Jumping out of Perfectly Safe Planes

Fort Bragg Fort Victory and Jumping out of Perfectly Safe Airplanes

Your branch and post are dependent on your performance at West Point. I was fortunate enough to be high enough in the class to select Signal Corps as my branch and the 82nd Airborne Division as my first post. It was time to jump out of perfectly safe airplanes.

If you are unfamiliar with jumping out of a perfectly safe airplane, click the link for a short one minute video. The person who yells “Go!” is the jumpmaster and he will be the last jumper. The person handling the static lines (yellow cord) on the plane is the air force loadmaster. The cord the sergeant first class pulls as he was approaching the ground lowers his backpack away from his body. There are some differences in how we jumped. Normally we jumped at night and had not slept in 24-48 hours. As a result, most parachutists learn to immediately fall asleep when getting on a plane. Normally there were 64 jumpers instead of 12 so much more crowded. Most folks had a M-16 rifle when they jumped. Otherwise, the peace and serenity of a parachute jump are the same up until the final impact with the ground.

Platoon Leader
My first assignment was as platoon leader of the 1st command operations platoon, A Company, 82nd Airborne Division. Sergeant First Class Sawa and Staff Sergeant Greene trained me well. My fellow platoon leaders were David Griffin and Randy Ponder. My platoon provided communications support for the commanding general and his staff out of the division main. The platoon was a high performing unit responsible for installing patch panels, switchboards, running miles of wire and installing telephones all connected with multichannel very high frequency radios. We were well trained and could do it very quickly with the majority of devices operational in the first few hours. We would then spend the next three days without sleep engineering the problematic and complex circuits where something was not working the way it was supposed to in the middle of no where. With everything working, we recovered from our sleep deprivation and the field was pretty straightforward for the next 30 days.

About once a month, the officers would get together for a Telephone Club meeting, normally at a strip club or establishment of similar low repute and we would socialize. During these meetings, every officer in the signal battalion had a name associated with something he screwed up badly and we could only refer to each other by that name – there were no sirs or rank at all. The XO was known as lights out because when he arrived at the unit and did not know better, we gave him a ton of useless gear for him to jump into Honduras. Being a major, he was smart enough to dump half of it but he was still vastly overburdened for the jump. He made a weak exit from the airplane traveling at 130 miles a hour and his head, thankfully in a helmet, made contact with the side of the plane several times. He has no memory of the next three days and thus he is.. lights out. One of the LTs who later became a general was known as Jeep Master. His jeep, while in the emergency response section of the motor pool (the EDRE section) caught fire. Hard to live that down but he was not done with jeep mastery. We would jump into Sicily drop zone about every month around 2AM, assemble on the ground into fighting positions, and then march 8 miles back to the barracks, clean weapons, and then get some sleep. Jeep Master even as a LT had some arrogance and on one of the jumps, he had rushed to his jeep to drive back in with his deployed parachute and 18′ strap for his backpack attached. I suspect he fell asleep while his driver was driving the jeep and that 18′ strap fell out of his hand and found its way to the rear axle of that jeep moving at about 30 miles an hour. This caused the jeep to suddenly stop as his rucksacks and that cord wrapped around the rear axle. Jeep master had the rare privilege of being passed by about 500 of his fellow soldiers as we marched by the broken down jeep.

I was known as Yobo. In Korean, this is a term of endearment that couples use to express affection for each other, similar to “honey” or “darling” in English. I was given this name because the Army lost all of Eileen and my furniture for four months somehow between Fort Gordon, GA and Fort Bragg, NC. We were newly weds, sleeping on the floor on an air mattress and as happy as we could be. Thus, I was Yobo.

Prop blast is a traditional rite of passage for officers assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division since the 1940s. I went through prop blast in 1984 and the final act of initiation was for me to sing “We’re All American” while my company commander brake danced to my singing. I cannot sing. He could not brake dance. We improvised. It is also the only time in our marriage where Eileen told me I was not allowed in the house until I took off all of my clothes and hosed off outside. I complied and immediately went to bed.

I also went to jumpmaster school during this time. It was stressful in that the three week course has less than a 30% graduation rate for first time attendees. In our class of 40, there were five first attendance graduates. I was one of the five. My wife had to endure me practicing actions in the aircraft at our house using the bathroom door for an entire weekend. In retrospect, it was so out of context as to be hilarious but it worked.

