take blood samples. I don’t know why, but it seemed to me that any time a GI entered the hospital, the first thing they told him to do was, "Strip down to your shorts.” If a GI only went there for a cold, I supposed that they would first strip him down to his shorts before they examined him. By the time they got around to examining him, he probably would have pneumonia. Anyway, they stabbed each recruit in the vein in his arm, stuck a tube there to catch his blood and told him to hold it in place. Then they went to the next recruit. There were about twenty recruits in each line. By the time the medics got back to each guy to get his tube, the blood was overflowing the tube and dripping on the floor. It seemed that even the non-jumping medics had gotten into the spirit and were hazing the airborne recruits. Naturally, I flunked the eye exam. When my platoon sergeant asked me how I had done, I lied. I told him, "Sarge, I stayed up late the night before the test reading my Soldier’s Manual. I guess I strained my eyes. If they gave me another exam, I will pass it.” I figured, "What the hell, that damn recruiting sergeant didn’t care what my eyesight was or how many pullups I could do. I was in this mess now and by hook or by damn crook, I was going to finish it." A few weeks later they sent me to take the physical again. This time, I checked the form that they gave me. No where on that form did it mention anything about me wearing glasses or the last exam, it was blank. The doctor that was checking our eyes left the door open and when I got about three men from the front of the line, I could see the eye chart. By the time it was my turn, I had memorized the 20/20 line and hid my eyeglasses in my pocket. The doctor told me, "Read the smallest line that you can see," and I quoted the 20/20 line perfectly. Then he told me, "Now read the 20/40 line," and I couldn’t read it. Hell I could barely see it. Of all the guys coming through that hospital, this guy had to be the only person to remember me. The doctor laughed and started to write down that I had flunked. I quickly bent down close to the doctor’s ear and whispered, "Doc, I’m in a parachute infantry rifle platoon. My sergeant promised to put me right up front, real close to the enemy so I won’t miss a damn thing that happens. So, please pass me and don’t worry about it.” He looked me in the eyes for several seconds and then wrote something down on my form. He handed my form back to me and said, "Twenty-Twenty, You pass. Get the hell out of here.” I sure as hell did to, I raced out of there before he changed his mind. In fact, I ran all the way back to my unit. I forgot that a truck was waiting to bring us back. It didn’t matter, I beat the truck back by an hour. I guess I was a little excited. Newt and I were scheduled to start jump training the next week so I took care of my next problem. Newt and I went to the PX where I bought two pencils and a ball point pen. One of the pencils was a regular wooden pencil, but the other pencil had red lead on one end and blue lead on the other. The ball point pen had blue, black, green, and red ink points. I figured that I was going to complete jump training, go to the stockade for cheating, or die trying. We soon discovered another "Catch-22," a big one. At that time, if you were in the Eighty-second, there was another requirement to attending their Basic Airborne Course [BAC]. You had to first complete a three week Pre-Basic Airborne Course [Pre-BAC] that was also conducted by the Eighty-second BAC cadre. This was a new requirement because none of the jumpers in my platoon had gone through Pre-BAC and consequently they did not know anything about Pre-BAC. Early one Monday morning in March 1955, I was introduced to Pre-BAC. We were formed up and double-timed the mile or so over to the jump school area to begin training. As we were approaching the entrance to the training area, I saw five or six soldiers standing in a group off to one side. They were wearing shiny jump boots, fatigue trousers, white T shirts and dark blue or black baseball caps. I only glanced out of the corner of my eye at that strange looking group of soldiers, but apparently one of the students turned their head and looked directly at them. Those guys descended on us like a flock of ducks chasing June Bugs. In about two seconds, they turned a harmonious, finely tuned group of marching soldiers into a chaotic mob. "Don’t roll those eyeballs at me, you stupid jerk" "Drop and give me ten!” "Too slow, on your feet, drop for twenty!” "Too slow, on your feet, drop for thirty!” On and on and on they went until I began to think they were never going to let up until we were all dead. If you dove to the ground to do pushups in front of someone marching behind you, they had to continue marching and practically trample your ass into the ground or they were also dropped for pushups. Even though I had not turned my head, I was one of the first to have to do "corrective pushups" because I was a "Four Eyes." In jump school, there were only two things worse than being a "Four Eyes". One was a student that had prematurely obtained a visible "airborne" tattoo and the other was a student dumb enough to wear jump boots instead of army issue boots. None of those foolhardy recruits made it through that jump school class. Those guys really caught hell. It seemed to be a particular penchant of the cadre. The cadre seemed to thoroughly enjoy seeing those trainees quit jump school and leave the airborne with their "airborne tattoo" and jump boots. In other words, jump school was a super chicken-shit outfit. My platoon cadre was a tall lean man named Corporal Kirk. A short muscular man named Sergeant Jones was another platoon’s cadre. If the platoon cadre had an assistant, I can not recall them. Every day of Pre-BAC, I did hundreds of extra pushups, simply because I wore glasses. After a few days, just out of curiosity, I kept count of the number of pushups that I did one morning and it was more than a thousand. Some group of bleeding-heart do-gooders at that time felt that army training was too tough. They convinced the army that soldiers should not be given more than ten pushups at a time as punishment because it was too harsh. So the ingenious cadre had devised ways of adding pushups. One way was requiring that you always do one extra pushup for the airborne. They never gave you more than ten corrective pushups at a time, but if you could not get down into the pushup position fast enough, that required an additional ten corrective pushups or if you did not do "airborne" [better defined as letter-perfect] pushups, you had to repeat them. When your corrective pushups totaled more than ten, you only did ten pushups at a time, plus one for the airborne of course, then you had to assume the position of attention, do an about face, and immediately drop back down to do the next ten. They could call me anything, except maybe "too late for supper," and I was not going to quit. Wearing glasses and being one of the two tallest men in our platoon made it impossible for me to blend into the group and disappear, which was what every student was desperately trying to do. We quickly learned to avoid looking directly at one of the cadre, that was to be avoided at all costs because if you did make eye contact, you would be verbally assaulted, "Why are you looking at me Number 302. Do you think I am beautiful. Are you in love with me Number 302. Do you want to fuck me Number 302. I think you’re queer Number 302. I hate queers Number 302.” and dropped into the front rest position doing pushups, "Until you sprout roots.” The first day of Pre-Bac was the Saturday before class began and it was devoted to the PT Test. It was to be conducted in a Round-Robin style. We would be broken down into four groups and each group would start at a different exercise station. I hoped that I would get lucky on the physical fitness test and not be assigned to the pullups first. For once, I was lucky and started with pushups. That’s when I discovered what "Airborne Exercises" were. For example, on pushups they first put you in the front leaning rest position, then they explained that you must go all the way down and touch your chest to the grader’s hand on the ground and then raise all the way up until your elbows are locked, all the while keeping your head and eyes to the front and your back as straight as an arrow and without squirming or grunting. That was an Airborne Pushup. Do it any other way and it did not count. Also, you were in the front-leaning rest while receiving this instruction. All of the different exercises had to be Airborne Exercises, in other words, it had to be perfect. The grader would not explain what you were doing wrong, he would just keep the count at the last exercise that you had completed correctly. Very few students got by with doing the minimum required number of any exercise because some of them were just not done perfectly and had to be repeated until it was done absolutely perfect. When I finished that first exercise, I by-passed the pullup bars and peeked at a buddy’s card that had just finished taking the pullup test. I slyly forged my pullup exam, giving myself a passing number of pullups. Believe me, that wasn’t easy because it seemed that someone was always watching every thing that you did. The Jump School Cadre were more vicious, more vulgar and more demanding than my basic training drill sergeant had been. However, on the other hand Pre-BAC only lasted four hours a day and none of the cadre tried to make out with me. Thank God for small favors. We spent