A Fighting Spirit. Paul Burns
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the complex where we were billeted were pretty basic, I was excited to be there after the long months of Recruit Company.
Our basic training was centred on an area of Brize Norton called No. 1 Parachute Training School. This was just a tiny part of an airfield, consisting of an aircraft hangar for ground-school training, and an administrative office block. On a separate part of the airfield was an area set aside for the outdoor training equipment. The two components of this were the Tower, which resembled an enormous column of scaffolding with a crane arm on the top, from which we could get used to falling through the air, and the Exit Trainer—or ‘knacker-cracker’ as it was affectionately known—from which we could practise the crucial moment when you exit the aircraft.
Parachute training is run by the RAF, which meant we were suddenly in an entirely different environment. In the Army you find yourself doubling up—or running—everywhere. At Brize Norton I was astonished to find coaches laid on to take us to the hangars. I remember turning to Woody and saying, ‘It’s a trick. They’re going to drive us ten miles out into the countryside and make us run back.’
Woody nodded ruefully. He was wise to the Army’s ways as well.
But it wasn’t a trick. No. 1 Parachute Training School isn’t like the Army. Its motto is ‘Knowledge Dispels Fear’. We weren’t here to be beasted, we were here to learn the basics of parachuting. I didn’t know at the time how much this would change my life.
To start with, we found ourselves in the large aircraft hangar where we were to undergo ground-school training. The goal is to learn how to put your parachute on, then how to land properly—with your feet and knees together and your elbows in so that you can perform a special parachute roll when you hit the ground. We practised in that hangar ad nauseam, learning the movements required for exit, flight and landing, repeating them over and over so that they became second nature. They had to be, because when it comes to a real parachute jump, you’re on your own. The time to make mistakes is in the hangar, not in the air. As time passed we progressed from a fake Hercules fuselage suspended a couple of feet above the crash mats to a piece of apparatus called the Fan. This was much like the machine I had jumped from back in Nottingham, but that seemed a long time ago now. The Fan, or a version of it, had originally been an attraction at a French funfair. When an English parachutist saw it, he brought the idea back to No. 1 Parachute Training School. It certainly gives you a taste of what it’s like to fall through the air.
We were taught how to check our parachute for problems, and what to do if it had failed to balloon properly. Before my day nobody bothered to teach you what to do if your parachute failed, because there was nothing you could do about it anyway. But in 1955 the reserve chute arrived and if things went pear-shaped, you had options. We listened especially carefully to that part of our lessons.
For the second week of our training we moved out of our hangar and over to the Tower, that huge, steel-framed apparatus on the edge of the airfield. Here we practised leaping into nothingness while attached to a harness and wire; the instructors suspended us in mid-air so that we could perform our flight drills, before lowering us to the ground to perfect our landings. And then it was the ‘knacker-cracker’, which was supposed to simulate the moment of exiting the aircraft but didn’t really come close.
Once we’d mastered the basics, the next stage was to perform some practice jumps, not out of an airplane, but from an enormous gas-filled balloon—an elderly thing that looked like the little brother of the Hindenburg. Operated by means of a winch, it had a little basket underneath, large enough for four of us plus the jump instructor. It slowly creaked up to a height of 800 feet, and once you’re up there, the only way is down. It took some courage to step out of that basket for the first time, even though for those early jumps we were using static-line parachutes. These are chutes which are attached to the aircraft—or in this case the balloon—by a webbing line. As you fall away, the line automatically opens the parachute, so you don’t have to do it yourself.
That first jump is vivid in my mind, even now. The eerie silence all around as I waited for the moment to arrive. No engine noise up here, no rush of wind. Just stillness, so high above the earth, and dry fear as the balloon, which has been rising steadily from the safety of the earth, comes to a halt. I looked down from the basket, knowing there was only one way I could get back down.
Suddenly I felt rather as if I was back on the trainasium again, waiting for the instruction to jump and knowing that, when it came, I would have no option but to follow the order.
I stood in the door, my arms across the reserve parachute on my chest, and on the command ‘Go!’ stepped from the cage. There was a churning sensation as I fell into empty space, leaving my stomach far behind. And in the split second before my parachute automatically engaged, questions started echoing through my mind. Is my chute going to open? Has it been packed properly? Do I trust the person who rigged it? Do I trust that I’m going to come out of this alive? Every parachutist puts his faith in the skill of the person who rigged his gear, because every parachutist puts his life in their hands.
You drop like a stone from the balloon. In many ways it is scarier than jumping from an aircraft because there’s no slipstream to hold you up. It’s impossible not to be scared when you do your first jump, but it’s exhilarating too. A moment that stays with you.
And then it’s time for your first aircraft jump—a ‘clean fatigue’ jump, which means that it is performed without any extra equipment such as your Bergen or your rifle. I’ll never forget the first time I shuffled into a crowded Hercules, one of about fifty parachutists being herded like sheep into a particularly unpleasant sheep pen. The Hercules is a transport aircraft, so it’s entirely free of creature comforts—a bit like being ferried around in a freight train. The seats, such as they are, are little more than webbing straps attached to a metal frame, so that the interior weighs as little as possible. The aircraft’s cavernous belly reeks of fuel. And as the plane makes its ascent, the constant, noisy drone seems to fill your head. It’s almost impossible to speak over the sound of the engines, and on that first jump no one feels very talkative anyway. We were packed in like nervous sardines, one line of men facing another and squeezed so tightly that our knees were touching. I remember anxiously watching up ahead the red light that would turn to green when the time came to hurl ourselves into the air. Half of me couldn’t wait for that moment to come; half of me wished it never would.
When fifty people jump out of an airplane in an exercise like this, the idea is to get them all landing as close to each other as possible, rather than scattered around the countryside. To achieve this, the aircraft needs to be as low as possible above the drop zone—the higher it is, the more scope there is for the parachutists to drift—and the guys need to jump out as quickly as possible. As the noisy, fumy Hercules climbed to 1,000 feet—low enough for a quick landing, but high enough to give the trainees time to sort out any problems on the way down—we all made sure that our static lines were attached to the cable above us. And when the RAF jumpmasters gave the word, we started to approach the exits on both sides of the Hercules.
When lots of people jump, it’s important that they are staggered, otherwise they can collide in mid-air and get knocked unconscious or swing through each other’s lines. Worst of all is an ‘air steal’. This happens when one parachutist drifts immediately over another and the lower parachute ‘steals’ the air that would ordinarily be filling the upper one, causing it to collapse. If this happens, the top parachutist will go into freefall until he as at the bottom, at which point his canopy inflates and steals the air of the second parachutist. Clearly if this happens too close to the ground, it can be extremely dangerous. So the jumpmasters do what they can to ensure that the parachutists exit in a staggered, orderly fashion. Not easy when you’re all crushed up together, nervously waiting to hurl yourselves out.
I can still remember the side doors of the Hercules opening.
The noise grew even louder, a screaming, roaring rush in our ears.
Suddenly the red light turned to green.
And then the jumpmasters shouted, ‘Go! Go! Go!’
Ahead of me I saw figures simply disappearing into the air, and the line moved up