A couple of interesting vignettes from this first assignment in addition to the stories above:

• When I first arrived in the airborne signal company, we were set to deploy to Fort Gordon Eisenhower. This was about nine months after the Grenada invasion which meant every officer’s wife in the company was pregnant and about to deliver. This happens all over the Army. I would be the acting company commander as a brand new 2LT. Three stories from this deployment:
• (1) Signal units have wire teams that climb trees/poles to suspend wire lines. All of us could perform this task. Occasionally, a climber would spike another climber. The injured climber would look at the ground crew through the hole in his hand;
• (2) several troops went out drinking and decided to stiff the taxi driver for a $18 fare and hide in the bushes. The taxi driver drove over one of my soldiers. I met him in the hospital with tire tracks over his chest. I asked him if it was worth the $18. He teared up and said no;
• (3) the return flight home was nap of the earth in August. The passenger cabin with 64 soldier got extremely hot. I was the airborne commander and forced the loadmaster to open the side doors 30 minutes early as we had troops throwing up in a very confined space. I did not throw up but had the worst motion sickness of my life.

Senior Signal Officer

Let’s Go

Motto of the 3/325 Infantry Combat Team (Airborne)

After being with A Company, 82nd Signal Battalion for 18 months, I was selected to be the Senior Signal Officer assigned to the 3/325 Infantry Regiment which was about to rotate to Vicenza, Italy where I would continue to jump out of perfectly safe airplanes. I joined some of my West Point classmates (Bill Bennett, Mike Longo, and Scotty Miller) and we had a series of adventures before the deployment. Sergeant First Class Edmond was my top NCO and mentor.

My boss was Captain(P) Frank Helmick who went on to become Lieutenant General Helmick and commander of 18th Airborne Corps. I last saw LTG Helmick in 2008 when we were both in Iraq. The executive officer was Major John Abizaid who went on to become General Abizaid or Ambassador Abizaid. I last saw General Abizaid in 2010 while I was serving as a Vice Dean at West Point. Like many reunions, the years in-between did not matter as military comrades were reunited. They both excitedly ask about my wife and remembered her name. I asked about their spouses and families and there is a certain warmth of interaction when comrades are reunited.

We deployed to Panama and attended Jungle Expert Training as a unit. We learned about navigating the jungle and the challenges of black palm, vampire bats, bushmaster snakes, frogs who can kill 10-20 humans, howler monkeys, and glowing orange swamps. You are wet all the time as you pass highways of ants working mightily to deforest the jungle and failing. Two vignettes:

• Most popular guy in the combat team: Yes, I was the most popular guy in the combat team while in Panama and that was because of my equipment. We had jeep-mounted 1,500 watt AM radios which we used to reach Fort Bragg by bounding the signal off the Atlantic ocean to cover the 1,500 mile distance. To cover such a distance, we had to build large directional antennas. At Fort Bragg, the receiving radio was connected to the telephone system which allowed the troops to call home for free and talk with their families. The circuit was simplex which meant only one person could talk at a time and you heard conversations like, “I love you dear, over” with a response of “I love you too, over”.
• While we were in the jungle most of the time, we did have a chance to go to Panama City one weekend. US forces were very unpopular with the Panamanian police and military due to the tensions between the two nations at the time. Lobster dinners were $7, the prostitutes were inexpensive and aggressive, and K street was hopping. I enjoyed the lobster dinner and energy of K street but skipped the prostitutes. Unfortunately, some of my married colleagues did not which lead to some difficult conversations about a month later.

We also deployed to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin in late January 1986 to conduct cold weather training. While we had all the right gear, it is problematic to operate in -40 degree weather. Electronics become brittle, power supplies struggle, and wire does not like to bend. You will get trench foot if you wear your cold weather boots inside. Like Panama, we learned a lot about operations in challenging environments. We learned of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion while we were in the field.

Italy and Jumping out of more Perfectly Safe Airplanes

Eileen and I rotated to Italy in 1986 and we would spend most of the next five year there. We flew with the unit on a charter plane into Padua, Italy where the Army hosted us at a “resort hotel”. It was a mud bath facility. In the summer. It attracted a plaque of mosquitos so the infantry were right at home. Within 18 hours of landing, our sponsor (2LT John Marriott) had picked us up, we had grabbed a train and we were in Venice. For the first in my life, I encountered a tangible object that was priceless. In my case, it was the altar in Saint Mark’s Basilica. I paused to consider its beauty trying to balance the cost against the utter poverty of many that altar induced. I reached no conclusion. We would return to Venice 15-20 times over our tour and we always enjoyed our time in Venice.

