Airborne (1997) (13 page)

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Authors: Tom Clancy

BOOK: Airborne (1997)
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W
hat kind of person jumps out of a perfectly functional aircraft loaded with over 150 lb/68 kg of weapons, explosives, and other assorted supplies and equipment strapped to their body? This is the basic question that most folks ask when they first consider the idea of being a paratrooper. Personally, I only know that my personal answer is, “Not me!” For other people, though, they find the concept of jumping into a war zone intriguing enough to ask some other questions. Sometimes, the answers are so fascinating they can send an inquisitor off on a quest which will ultimately lead down a road in Georgia to a place which will change him into a special breed of American warrior: a paratrooper.
When a soldier signs up to go into airborne training, he or she is telling the world and their fellow soldiers that they are cut from a different cloth, and are taking a different path in life. One that will mark them as part of a small and elite group, which does something difficult and dangerous, just to go to work! The paratroopers are clearly a breed apart from their Army brethren, and I hope to be able to show you why.
Most special forces claim a unique ethos.
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Many other branches of military service have tried to claim their own code: one that is special to them. Trust me: In most cases, the people doing the claiming are full of crap. In the whole of the American military, only a handful of groups are truly worthy of such a distinction—the Marine Corps, certain special forces units, and of course, the airborne.
The airborne ethos is at the very core of each paratrooper’s being. The undeniable heart of the airborne philosophy is toughness. It’s essential that each member of the airborne must be both physically and mentally tough. If you try to make an animal such as a dog or horse jump into water or over a wide ditch, they balk. The natural instinct of any animal, including humans, is to avoid danger. The human animal is different, however. Only we can rationalize and assess risk. In short, we have the mental capacity to overcome instinct, and do things common sense tells us not to. Things like jumping out of airplanes, and going to war. The type of person who can rationalize such ideas has to be more than just physically qualified. They must also have a mental ability to set aside the danger, and see the rewards of parachuting behind enemy lines into a combat zone. Some might call it cavalier, or reckless. I think it’s just plain tough.
Now, it may be that I am oversimplifying the mentality of paratroops just a bit, but the central theme of almost every part of their lifestyle is toughness. From their early training to how they actually deploy and fight, they do so with a mental and physical edge that is frankly astounding.
It also can be a little frightening. You notice their collective will when you talk to people like General Keane. A lieutenant general (three stars) and in his fifties, he still jumps in the first position from the lead aircraft whenever he can. He is hardly unusual, though. There is a popular notion in the American military that paratroopers are short little guys with bad attitudes. Actually, they come in all shapes and sizes, and in both sexes.
In the 82nd Airborne Division, every person assigned must be airborne qualified at all times. This means that everyone in the division, from the commanding general to the nurses in the field hospitals, must have a current jump qualification, no matter what their job is. In a worst-case scenario, every person assigned to the 82nd, as well as every piece of their equipment and all supplies, might have to be parachuted into a hot drop zone (DZ), since air-landing units would be difficult or impossible. Let me assure you, everyone with a jump qualification in the U.S. Army is tough, because just getting through airborne school requires it.
There is one other basic characteristic you notice about paratroops as a group: They are in incredible physical condition. Being in shape is an obsession with the paratroopers. Not just hard like the Marines, but a kind of lean and solid look that you expect in a marathon runner. In addition, there is a dash of raw power to a trooper’s body, mostly in the upper body and legs, where paratroopers need it.
Physical strength comes in handy, especially during drop operations. An average 180-1b/81.6-kg trooper getting ready to jump from an aircraft will likely be saddled down with a load equal to or exceeding their own body weight. Consider the following average loadout for a combat jump. The trooper’s T-10 main/reserve parachute/harness assembly will weigh about 50 lb/22.7 kg. American paratroopers then add a rucksack (backpack) loaded with food and water (for three days in the field), clothing and bedding, personal gear, ammunition (including two or three mortar rounds and possibly a claymore mine or two), and a personal weapon (such as an M16A2 combat rifle or M249 squad automatic weapon [SAW]), with a weight of up to 130 lb/60 kg! They must walk (more of a waddle, actually) with this incredible burden up the ramp of a transport aircraft, if they are to even begin an airborne drop mission. Later, they have to stand up, and jump out of that same airplane flying at 130 kn, and land with much of that load still attached. Once on the ground, they drop off their load of heavy munitions (mortar rounds and mines) at an assembly point. Finally, they must heft what remains in their rucksack (probably loaded with more than 100 lb/45.4 kg of supplies, equipment, and ammunition) around a battlefield. All the while fighting their way to their objectives, whatever the opposition. If that is not tough, I don’t know what is!
The number of people who have both the physical strength and endurance for such exertions is small, and the mental toughness needed to go with it is rare. That’s why there are so few folks who wear the airborne badge in an army of almost 500,000 soldiers. So why go to all the trouble and risk to select and train a group of people like the paratroops? The top airborne leaders like General Keane would tell you that we need paratroops to establish American presence, and to win the first battles of our conflicts.
The basic objectives of airborne training are defined by these goals: to successfully parachute into enemy territory, and to fight to the objectives. The first challenge, to teach people to throw themselves out of an aircraft, into a dark and empty night sky, to enter a battlefield hanging from a fabric canopy, is the easy one. The second challenge is to teach the troopers to fight until their objectives are taken no matter what the odds. This is perhaps the most difficult set of training tasks that any school in the U.S. military has to teach. Lessons like this require a special school with the best teachers available. In the airborne, it is called Jump School, and is located at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Fort Benning: The Cradle of the Airborne
Fort Benning is located in the southwest corner of Georgia—an area nobody just passes through. You have to really want to get there. You start by flying to Atlanta’s miserable Hartsfield Airport, though I highly recommend that you not do it on the last night of the 1996 Summer Olympiad as I did! Then, after renting a car, you head down Interstate 85 toward Montgomery, Alabama, and the heart of the old Confederacy. At La Grange, you take a hard turn to the south onto I-185. Fifty miles later, after you have passed through the town of Columbus, Georgia, you hit Route 27 and the front gate to one of the U.S. Army’s most important posts. It is literally at the end of the road, but it’s the beginning of the journey for those who want to become airborne troopers.
Fort Benning is a relatively old post, dating back to just after World War I. In spite of its age (some of the buildings are more than fifty years old) and remote location, it is the crossroads for the Army’s infantry community. Located on the post are such vital facilities as the U.S. Army Infantry Center and the School of Infantry. This is the institutional home for infantry in the Army, and the primary center for their weapons and tactical development. If a system, tactic, or procedure has anything to do with personnel carrying weapons into battle, the Infantry Center will in some way own it.
The Center’s responsibilities have ranged from developing the specifications of the M⅔ Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the development of tactical doctrine for the employment of the new Javelin antitank guided missile. Fort Benning is also home to a number of training facilities, including the notorious U.S. Army School of the Americas. Known ruefully as the College of the Dictators (Manuel Noriega of Panama was one of its more notable graduates), it has provided post-graduate military study programs for officers of various Latin American nations for decades. Fort Benning is a busy place, and it is here that our look at airborne training begins.
In the middle of the post is a large parade area with a number of odd-looking pieces of training equipment. These include three 250-ft/76-m tall towers that look like they were plucked from a fairground (they were!), as well as mockups of various aircraft. Tucked over to one side of the parade ground is the headquarters of the 1st Battalion of the 507th Airborne Infantry Regiment (the 1/507th), which runs the U.S. Army Airborne Jump School.
There are ghosts here, though you have to know more to see them. Close your eyes, and travel back over half a century to a time when America had no airborne forces.
It was 1940 and America was desperately trying to catch up with the astounding combat achievements of the Germans, Russians, and Italians. Already, the Nazis had used airborne units to take Norway, Denmark, and the Low Countries of Western Europe with great success. This was one of many German innovations that had been demonstrated in the first year of World War II, and the leadership of the U.S. Army had taken notice. There was a smell of war in the air, and more than a few Army officers knew that America would eventually be part of it. The question for them was whether airborne forces could prove useful for the growing American Army that was beginning to be assembled. It fell to a small group of visionary Army officers on this very field to prove that America both needed and could develop airborne forces. At the heart of the effort was a man who, though he himself never saw combat with the American airborne force, would be honored as their institutional father: Bill Lee.
Major General William Carey Lee, USA, started life as a native of Dunn, North Carolina. A veteran of service in the Great War, he was a citizen soldier (a graduate of North Carolina State University, not West Point) in the tradition of officers like J. J. Pettigrew.
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Lee was an officer with a vision for the possibilities of warfare, and was always looking for new and better ways for technology to be applied to battle. After World War I, he served in a variety of posts around the world. At one point, he was the occupation mayor of Mayen, Germany. Later he would serve a tour of duty in the Panama Canal Zone. It was in his service as a lieutenant colonel in the Office of the Chief of Infantry in the War Department (the old name for the Department of the Army) that he rendered his most valuable service to America and its armed forces.
Major General William Lee, USA. General Lee was the institutional father of American Airborne forces and the first commanding officer of the 101st Airborne Division.
OFFICIAL U.S. ARMY PHOTO
During the inter-war years, he had taken a great interest in the idea that aircraft could deliver troops to the modern battlefield. Such thinking was hardly popular at the time, especially after the court-martial of Billy Mitchell for speaking out against the Army’s lack of vision on the uses of airpower. Army generals were more concerned with holding on to what little they had in the way of bases, men, and equipment than exploring the crackpot ideas of airpower zealots like Mitchell. Still, Lee watched the development of the airborne forces of Russia, Italy, and Germany with great interest, and he began to think about how Americans might use paratroops in their own operations.
Then came the German assault on Scandinavia and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940. The parachute and air-landing troops led by General Kurt Student were the spearhead of the Nazi invasion in Western Europe. This made everyone in the U.S. Army take notice, and Lee was well positioned to make use of the excitement. Less than two months after the Germans attacked in the West, Lee was assigned to start a U.S. Army project to study and demonstrate the possibilities of airborne warfare. By late 1940, he had formed a small group of volunteers known as the Parachute Test Platoon at Fort Benning. Their job was to evaluate and develop airborne equipment and tactics, and do it in a hurry. This small group of airborne pioneers was to do in just a few months what had taken countries like Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union years to develop. In those few short months, the test platoon demonstrated almost all of the key capabilities necessary to effectively drop combat-ready units into battle. Numerous parachute designs were tested and evaluated, along with lightweight weapons, carrying containers, boots, knives, and a variety of other equipment. They were racing against time, since Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the Second World War were just months away.

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