Beaky's Blather

Parachuting it seemed was part of the deal in the bit of the RAF I wanted to join. 

‘In the Services…. explained the recruiting sergeant, in the warmth and safety of the recruiting office in Hanover Street in Edinburgh, 

‘Physical Education officers an’ PTIs teach parachutin’ to everyone in all Services, ….including special forces…. what ‘as need tew do it. Yew’ll ‘ave to teach it tew. Still want to join?’

Despite his accent, it seemed pretty clear and I didn’t think I’d mind. I affirmed and thought little more about it.

A year later, and now comfortably embedded and busy in my first posting at RAF West Drayton, I received the, by now almost unexpected, letter advising me to report to RAF Brize Norton in a few weeks time to begin my initial parachute training. 

By this stage in my early career, I had undergone various forms of initial training, by way of introduction to much that was novel and exciting. I’d learned to fire a machine gun, how to disarm and, if need be, incapacitate someone. I’d experienced and overcome challenging assault courses that could only be completed if a small squad combined well together. 

Initial parachute training, in week one involved a wearying amount of climbing onto and jumping, knees together, onto mats from boxes of increasing height. We eventually graduated to landing on a thick mat from twenty feet, buckling at the knees and rolling sideways until my hips hurt.  

Our instructor was a vastly experienced Parachutist of around fifty who had parachuted thousands of times all over the world, even on occasions whilst being shot at, as I recall he informed us – least we forget – approximately twenty times each day. He swore to the extent that we had to concentrate in order that we might identify the few useful words of instruction buried in some sentences, most of which informed us, in expletive-filled phrases, that most things were ‘fucking important’ and we would end up in ‘gob shite’ should we neglect to do them. I remember him even until today by no other name than, Flight Sergeant Gob Shite. 

Day seven was to be our first descent from an aircraft. In the morning we were to observe a stick of sixty-three Paras jump in a tight formation over Weston On the Green. I was eager to see this body of, what I knew to be elite fighting men, demonstrate what my fellow parachuting-novice officers and I would soon do. 

We arrived by coach from RAF Brize Norton and assembled on the grass strip near where we were to observe the sixty-three jumpers were to land in a close-packed, fight-ready-group – near enough to each other to be able to regroup quickly.  The Hercules aircraft dropped from the clouds in a precipitous spiral descent, as if over enemy territory, levelled out and trundled slowly over us. On cue men, tumbled from doors on either side of the plane like black bundles, one rapidly following another, the two strings of opening parachutes stitched a line behind the aircraft like a closing zipper. Someone in the middle of the string tumbled from the plane, like the others, and then continued to tumble. The parachute above him ‘candled’, in that it deployed but didn’t open. It streamed above him uselessly wrapped in its own cords. He plummeted and we could plainly see the tiny figure twisting and wind milling his legs in a desperate attempt to twirl and unwind the tangled parachute cords binding his deployed but useless parachute, restraining it from opening.

We watched… still…. as he gained speed, exponentially, passing all those who had jumped before him, he speared towards us. We could see his face and hear him yelling as he struggled.

‘Ees fucking ‘ad it,’ announced Gob Shite calmly, as we watched, mouths a gape.

Somewhere – around 150 feet, two or three seconds from death, I’m unsure at what height exactly – he managed to rotate sufficiently to unwind his candled chute and release it from the restraining cords. With an audible crack, it deployed violently, wrenching him almost to a stand still at about fifty feet above us before – under the excessive force of stopping someone travelling at three or four hundred miles an hour – the canopy promptly collapsed again, dropping the lucky soldier onto the ground in front of us, from a height of twelve feet. 

He landed, did a quite passable roll, as we’d been instructed, and got to his feet. He looked amazed. We looked amazed. It was fucking amazing…. and it happened right in front of us…. just an hour before we were scheduled to make our first jump with the next lift of sixty-three paras.

 A land rover raced up to where we stood, having walked the few yards towards the soldier who was gathering in his chute.  Ignoring us, the PTI Parachute instructors from on board the vehicle grabbed the man, bundled him into the rear of the land rover and drove off.

‘What’s going to happen to him?  Where are they taking him,’ someone asked Gob Shite.

‘He’ll be going up on the next fuckin’ aircraft we’ve got, so that he jumps again before it sinks in what a lucky fucking Gob Shite he fuckin’ well is,’ muttered Flight Sergeant Gob Shite. 

On the bus back to base, one of our small band, in a jocular tone that may have masked a sense of concern, enquired of Gob Shite,

‘What happens if that guy…. or one of us for that matter, were to pull back and decide at the last moment not to jump?’

Without looking round from his seat in the front of the vehicle, Gob Shite replied, 

‘He, or you’ll be in a fuckin’ line of paras drilled to exit fast out of alternate doors on either side of the plane’.

The despatchers on each door, he led us to understand, must maintain a precise exit interval so that between the dispatcher on either door, a parachutist leaves the aircraft every second. 

‘cos if you delay, you’ll exit at the same time as the guy going out the other fuckin’ door and you’ll collide in the air behind the fuckin’ aircraft…. like that poor fucker this morning; then you’ll be in the fuckin’ gob shite too’. 

‘So… he said, turning round to face us, you’ll be fuckin’ thrown out – if he suspects you might hesitate’. 

An hour and a half later, fully kitted, with my ‘chute’ packed on my back, I boarded a Hercules aircraft on the pan at RAF Brize Norton. We were about to depart on the short leg once more to Weston on the Green where my small group would exit the side doors – at one-second intervals – mixed in with the sixty-three paras seated around us. 

We took off and the plane climbed more steeply than had any civil aircraft in which I’d ever flown. I turned to the soldier jammed beside me; a Red Beret of the famous Paras; a Regiment I knew of by reputation as exceptionally tough, fighting men. Imagining him a seasoned veteran and…. just really to make conversation, I enquired,

‘How many jumps have you made already?”  He flicked a glance in my direction and, over the clamour in the plane’s cargo hold, with seventy men aboard, all clipped to a wire at shoulder height, preparing to leap out – I heard him say, in the broadest Scots accent,

‘Jumped, I’ve never fucking flown before’.