Notes From a Small Military - I Commanded and Fought with 2 Para at the Battle of Goose Green. I was Head of Counter Terrorism for the M.O.D. This is my True Story. Major-General Chip Chapman
the second by going left.
Jump all poles; trying to clamber over them will slow you down.
Large pole: keep right, watch the second ditch.
Single pole: shallow, watch your ankle on landing.
Run and run until your heart gives out.
The assault course was more like Aintree in relation to its timings. A scoring mark of six points only required you to complete the course in seven minutes and 30 seconds. Considering that most of the soldiers could run a mile in somewhere around six minutes, this was no ordinary assault course. Neither were the instructions. They were far simpler than the steeplechase: ‘Always run and attack all obstacles.’
The final 14-mile South Downs march was a picnic after the previous events. My reward came when we were back in base and assembled in a silent room. I was asked to stand and was told, ‘Pass’. I was now the official proud owner of a red beret.
There were two interesting cultural bookends either side of P Company. Just prior to the start of P Company, I attended an army football dinner. The speaker was the first England football manager from 1946 to 1962, Sir Walter Winterbottom, who gave an insight into the pressures of being a top class football manager.
At the conclusion of P Company, I travelled to Blackpool to stay with a university friend for the weekend. I had never been on such a depressing train journey. The coaches were for a ‘holiday special’: two words that did not fit easily together in any trip to Blackpool in the early 1980s. The average age of those on board was about the same as the top speed of the train, with the packed ranks heading to the north to re-live the memories of their youth. Blackpool is as good a reason as you can find for cheap air travel.
I hope the good folk of Blackpool will forgive my memories of the place, but its heyday was rather like the era of the speaker we turned up to see at a country club – the legendary Stan Mortensen. As every soccer-loving fan will know, he scored a hat-trick in the 1953 ‘Matthews Final’ – Blackpool’s 4-3 defeat of Bolton Wanderers. I sincerely hope that that, like the modern Blackpool football team, the town is once more enjoying moments in the regenerative sunshine, as they did under that newest of football philosophers, their manager Ian Holloway. But he has now moved elsewhere, and my memories of Blackpool may cast me in the same treacherous mould as those who turn their backs on their football teams. Football is not, despite the pressures that Winterbottom and Mortensen spoke of (and both served in the Second World War), a matter of life and death. What I would experience in 1982 most certainly was.
With P Company done with, it was time to complete our jumps training at RAF Brize Norton. The sun seemed to shine relentlessly. It was a glorious summer, and the final few weeks that the officers on the course would have with no responsibility before they would be unleashed on their unsuspecting battalions. In many ways, those halcyon summer days put one in mind of the seminal work on the RAF during the Second World War – Richard Hillary’s The Last Enemy.4 For some, this notion of a halcyon summer before a storm would become a reality: one of our fellow parachuting students was Captain John Hamilton who had just passed SAS selection and was also completing his jumps training. He was killed in the Falklands War almost a year later.
The on-camp cinema at Brize Norton showed the film A Bridge Too Far, and all the soon-to-be-qualified paratroopers would rush to see it. It had been released in 1977 and it was now 1981, so either the film was on a continuous loop, the most successful and longest-running film in history, or recycled with every parachuting course that trooped through the base. I favour my final theory.
It may seem curious that in a parachute course that lasted for four weeks, one was required to complete only eight jumps, with and without equipment, and by day and by night. Military parachuting is something that does require an almost automatic and learnt response, for time in the air in which to correct errors is precious, and the decision-making needs to be swift.
While it is rare these days for people to be killed in military parachuting, the numbers of jumpers in the air at any one time can be vast – all potentially occupying, or attempting to occupy, the same air space. Air space, along with time, is a precious commodity, for an ‘air steal’ – where someone glides across the top of your canopy – causes your own parachute to deflate and collapse. Should this occur the laws of physics apply, and you have the aerial buoyancy of a stone. Plummeting to earth occurs unless corrective action is taken – and quickly.
The first weeks are conducted in a large hanger in either flight swings, or on rubber mats, learning, relearning and reinforcing what has already been learnt. It is little wonder that the motto of the Parachute Training School is ‘Knowledge Dispels Fear’.
Everyone remembers their first jump. It occurs at Weston-on-the Green, near Oxford, overlooking the A40. Four men rise from the ground in a cage with a large barrage balloon inflated above them. This initiation will be the balloon jump. It is eerily quiet as the jumpmaster declares, ‘Up 800, four men jumping.’
A winch cranks into gear, and a soft, swaying journey takes place. Sergeant Martin, the parachute jump instructor from the RAF, does a supreme man-management job in the ascending balloon to take our minds off the altitude. The winch stops. We are 800ft above the ground. The balloon blows gently, and the first novice is called to the door.
Me: ‘Red On’.
Hands swiftly close on the top of the reserve parachute.
‘Go.’
A leap occurs into the air.
‘1,000, 2,000, 3,000, CHECK CANOPY.’
You look up in anticipation that above your head is a growing envelope of silk attached by parachute cord to the webbing straps that secure the harness via your ‘risers’ to your back. The inside of the canopy is a welcome sight. The noise as the chute opens reminds me of the wind billowing through bed linen on a washing line from my childhood days. The absence of a canopy leads to the instant deployment of the reserve chute – rare on a balloon jump. You quickly separate the risers to peer above, beneath, and around to assess that you are in clear air space. You are now a parachutist. You smile with glee, and then keep all body parts tightly together to conduct a safe roll as you come in to the ground. You smile after you collapse your parachute and roll it up. It will be repacked for a future descent. Your smile is now ear-to-ear. You are happy. You are on your way to earning your wings and become part of Airborne Forces. And someone has paid for you to have that smile.
As more descents occur, further complications are added. These include aircraft, equipment, people trying to invade the same air as you, and the night. Additional vocabularies are added. An unclean aircraft exit inevitably leads to a few spins and the authoritatively shouted informative instruction to those around to ‘STEER AWAY, I’M IN TWISTS!’ This is rightly shouted in capital letters, for until one has managed to kick out of twists, the ability to control any movement of the canopy is severely constrained. Other jumpers must steer away, for you are at that moment a dangerous hazard.
‘Twists’ also mean you cannot lower your equipment. Military parachuting requires you to carry all that you need with you. The rucksack, which will be carried once on the ground, is attached by a device to the legs. Once in clear air space, you must lower your equipment as quickly as possible; failure to do so will almost inevitably lead to broken legs, as there will be no ability to turn off the limbs for any sort of landing. Watching men fail to lower their equipment due to entanglements with other parachutists (another not-to-be-recommended technique or procedure for landing) or other problems will inevitably lead to screams from those already on the ground to ‘LOWER YOUR EQUIPMENT!!’ The capital letters will get bigger as the parachutist gets closer to the ground. You assume that reserve parachutes have already been deployed in the first few seconds after an entanglement: entwined parachutes look more like a basket of laundry. They also have the properties of a bag of laundry and not of a parachute. Deployment of the reserve parachute must be a reflex action. It almost inevitably is.
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