Airborne (1997) (15 page)

Student Handout (SH) 57-1, the basic
Guide for Airborne Students,
lays out the following requirements that must be met by a soldier for entry into Jump School:

 

A passing score on the APFT is almost absurdly easy to achieve. It involves successfully completing just three events (a timed 2-mile/3.2-kilometer run, push-ups, and sit-ups). A healthy person in even moderately good shape can pass this test with ease. The following table summarizes the minimum passing scores. The run times are expressed in minutes and seconds, with the push-ups and sit-ups in numbers of repetitions:

Other than these basic qualifications, nothing else is required to enter the paratroops. Prospective paratroops make an application to the school, and are selected on the basis of merit and their need for a jump rating in their current or projected billet. As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, the 82nd Airborne is made up of thousands of personnel with hundreds of different MOSs. While most are line infantry and artillery personnel, there are also cooks, doctors, truck mechanics, and clerks. All of them must be jump-qualified. Generally, though, most applicants tend to be fairly young, and probably a bit more career-oriented.

Once soldiers have been selected, they report to Fort Benning for the three-week course of instruction that is the Basic Airborne Council (BAC), or Jump School. With forty-four such classes per year, there is a lot of overlap between classes, and we were able to see BAC students in all three weeks of their course. Each Jump School class is composed of some 370 candidate students, though this number will drop to 307 by 1998. Most arrive a day or two early to get used to the weather (which can be wicked in the summer!), and are housed in the huge group of visitor-billeting dormitories on the eastern side of the base. These are Spartan little rooms, though it hardly matters. The BAC students will spend very little time in their rooms.

To show us around, Ms. Monica Manganaro, the Fort Benning Public Affairs Officer (PAO), hooked us up with Major Rob Street, the Operations Officer (S-3) of the 1/507th. They took me to see the various phases of Jump School, while doing their best to keep me alive in the killing heat of August 1996.

Each BAC class starts early on a Monday morning. I say early, since the students must be ready for their first PT run of the day by 0600 (that’s 6:00 AM, folks). BAC students are expected to show up in exceptional physical shape, and are tested from their first moments with the Black Hats. Earlier we told you how easy the physical qualifications to enter BAC were, and they are. But the physical strength and endurance to stay in and finish are something completely different.

Each day starts with a grueling run, which every student must complete if they are not on some sort of medical waiver. Some of you might think that starting the day with a nice run is a wonderful idea, but at Fort Benning, it is anything but. Most of the year, but especially in the summer months, the sunrise temperatures are above 80° F/27° C, with humidity frequently in the 80 to 90 percent range. Heat indexes in excess of 100° F/38° C are not only common, but expected. This makes the morning runs a thing to be dreaded by every student. If you fall out of even just one mandatory run, you are out of Jump School. Just that quick! The runs start out at 2.4 miles/3.86 kilometers in length, and are gradually lengthened over the course of the three weeks training to 4 miles/6.4 kilometers. Each is done in formation, with the Black Hats setting a nine-minute-per-mile/five-and-one-half-minute-per-kilometer pace through a chorus of cadences.
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BAS students hate the PT runs for good reason. Even in the pre-dawn hours, that half-hour run soaks the trainees with sweat. Their muscles begin to ache and bind up. The really bad news is that if you don’t fold up one day, you may do so the next day. The runs are an extremely high-impact form of exercise that is very tough on joints and muscles. The pounding is progressive, and it either tends to build a person’s body up, or wreck it. As you saw in the table earlier, failed PT runs account for almost 20 percent of the dropouts and are a secondary cause of many other injuries. Running in the high heat and humidity of Fort Benning is a cause of frequent heat injuries, including rapid dehydration and possible heat stroke. In particular, if students suffer a jump injury in another phase of training, like a sprained ankle or foot, there is no way that they will be able to hide it on the following day’s PT run. If the students submit themselves to the infirmary, and they receive a profile (a doctor’s order limiting physical activity), depending on the severity of the injury, they may be dropped from the course or recycled (sent to another training company).