Our unit was a fully contained combat team of about 1,100 men. We were the US continent to NATO’s rapid reaction force which meant we were deployed about 10 months of the year throughout Europe jumping out of perfectly safe airplanes with airborne units from 11 other NATO nations. While some families lived on the economy, most lived in a small American housing area very close to the base. There were a couple of implications of this assignment:

• Given that we were deployed about ten months of the year, all of the babies were conceived in a very small window with most babies conceived the same week. When a baby was conceived outside that two month window while the husband was deployed, the adulty was very apparent to everyone. These led to a lot of bonding between the wives. One of those wives took pictures at Eileen’s baby shower and had a baby at the same time. That would be Jennifer Reali, the fatal attraction killer.
• With all the airborne units together, it was possible to get foreign jump wings. The most desired were the Spanish jump wings as they looked awesome. Really – search on spanish jump wings – they look regal. The most common were German wings which are the wings I earned. Much more spartan. I earned German jump wings in Turkey in 30+ knot winds jumping into the most dangerous jump zone of my career (three sides of the drop zone were active roads and the front leading edge was a river.
• With twelve nations represented in NATO’s rapid reaction force, we exchanged food rations and there was a hierarchy between the rations. The worst were the British and the best were the Italian as they came with wine and grappa. American rations were safely in the middle with the rations of several other nations.
• Because the unit was a cohort unit and we were going to be together for three years, unit leadership was ruthless about leader competence. They would rather have a vacancy than a leader who was not performing. You developed a sense of when someone was really in trouble because it happened so often. The metaphor was a black Chinook was hovering and the headless loadmaster was scanning the leaders for who would be next.
• Because we were deployed all the time, we got very, very good at our jobs and we moved at the speed of trust. It was one of the highest performing and accountable organizations I ever served in.

There were a couple of interesting vignettes from this assignment as well:

• My company commander was Scott Mcquaig. He, his lovely wife Kathy, and their two kids lived in the same cul de sac as Eileen and I. Scott and Kathy are our oldest son Curtis’ godparents. We would babysit the kids and spend some wonderful days at Sirmione/Lake Garda together just enjoying each other’s company. Our families were close enough that their daughter Megan was quite comfortable at stealing food from my plate. Fast forward fifteen years, and their daughter Megan is a cadet at West Point. Eileen and I are her sponsors (think home away from home) and we had the privilege of watching her meet and fall in love with Peter. They staged their wedding from our house. Fast forward fifteen more years, Megan is Lt Colonel and she and Peter have three lovely children.
• On one of our deployments to Germany during the winter, the troops were smirching all day long at the officers. When the mail was delivered later that day, we learned why. Our wives got together, went to isle of Capri, bought topless postcards, and mailed them to their husbands on the same day with the same message on every card – “wishing you were here”.
• How the Infantry solve problems. We were on a month-long deployment to Triste, Italy on the then Yugoslavian border. We had been deployed about three weeks when my boss surprised me. He told me to go home early and enjoy the human chess game in Marostica, Italy. It only occurs every two years and this was the last night. Communications had been fantastic and everything was stable. My driver and I made the three hour drive back to base, I showered, changed into civilian clothes, and Eileen and I drove to Marostica for dinner and the human chess game. It was lovely. At about 3AM, there was a pounding at the door and they needed me back in the field. All the comms were down. We drove the three hours back to find my very frustrated deputy (LT Marriott). Nothing was working. It took me about 30 minutes to figure out that we were being jammed and to triangulate the location of the jammers. They were about a mile away and inside our friendly lines for the exercise. Whoever was jamming us was cheating. I went to my boss and asked for an infantry platoon. We showed up at the site and met with the national guard unit jamming us. I offered to have the infantry platoon turn off the jammers permanently or the national guard unit could turn them off for the remainder of the operation. The national guard unit turned everything off, communications immediately came up, and I spent the remainder of the week in the field. To this day, I am appreciative of the ability to see the human chess game.
• The term “airborne!” was an appropriate response to pretty much everything. Depending on context, it could mean everything from I would take a bullet for you to please go have sex with a goat. On one of my last jumps, the Air Force screwed up the stick order and subsequent jumpers were dropped all over the drop zone. I was in the second stick and carrying the comms package for the assault tactical operations center (TOC). When I hit the ground, I was in a dead sprint to try to get to the assault TOC before it moved. I was too late. I then sprinted to the next location and the combat team commander (my boss’s boss) met me and chewed me out. He knew what happened. I responded with the go have sex with a goat version of “airborne!”. His face got red and after a pregnant pause, he laughed and walked away. Luckily we had been working together for several years at that point and there was a deep emotional reserve between us.
• Officers are captains for eight years. This leads to officers at the same rank with vastly different experiences. There was a brief window of a month or two when my boss, CPT(P) Helmick and I were the same rank at opposite ends of Captain experience. To paint the picture, we are in Turkey near the border with Syria and Iraq. The only sign of technology is the sheep have numbers spray-painted on their butts. A command briefing is taking place and Frank is trying (and failing) to transfer the brief to me due to the recent rank change. As I walk up, I comment, “Frank, you can just call me Curt.” The absurdity of that statement was not lost on the command group.
• One leadership lesson I learned is that certain competences are rare and if you are really good in a rare competence, you have endless political capital. This gets me into trouble from time to time but it remains true. Everyone is replaceable but some have a higher bar.

The next chapter in my military journey was Really Top Secret Data Centers.