the morning in Pre-BAC and worked with our company the rest of the day. We were each assigned a number, my number was 302. From that time on, our number became our only identity to those cadre. We all became just a number. The guys who had flunked any part of the test had to go through Pre-BAC anyway and then be re-tested at the end of Pre-BAC. At noon of each day, our sergeant from the Three-two-five took over from Corporal Kirk and double-timed us back to our regimental area. No soldier ever forgets his drill sergeant’s name and no paratrooper ever forgets his jump school platoon cadre or his jump school number. They will remember those names and that number until the day they die. In my case, I'm not sure about my jump school platoon instructor's name, but I sure do remember my Pre-Bac instructors. God help you, if you quit Pre-BAC or jump school, because you couldn’t quit when you wanted to quit because there was another Catch-22. Quitters had to remain under the control of their BAC cadre until the end of that full day of training or be court-martialed. This was another interesting point that my recruiting sergeant had forgotten to cover. If you quit, you got special attention for the rest of that day and even after you returned to your unit. Then you were shipped out [Repple Depple] usually within twenty four hours. By "special attention," I mean you had your own individual Cadre for the rest of that day and you never received any additional training, only public harassment. They had several favorite ways of harassing a quitter. They would force the quitter to wear their helmet backwards while doing the "big-assed bird" act, which was running around in a big circle flopping your arms like wings while yelling, "I’m a big-assed bird" over and over. The quitter would have to do the "dying cockroach" for hours, which was lying flat on your back and waving your arms and legs back and forth while yelling, "I’m a dying cockroach" over and over. They would force the quitter to perform as many other humiliating acts as the cadre could invent, all in front of his fellow students. After we witnessed how the first quitter was treated, it amazed me that anyone else had the courage to quit, but they did. Not me: I wasn’t that brave. To me, it would have been easier to die than to quit. I sometimes wondered who really was the strongest. The ones that stuck it out or the ones that quit even though they knew the humiliation that they would have to endure. We lost about 20% of our class, but I believe that most of them were dropped for physical reasons. We soon learned another "Catch-22" that dealt with quitting parachute duty after you had completed jump school. If you are not scheduled for a parachute jump at the time you quit, you got shipped out within twenty four hours. If you were placed on a jump manifest and then you quit before you made that parachute jump, you were court-martialed. This was another small detail that the recruiters did not mention. I remember thinking that this damn Catch-22 stuff seems to be very popular in the army. The second day, we began a daily training routine that would last for the next three weeks. Training began at 0800 hours, but first we had to form up at 0700 hours so our sergeant from the Three-two-five could inspect us and then double-time us to the training area. Our first hour of class was always the "Army Daily Dozen" calisthenics. Each day, they increased the number of repetitions and by the last day of Pre-BAC we were up to 25 repetitions. The second hour, we always ran. The third and fourth hours were devoted to Hand-To-Hand Combat training. Naturally, if you did anything to displease a cadre, you went through the, "Drop and give me ten!” "Too slow, on your feet, drop for twenty!” "Too slow, on your feet, drop for thirty!” routine. Calisthenics consisted of twelve different exercises, two of which are pushups, the four-count and the eight-count pushup. The airborne was very partial to pushups and apparently they believed that a soldier could not do too many pushups. We never did anything right and we always had to do at least ten "corrective pushups" between each exercise. Of course, we also had to repeat each exercise because we never did any of them correctly the first time. We received a ten minute break every hour. We normally spent our ten minute breaks doing more pushups because we had performed so poorly we owed it to our cadre. Every day we double-timed non-stop for fifty minutes. During the run, if you dropped behind the formation, you got no credit for that run and you had to make it up on your own time with "special attention" from a cadre. Some guys literally ran until they dropped. If they dropped, they were left laying where they fell, unless they fell on the pavement. One cadre shoved a fallen student from the pavement with his boot into the nearby ditch, saying, "Don’t block traffic, Leg!” The poor kid was barfing his guts up. No one was allowed to help another student. It was an individual effort, if you helped another student, they made you pay dearly. During the run, you also would need "corrective pushups" because, "You sweat too much 302!," "You’re out of step 275.," "You’re too slow moving out on road guard duty 389," "You’re too slow returning to formation from road guard duty 301," "You’re not sounding off loud enough 300" or "You don’t swat flies or gnats 302, they’re airborne!” We were quickly informed that we, non-airborne trainees would never strike anything that was airborne, especially the gnat because the gnat was considered to be the North Carolina state bird. Newton fell behind on a couple of the runs. I dropped back with Newt and cajoled, begged and threatened that big ass East Tennessee boy to keep him running. Corporal Kirk ordered me to do hundreds of corrective pushups during those runs because I was helping that dumb ass hillbilly. Doing the pushups during the run isn’t the bad part, the bad part is catching back up to your platoon because they continued to run at the same pace. I didn’t care, that big SOB was not going to quit on me and leave me the only East Tennessee boy in Easy company. Hand-to-Hand Combat training was a real pain in the butt, literally. Come to think of it, it was also a pain in several other places. Trust me, you do not want to study self-defense under your jump school cadre. There is no need for corrective pushups because they used you as a training dummy. The cadre used our body to demonstrate the correct technique of destroying your enemy. They had absolutely no mercy and Hand-to-Hand Combat training got very physical. Remember, the jump school cadre’s primary duty is to test and eliminate - not to educate. If you wanted to learn how to use that damn parachute the "army way," that was entirely up to you. Hand-to-Hand-Combat is an excellent way to accomplish their primary goal. Maybe that’s why they no longer are allowed to teach Hand-To-Hand Combat. It really got rough out there. [There is a big difference between paratroops and parachutists. Parachuting is the main objective of a parachutist while parachuting for a paratrooper is just a means of transportation to get you to your main objective where your real job begins. A paratrooper’s job starts after they hit the ground and remove their parachute. The Basic Airborne Course (BAC) is not a "school" as you know the meaning of the term. BAC was not designed to simply "teach" parachuting, it was designed to "test" the student to determine, not if they can jump from an airplane or manipulate a parachute but, whether they will be a reliable soldier after they land behind enemy lines in total darkness and are all alone. The paratroops are the only troops who intentionally begin a battle surrounded, lost, scattered, disorganized, out-numbered, out-gunned and almost always at night. They are still expected to accomplish their mission. Other troops with no prior combat experience will almost always panic when they find themselves in that same situation. The difference is mental attitude. A poor attitude would get you dropped from jump school faster than anything. Every minute of Pre-BAC and jump school was a "test."] The cadre dropped us if we couldn’t perform physically or because we lacked the "proper attitude.” They are only required to call any student by his assigned number, regardless of that student’s rank. The student’s number must be neatly taped on the front and rear of his helmet and on his field pack, but if they had stripes or were officers, they still wore their rank and everyone wore their name tag. One day while we were in one massive formation at close interval in the sawdust pit just prior to doing calisthenics, Corporal Kirk determined that we all needed corrective pushups. Kirk ordered us to, "Drop!” Students were piled one atop the other in one big mess while trying to do pushups as ordered. A military sedan screeched to a stop near us and out jumped, a general [I discovered later that it was our Division Commander]. The general told Corporal Kirk, "Get these men on their feet, corporal and have them stand at ease!” The general then stood Corporal Kirk at attention and chewed him out for a good five minutes. The last thing that the general told Kirk was, "These men are not animals. They’re humans and you will treat them as such henceforth! Is that clear corporal?" "Clear Sir!” The general then hopped back into his staff car and was soon out of sight. As I watched the general depart, I thought, "Boy, oh boy, now we’ve got it made.” Corporal Kirk immediately yelled, "Drop!” and we were right back in the same cluster fuck