While this may sound rather unfair, the PT runs serve a variety of purposes. First, the runs verify that the students are in proper physical shape for the challenges that they may face in the airborne. The runs also provide the Black Hats with a gauge for measuring the physical toughness of the future paratroopers. The airborne lifestyle is rough on a person’s body, and it is best to find out one’s durability early. Since an airborne recruit is only allowed to miss one run (unless they present themselves as injured to the medical department), those who are brittle or weak tend to fall out early. The Black Hats like to say that if you can survive BAC and your first few years of airborne duty without a major injury, you will probably stay that way for your whole career.

Right after each morning’s run, the recruits are marched over to the mess hall, where they are given their choice of breakfast, and a few minutes to catch their breath. As might be expected of an Army post in the heart of the old Confederacy, the menu contains such favorites as grits (yuk!), biscuits and gravy, and other “classic” Army fare such as “SOS.”
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There also is lighter fare, acknowledgment that times and dietary preferences are changing. Whatever their choice, the BAC students wolf down their food, eating hearty and drinking all the coffee they can hold. They will need the energy and fluids, because they are headed back outside, into the heat and humidity, where most of Jump School takes place.

After breakfast each day, the BAC class is marched over to the parade ground for training. On the first Monday, though, the class is marched over to the parade area mentioned previously, for their first introduction to the paratrooper world. Seated in bleachers, they are then given a combination pep talk and primer on what will happen to them in the coming three weeks. Called the “Airborne 5,000,” the presentation shows the BAC students all of the skills that they will be required to learn and demonstrate.

In addition, they are given a good dose of what the Black Hats call “HOOAH” talk.
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This is delivered by both the commanding officer (Lieutenant Colonel Sifers) and command sergeant major (Sergeant Major Cox) of the 1/507th, and is both inspiring and daunting. Using the good cop-bad cop method of communication, they tag-team the new BAC class with the good news (most of them will be airborne troopers soon) and the bad news (the rest won’t) about the coming three weeks. In particular, the sergeant major drills home the point that there are many ways to flunk out of BAC, most of them just plain stupid. Failing to follow orders, ignoring a safety regulation, not completing a run, or just getting drunk on a day off are all reasons for being expelled from BAS. In particular, he makes the point that just making all the runs and completing five jumps does not make a student a paratrooper. Only his say-so and that of the Black Hats give Jump School candidates their airborne certification.

The whole presentation is like something out of the opening of the movie
Patton,
and is designed to have the same effect. There is a positive air of excitement and esprit in the air, even in the way students are expected to respond to the Black Hats. Whenever addressed by a BAC cadre member, the appropriate affirmative answer is “Airborne,
Sir!”

Sergeant Major William Cox, the Senior Non-Commissioned Officer of the 1/507th. He supervises the training of student paratroops for the battalion.

Student paratroops at Fort Benning, Georgia, yell a hearty, “Hu Ahhh!” during the Airborne 5,000 Demonstration Orientation.

Following another healthy round of shouted “HOOAHs,” the class is shown a series of demonstrations of various airborne techniques that they will have to master. Skills like parachute landing falls and exit tucks are shown to the trainees to give them some idea of what is to come. They are also shown some of the training apparatuses that they will use during the following few weeks. These include everything from swing harnesses and stands to teach aircraft exits and landings, to the 34-foot/10.4-meter and 250-foot/76.2-meter drop towers. It is an exciting presentation, and you can feel the growing enthusiasm in the young men and women as they sit there, watching intently. You also see them sweat, which is going to be one of their primary occupations in the days to come. That’s not surprising since most of the BAS classrooms are merely open-air sheds, with little more than a wooden roof to keep the sun and rain off their heads. During all of my tour of the BAS facilities, I saw no air-conditioned classrooms. This is a truly brutal way to learn, but what you have to endure if you aspire to the airborne.

Following the Airborne 5,000, the BAS students and their Black Hats get right down to business. The first class has the student learning to do mock exits from a simulated aircraft fuselage. Other drills and classes follow, and don’t let up until graduation, three weeks hence. The BAS course generally follows the curriculum shown in the table below for the rest of the first week of BAS: