I bet someone pissed off someone in the chain of command. Maybe it was a reenlistment jump? I can remember a buddy of mine requesting a hollywood jump (just the main chute and reserve chute) reenlistment where he had the 1SG/CSM jump in a dress. They agreed to it but that SGT. was the 1SG's CQ ***** for a whole year.

I was a mean SOB when I wasn't a jumpmaster and when I wasn't assigned to a specific chalk as a jump master as a regular jumper. I used to wait till 1 minute till greenlight to plead with the man in front of me to NOT jump the chute he was wearing. LOL I would say, "you sure you wanna jump this chute, man? It looks pretty old..." Sometimes I’d hold an old piece of cut static line I had stuffed in my cargo pocket in front of the young private and watch his eyes light-up about 30seconds out. Another good thing to tell privates straight out of jump school was
daisy-chaining... as a TL you'd basically tell a FNG that you didn't want the team to get split-up or lost on the DZ. You (and the rest of your team while holding a straight face) would describe the process of hooking static lines to each other's reserve chute ripcord rather than the anchor-line cable inside the plane. Then you'd stress the fact that the lowest ranking private would get his cord pulled approximately 200ft from the ground (LOL). I have about a thousand other crazy things up my sleeve that we did to cherries. It's the never-ending cycle that leads to tradition, esprit de corps and good soldiers.

Any paticular stories from leg land, Paul?

 

Thank God I never jumped in MOP4....Can you imagine a real world mission where you had to? What a living hell that must be. MOP4 on the way down,...into a contaminated combat zone. If the bullets don't kill you the chemicals eventually will. Or the 5 gallons of sweat splashing around in your mask will eventually drown you.

Big thanks to all the service men and women out there now and to the ones that put thier time in back then.

 

Are you in the service, Chrisnonstop?