where we were before the general arrived. Corporal Kirk then declared, "I’m in charge of this class, not the damn general," and we began doing pushups as best that we could. Of course we had to do extra pushups because the general had pissed Kirk off. God save me from the do-gooders, I thought. The last couple of days of Pre-BAC, we had "Bear Pit" training instead of regular hand-to-hand combat training. Bear Pit training is where one group of soldiers fights another group of soldiers. The last group to have a member remaining inside the pit is the winner. Eye-gouging and biting were not allowed. One hundred men fighting in a sawdust pit was a real rat race that the cadre thoroughly enjoyed. If you were ejected from the pit, you had to assume the pushup position until the fight was over, assuming you weren't too crippled that is. A serious injury meant that you could not finish jump training. If it was a minor injury, you could return to jump school and try again, but if it was a major injury, you would not be allowed to take jump training. My only goal was to complete jump training. Entertaining the cadre by hospitalizing a fellow student or by being hospitalized by a fellow student was not one of my priorities. To accomplish my goal, I put up just enough of a struggle to make it look good and I let the first guy that was brave enough to tackle me push me out of the pit. This was my first lesson on the "art of surviving behind my own lines." The BAC [jump school] was a snap compared to Pre-BAC. Jump school was much less physical, it only had one hour of physical training and that included both the calisthenics and the run and there was no hand-to-hand combat. The only negative difference was jump school lasted longer, it was eight hours a day and Pre-BAC had been only four hours. The harassment in jump school wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been in Pre-BAC either. To the best of my memory, I believe that my platoon cadre in jump school was a Sergeant Sharp. [Pre-BAC didn’t last long after I completed it because it did not exist when I returned to Fort Bragg in 1957.] After I had made four jumps and only had one qualifying jump remaining, I knew for sure that I was going to make it. I telephoned mom, "Hi Mom. Well, I make my qualifying jump tomorrow.” She responded, "Jump. What do you mean, jump. Jump from what?" I said, "From an airplane. I’ve made it all the way through jump school and tomorrow I make my final jump to get my wings.” There was a long silence, then she finally said, "I let your Uncle Cecil read one of your letters and when he saw your return address, he told me that you were in the paratroops, but I refused to believe it.” She was a tad upset with me. She sobbed a little. It took a while, but she got used to the idea. On my final qualifying jump Sergeant Sharp checked my chute after we were on the plane. Sergeant Sharp told me, "Three-oh-two, somebody has given you a laundry bag full of dirty skivvies instead of a parachute. You can’t jump that so you’ll have to start jump school and Pre-BAC all over again.” I yelled, "I don’t give a shit what’s on my back, I’m jumping it today," and I did. I probably would have jumped with nothing but a damn beach umbrella, if I thought that’s what it would have taken to graduate. That’s exactly the kind of guy that the airborne loves — a rock-head! The first jump is the easiest because you react strictly as you were trained — like a robot. Nobody could remember any details about their first jump because they were so scared. The second jump was when you begin to realize what you were doing and that’s when it really startied to get scary. After you make two or three dozen jumps, it finally becomes old stuff and you’re no longer afraid. You may be anxious, but you are not really afraid. After you become a jumpmaster, you are no longer even anxious, you’re too damn busy playing nursemaid to a planeload of eightballs. At this time, Eisenhower was president and he believed in starving the military. For one thing, Ole Ike wanted to go back to paying Buck Privates only $28 per month and for another, he wanted to cut the military funds down to almost nothing. He couldn’t get the pay dropped, but he sure cut our funds. As I recall, Easy Company never had vehicles for maneuvers, except they did get to use one vehicle to deliver supplies and every now and then a hot meal to their troops. The only hot meal that I recall being served seemed to be breakfast or supper and regardless of which meal it was, it was always served when it was pitch black. Many times, we went through the chow line when it was pouring rain and it was pitch black. The KP or cook who was serving food had to feel around until he found your mess kit. He held our mess kit with one hand while he slopped your chow