More laps followed, and then the legalized hazing called “water aerobics.” The class lined up along the pool’s edge while instructors commanded from the tower. On a whistle blast, we crossed the pool using whatever mutated stroke they ordered — underwater, no arms, wearing boots, carrying a barbell, wrists tied to ankles. When the last man clutched at the far wall, we recrossed the pool. Whistle. Swim. Whistle. Suffer. Whistle. Hyperventilate. Whistle. Black out. Water aerobics kept me awake at night. I didn’t want to fall asleep because I knew I’d wake up only a few hours from the next session.
Twenty Marines started the class; eleven graduated. In its own way, those two weeks were as transformational for me as OCS had been. I faced a fear and beat it. Grabbing my diploma, I was buoyant, ready to return to recon and meet my platoon. But the battalion had other plans. Despite Captain Whitmer’s assurance that First Recon wanted to avoid “high-speed, low-drag” training, I was handed an airline ticket and orders to Fort Benning, Georgia, where I would become a paratrooper.
Recon had done exactly three real-world parachute missions in its entire history, and none since Vietnam. My three weeks at the Army Airborne school was time I could have spent working with my new platoon. I was noticing a trend in my career: train to lead a rifle platoon, but get a weapons platoon; train to raid the coastline in rubber boats, but go to war in a landlocked country; train to jump into patrols via parachute, but use boots or Humvees in the real world. It could be maddening, but I chose to see it as a tribute to flexibility. “Improvise, adapt, and overcome” was a Marine Corps mantra for good reason.
Airborne reminded me of OCS. We left our rank at the door. Aspiring SEALs, Special Forces troopers, Army buck privates, ROTC cadets, and recon Marines stood in formation each morning, doing pushups and being berated by Army instructors in black hats. Their only name was “Sergeant Airborne.”
“Give me thirty pushups! Fifty from you jarheads!”
For two weeks, they drilled us in muscle memory. Jumping from wooden boxes into a sandpit. Jumping from something called the “swing landing trainer,” hanging five feet above the ground in a mock parachute harness before being dumped unceremoniously into a gravel pile. Jumping from a thirty-four-foot tower and sliding down a zip line to simulate the airplane’s slipstream. We were told that the height was carefully chosen for maximum psychological effect: any lower and the jumper thinks he can fall unhurt; any higher and the fall becomes abstract. My knees ached, and my hips were purple with bruises from all the practice landings. Evenings I spent making trips to the hotel ice machine and popping Motrin by the handful.
Skydiving was supposed to be fun. Another trend in my training had been taking a pleasant pastime and turning it into hardship. Hiking, swimming, boating, shooting — all were corruptible. The reason was that we had to perform these commonplace activities under uncommonplace conditions. Airborne’s hundreds of practice jumps prepared us to do just that — keep our heads, deploy the chute, and land safely at night, carrying a heavy load, from low altitude, at high speed. During the last week, we did it for real.
Beyond the tips of my boots, a neighborhood slid past twelve hundred feet below, complete with kids waving from backyard swimming pools. When the red light to my left turned green, I would step from the C-130’s door and make my first jump. We were “slick” — no packs — and starting in daylight. Behind me, standing in a line with one hand over their reserve chute handles and the other grasping their static lines, was my thirty-man stick. “Mine” because, as a first lieutenant, I was the senior guy in the group. The first one out the door. We couldn’t speak above the roar of the four engines, so we smiled reassuringly at one another and pretended to know what we were doing.
Sergeant Airborne stood by the door, ready to kick me in the back. He grinned and shouted, “Don’t worry, jarhead. I’ll push you, and gravity’ll do the rest.”
When the light turned green, I jumped. No way would he get the satisfaction of pushing me. A proper exit puts a jumper’s feet together, his body bent at the waist, and his hands and elbows tight to the reserve parachute on his stomach. I hit the slipstream with my feet apart and my arms flapping. Head over heels. Sky. Dirt. Sky. Dirt. The shock of the chute deploying stabilized me.
“One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand. Check canopy and gain canopy control.” It was a testament to our training that I remembered exactly what to do, counting aloud as I tumbled through the sky. I checked the risers to make sure they weren’t twisted and looked up to see that the chute was round, with no panels blown out. Around me, parachutes filled the sky. Some jumpers were in a hover, caught in thermal updrafts. Hundred-pound ROTC cadets drifted down like fall leaves. My route to the ground was more direct.
During every jump, there’s a definite transition point between flying and falling. I learned this as the pleasant floating sensation ebbed away and the ground rushed up. I checked the canopy again, expecting to see panels missing, but it looked unripped. Finally, I grabbed the risers and fixed my eyes on the horizon as I had been taught. Don’t anticipate the landing. Back straight. Knees slightly bent.
Impact knocked the air from my lungs. Instead of rolling gently to the side and dissipating the force along the long axis of my body, I went from my feet to the back of my head. There was a flash of blue and then blackness. My chute refused to collapse, and filled by a complicit wind, it dragged my stunned body across the rocky drop zone. I finally pulled the D rings to release it from my harness and lay on my back as the next wave of airplanes passed over, pouring jumpers into the sky. Sergeant Airborne stood above me.
“Four jumps to graduation, jarhead. Only three more landings. Chute don’t even have to open on that last one. We’ll send the wings to your mom.”
Four landings later, I stood at attention while Sergeant Airborne pounded silver jump wings above my left breast pocket, drawing blood. It was the only time I would wear them. Unlike the other services, which decorate their uniforms with badges and patches, Marines wear no special insignia. I flew back to California with a skill I wouldn’t use and wings I couldn’t wear. My only memento of Fort Benning was the pair of red dots on my chest where Sergeant Airborne had taken out his frustration on the United States Marine Corps.
A few weeks later, I froze in the darkness as a spotlight washed over me. My heartbeat sounded like a gong in my ears. Surely, it could be heard a hundred yards away. When the light moved on, I pressed my body deeper into the gravel of the dry riverbed, squirming to put another millimeter of earth between me and the light. With the light were dogs. With the dogs were armed men. Capture meant torture, maybe death. I had to escape from the light. Our C-17 crashed somewhere in the Balkans, dumping me and a dozen others into the cold woods. We had to travel by night and hide by day, trying to link up with underground collaborators who would spirit us to safety.
At least that was the story. In the riverbed that night, I almost believed it. The woods were actually near Warner Springs, California, in the high country east of San Diego. I was a student at the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school. SERE trains “high-risk personnel” — mainly pilots, SEALs, and recon Marines — to evade capture behind enemy lines and to resist torture if caught. The school’s motto is “Return with honor,” a summary of the lessons learned by American prisoners in North Vietnam, the Gulf War, and other conflicts.