There’s an app for that
Pictured above is a young Fallschirmjäger who couldn’t find the drop zone during a recent joint military exercise near the town of Dueren in Germany. Subsequently, he had to be rescued by the local firefighters before he could finish his part of the exercise. Take it from one who has had his share of tree landings, we have a way of overcoming this obstacle – we merely deploy our reserve parachutes and climb down the outside (climbing down the inside of the reserve has it’s own shortfalls) of the parachute. The reserve provides a thirty-foot avenue of escape from your leafy prison. And usually much more preferred than ending up in the pages of the UK’s Daily Mail.
Thanks to COB6 for the link.
Category: Military issues
So no shit, there I was. Hanging upside down about 20ft off the ground in the trees. The DZ safety guys come thrashing through the woods and find me.
“You alright” yelled one.
“Yeah, nothing broke” I yell back.
The pair turn around and beat a retreat without helping me down and I had a few choice words for them as I deployed my reserve to shimmy to the ground.
We were taught not to aim for the trees. Almost did a water-PLF once though.
DaveO: so were we. But when the #3 guy in your stick goes out over the treeline marking the edge of the DZ, everyone after him exits over trees, and you’re near the end of the stick – missing the trees sometimes isn’t an option. (smile)
I don’t know which is worse.
1. Having to call a bunch of civilians to get you out of tree that you easily could have self-extracted from
or
2. Missing the damn dropzone in the first place. It’s broad daylight and no combat equipment or weapon!
The only time I landed in the trees, the branches held up just long enough for my main to collapse so I got to make about the last 15′ of my descent without a canopy. I guess when people say I fell out of an ugly tree and hit every branch on the way to the ground, it’s as much a statement of fact as an insult.
1 water landing (intentional)
1 canopy collision
many rough landings
no tree landings
no injuries.
blessed.
And so very glad I am Airborne.
Since I was leg infantry, isn’t there only supposed to be two things falling from the sky in the first place?
Why guys at the end of the stick are pushing like an NFL Guard. They don’t want to end up like this.
I ever landed n a tree large enough to suspend me in air… that said, I have landed going through plenty of trees, Landed on my ruck a couple times, smashed the hell out of myself enough to account for most of the 90% Disability rating…
Would do it all over again tomorrow.
Hit the trees once…and I was 1st out. I immediately ran to the DZ but came up short! Not fun.
What kind of sick masochists jump out of a perfectly good airplane, anyway?
@11 NH Sparky, only the most highly motivated, truly dedicated, rough, tough, lean and mean sick masochist…
Now about those tin cans under water….
Do they still issue clickers to jumpers so you can find each other in the dark or in trees?
#11, NHSparky; a masochist who is making $295/month and thinks an extra $55 tax free would buy a lot of beer (when a case of Miller Ponies was three bucks).
Ex-PH2 #13; nope we have NODs these days.
Oh, there’s just no romance left in it any more.
Yeah, I’m not quite that down on the pay pole (when I came in, E-3 pay was $695/mo) but being overseas was always nice when you could get smokes for $4 per carton or Bud for $5 a case, if you didn’t mind the fact it had sat on a pallet in the Guam sun for about a month.
$55 a month, tho? To quote Spicoli, “Righteous bucks…” I’ll have to find my LES to find out how much Sea/Sub/Pro Pays were when I hit my first boat. IIRC by the time I left my last one the three added up to about $800-850/mo. And all you had to worry about was electrocution, radiation, steam, and that 800 feet or so of water over your head.
14 & 16: you guys are young whipper snappers. In 1963 as an O1 I made monthly: $222.30 base pay; $47.88 Subsistence; $110 housing….and $110 jump pay (I have no idea why officers have forever made twice what Enlisted do for jump pay).
When I PCS’d out of the 82nd as an O2, I took a big pay cut for losing jump pay (plus no longer being the best Div ever until I joined them again in VN (where we got jump pay but never saw a parachute)).
@ #11 and #12: There are those among us who question the sanity of both those who jump out of perfectly good airplanes AND those who live in tin cans under water! 😉
No shit there I was. Bunker DZ, jumping into a 72 hour suckfest at points distributed across Grafenwoehr Training Area. Bunker DZ is a tree farm surrounded by rifle ranges. So, it’s a natural place for paratroopers to start the “war.” My job as Company Fire Support Officer was to quickly find my commander (he jumped just ahead of me) and get comms on Battalion Command and Fire Support nets so we could move the company into Battle Positions, pull security until we met “min force” to move to our objective. I took pride in beating the CO’s RTOs to the assembly point every time, and I was thinking through how I was going to get there (and how much shit I would talk) when I noticed myself drifting into a patch of trees right in the middle of the DZ. I pulled a one riser slip, locked my fingers in the anti-inversion net and prayed, but to no avail. I prepared for my tree landing just as I was taught. Crashed into the trees and went right through. Into a pile of thornbushes. My ruck, which was to be my home for the next few days and in which all my worldly possessions of any note were placed (namely, radios, batteries, woobie, water, and chow), landed squarely in a water-filled ditch alongside the road near my thorny landing area. My chute snared itself in the branches that failed to hold me. I rolled my way out of the thorn bushes while speaking in tongues and securing my weapon so I could drag my water-logged ruck and establish comms. As I rolled, I activated the pull-strings on my BA-7 life preservers (required because the prick who surveyed the DZ reported a “body of water” 950 meters from the trail edge – 50 meters short of not being a problem). The life preservers functioned beautifully, surrounding me in the loving embrace of two massive orange cheeto-shaped devices. Now my wallowing, shit sucking self got pissed. When you activate your BA-7s, you have to report it to the DZSO and give a… Read more »
Stew: a civilian reading that would never understand…and I do not mean the terminology. I mean the spirit and attitude you described. Great story.
2nd worst landing?
Yup. 2nd worst. The worst came a few months later, also on Bunker DZ. That one didn’t involve trees.
I have no memory of that landing, but one of my Section Chiefs told me he found me crawling in circles around my ruck sack, so he took my aiming circle (I was a Battery XO then) and called a medic over to police me up.
When I came to, I was at the aid station with my brand new BDU pants cut from ankle to crotch. I had blown the MCL in my right knee and had a slight concussion. There were about 20 other people at the aid station with similar injuries, all from the same pass.
The theory was that the wind shifted at exactly the wrong moment, as we were about to hit the ground. So, I must’ve been ready to land on my left side when a gust of wind made me land on my right side instead, feet then head. Definitely rung my bell and I learned never to wear good BDUs on a jump.
Our Brigade Commander broke his leg on that same jump, I think. He landed on the hood of one of my HMMWVs. He made a point after that to come by and piss on my truck from time to time. I’d have probably done the same.
This makes me glad that I never learned how to fall out of an airplane.