into it with the other hand. Your mess kit was usually full of rain by the time you reached the end of the chow line. Your cold, soggy food was all mixed together in the rainwater. You couldn’t see what you were eating because it was so dark. That was probably a blessing in disguise. By the time you got to eat it, it had very little taste. You seldom knew what it was unless you had asked the invisible cook or KP what he had just slopped into your tray. Heated field rations were better than that. We always walked or ran everywhere we went. Everybody walked, including the officers. Not because our officers were so gung ho: they just didn’t have any gas for their vehicles. That’s when I learned the three basic rules of a good infantryman Eat whenever you have food; Never stand when you can sit; and Never stay awake if its okay to sleep. This was also when I first began to smoke cigarettes. During training maneuvers, we would be issued C-Rations. Each C-Ration meal contained a small packet of 4 or 5 cigarettes. I remember getting mostly Camels and Lucky’s. Lighting a C-Ration cigarette and blowing smoke around me seemed to be the only way to ward off the constant flock of North Carolina state birds — gnats. A lit cigarette is also handy for removing leaches and ticks. Each C-Ration meal also contained a small roll of toilet paper, a tiny tin of jam or jelly, a main entree, a packet of instant coffee or a cocoa bar, cream, sugar, salt, pepper and a small can of crackers. Some meals included a tiny pound cake or pecan nut-roll and others had a small tin of fruit cocktail. C-Rations offered several main entrees. As I remember, we had hamburger patty, sausage patty, ham and lima beans, spaghetti and meat sauce, tuna and noodles, and beans with pork. You could tell that the lowest bidder made the food. As I recall, the only entree that was edible without heating it was the pork and beans. The other meals were packed in so much grease, they were inedible in the winter unless you heated it. We were never allowed to have fires during tactical maneuvers regardless of the weather. We sometimes had fires when we were in the field on other occasions. We learned to save up the cocoa bar wrappers because they were lined with tin foil and we used them to cook the patties. That was the best way to cook those patties, just wrap it tight inside the cocoa bar packet and put it in the hot coals. It only took two or three minutes and the patties were actually good that way. Actually, when heated, the hamburger and sausage patties were the best entree in C-Rations. We only jumped from US Air Force C-119s. The Air Force called them "Flying Boxcars" because of their shape, I suppose. The jumpers had another name for them — "Flying Coffins.” Jumpers had named them that partly because of their shape and partly because they were just plain dangerous. The Flying Coffins were usually a very rough and noisy ride. The rumor was that the C-119 wasn’t supposed to fly because it had such small wings and such a large body. The rumor was partly right - it just barely flew. Most of us would rather jump from a One-nineteen than ride in it. The take-off in a One-nineteen was always an anxious moment. You never knew if it would get off the ground, sometimes they did and other times they didn’t. When the pilot revved up the engines prior to take off, the noise was deafening. That plane shook like it had a bad fever. The best thing about the One-nineteen was the design of the cargo/troop space and the jump doors. It was the first plane specifically designed for use by paratroopers and for aerial delivery. The jump doors were angled so it was very easy for us to exit the plane. In order to exit all other planes, you had to make a ninety-degree turn to get through the door. The One-nineteen could carry about 42 paratroops who sat half on one side of the plane and half on the other side. Both sides faced the middle of the plane. It could also carry several monorail bundles rigged with parachutes. The bundles were suspended from the monorail on the ceiling and the bundles were released at the forward end of the monorail and fell through a hole in the center of the floor. The monorail bundles continuously swung back and forth during the flight. You could not focus on those bundles. If you did, you would get air sick on a long flight. Some crew chiefs erected canvass shields around the bundles and their belly door. This helped prevent air sickness but it was really to prevent the jumpers from becoming entangled in the bundles or accidentally falling through the monorail door in the aircraft belly. During parachute operations, the pilot is referred to as the "Aircraft Commander.” Just before takeoff, the pilot always gives a safety briefing to the paratroops. One pilot gave us this briefing, "If we have an emergency while we are at a safe jump altitude, I will turn on the green light and ring the bell continuously. That is your signal to hookup and exit this plane as fast as possible. The Aircraft Commander shall be the last person to leave the plane. If you want to become the Aircraft Commander, just take your sweet time getting out of this damn thing." In jump school, you are taught to jump at one second intervals for safety reasons. That slight delay prevents jumpers from becoming entangled with the man who preceded him out the door. Your first jump with your assigned unit is called your "cherry" jump. Once you leave jump school, the One-second-between-jumpers Rule went out the window, especially when you were making a Hollywood Jump from a One-nineteen. The jumpers did not turn and face into the door and then jump from the plane as taught in jump school. They just ran non-stop right out the door. This is a big change from what the new jumpers were taught and the first time usually wreaked havoc on the rookie’s nervous system. The jumpers in front of a cherry jumper usually ran off and left him shuffling along towards the door. The line of troops in each door is called a "stick.” In a regular jump unit the last jumper in a stick is called the "stick pusher.” Actually that is a misnomer because almost everyone is pushing the guy in front of them. They’re trying to get the guys in front to hustle out of that plane as fast as possible. The closer you jump together, the closer you will land together on the ground. In combat, you do not want to be on the ground all by your lonesome. Also, the faster you empty the plane, the more likely you will land on the drop zone. Sometimes a few jumpers on the end of a slow stick will miss the drop zone and land in "hazardous terrain.” Hazardous terrain included obstacles such as high-tension power lines, utility poles, trees, rocks, highways, paved parking lots, roofs of buildings, lakes, creeks, oceans, etc, oh yes and if you are in combat, enemy positions . The fastest time I am aware of for emptying a One-nineteen of paratroops was "nine seconds.” One of the companys in the Three-two-five made that Hollywood jump. Mike Company comes to mind, but I don’t remember which company it was for sure. Anyway, they also set another record on that jump; 19 parachutes out of 42 malfunctioned. In the summer of 1955, my battalion went to Fort Meade to train the Rotsee [Reserve Officer Training Corps]. The very first thing that my platoon had to do was bleach the wooden floors in our old World War Two barracks until they were white. The Third Armored Cavalry had been there the year before and a unit from the Eleventh Airborne the year before that. We quickly discovered that the local civilians loved the Third and hated the Eleventh. It seemed that an Eleventh trooper had been killed in a local tavern and the next night that tavern had been burned to the ground and all inhabitants severely beaten about the head and shoulders by person or persons unknown. [Later, I learned that this was typical of the Eleventh.] While we were there, we spent some time in the boonies on training maneuvers at Camp AP Hill, Virginia with the Rotsee. We also made a demonstration jump for the Rotsee while we were there, but I can’t remember exactly where we jumped. It seems like it was somewhere in Maryland near the Virginia line. Because I hit the ground so hard on that jump, I injured my ankle. When I tried to stand, I discovered that I couldn’t put any weight on it. It was so sore, I decided to lay on the DZ where I landed and wait for the medics. The medics never came to check on me; nobody came to check on me. After the last troop transports passed over and all of the other jumpers had cleared the DZ, our fighter aircraft began to simulate strafing the DZ. They came close to the ground. Don’t ask me why our own planes were strafing our DZ, I just know they did. Finally the simulated strafing stopped and the planes all flew off. The Rotsees and VIPs all loaded up in trucks and left. The VIPs could see me lying out there, I know they could because I could see them. I was the only guy left on the DZ, still no medics came. I finally got angry. I got up and hobbled around gathering my chute and field gear. Using my BAR for a crutch, I slowly started hobbling towards my designated assembly area. All told, I guess I was carrying about a hundred pounds of gear. It was a load for a man with two good legs. When I finally hobbled into the assembly area, I discovered that all of the jumpers had already turned in their chutes and returned to camp. Nobody had even missed me. The only people who were still there were the parachute riggers who were collecting the chutes so they could re-pack them. And I suspect they were still there counting chutes all over again because there was still one missing - mine. Like I said earlier, that Three-two-five was a screwed up outfit - at least Easy Company sure was. The riggers gave me a ride back to camp on the trucks carrying the parachutes. They offered to take me directly to the hospital, but I still had my BAR and field gear with me and I wasn’t leaving it with anyone except somebody in my platoon. Instead of going to the dispensary, I reported in to my squad leader, Corporal "Frenchy" Blanchette. He and our platoon sergeant convinced me to let the medics take me to the AP Hill dispensary the next morning. Since only goof offs went on sick call and I did not want to be considered a goof off, I had refused to go on sick call. Injured soldiers were "sent" to the hospital. They hauled me to the hospital in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. A doctor took some x-rays that showed a piece of bone about the size of the first joint on my little finger had been chipped off of an ankle bone. Then the Doctor started jerking around on my foot and ankle. When I didn’t yell, he asked me, "Does it hurt?" and I told him, "Hell yes it hurts. Why do you think I'm in here?" He asked, "Well, if it hurt so much, why didn’t you yell when I twisted it?" "Why the hell didn’t you just ask. You can twist the damn thing off, I’m not yelling for you!” "Obviously, you don’t need a cast, you can stand the pain for the next few weeks without one.” So he just gave me a pair of wooden crutches and a "light duty" slip for the next six weeks. I may be a rock-head, but that asshole was a damn quack, if I ever saw one! When I finally arrived back at camp, I hobbled straight to the Orderly Room tent and there sat First Sergeant Hart. As I handed over the light duty slip, I told him what the doctor had said about my ankle. All the while, I was leaning on those stupid crutches. He said, "Report for KP duty every morning for the next six weeks.” My experience with KP duty in basic training had left me with a bad taste in my mouth for KP duty and cooks in general. I asked, "Can I see that slip of paper again First Sergeant?" He handed it to me and I tore it up, saying "I’ll be damned, if I’m spending six weeks on KP. One way or another, I’ll pull duty with my platoon.” I hobbled back to my squad tent and threw those damn crutches in the corner and left them there. The very next day, we had to demonstrate "Rifle Squad in the attack" using live ammunition for those dumb Rotsees. To me, it looked like a million miles from our starting point to the hill that we were to attack. Off I went hobbling along with my trusty twenty pound BAR and about nine full magazines of ammo plus my steel helmet and web gear. Somehow, I kept on line with the guys in my platoon, except when I was changing magazines, but I always caught back up each time before I commenced firing again. Damn, how I dearly loved to shoot that BAR. When we reached the top of the hill, we hit the ground and fired from the prone position. Then we were ordered to advance to the far side of the hill. Eager not to be left behind, I clambered up, but I was in such a hurry to keep up with my platoon, I made a mental boo-boo: I grabbed my BAR by its red-hot barrel and severely burned my left hand so bad it sizzled and smoked. Now I had two damn injuries to put up with. After the demonstration, I discovered that the underside of my fingers and my palm were blistered, but some axle grease from the motor pool helped soothe it somewhat. Going back to that hospital was a waste of time and I wasn’t going on sick call because Don Valentine was not a goof-off — a rock-headed dumb-ass yes, but a goof-off, no way. Until my left hand healed, I was one-handed and when firing from the hip, I cradled my BAR in the crook of my left elbow. I dearly loved firing my BAR. The BAR was heavy as hell, but it was also hard-hitting, very reliable, and very very accurate. We did Squad, Platoon, and Company-in-the-Attack demonstrations, all live fire, for several days and somehow this naive rock head hobbled through it all. It took a lot longer than six weeks for that ankle to stop hurting though. Our company lost one entire mortar squad on one of these live-fire demonstrations. They were dropping shells into the mortar tube so fast the loader dropped a shell into the tube before the previous shell had left the tube. The two shells just cleared the tube before one exploded. The explosion killed a couple of men and wounded several more. Other than First Sergeant Hart, I can only recall Cpl. Blanchette, Cpl. Hopper, and an enlisted man named Powell, I can't recall his rank, but I do recall running into him later in Germany. I lost contact with all these men.
Link to Photos of the Early Years
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