The Most Important Thing. David Gross

      Every few hours, the planes of the U.S. Air Force and Army flew over Fort Bragg. Every time Kentuck saw one, he remembered his first view of an airplane in flight. The sight filled him with envy that someone had wings to fly over the mountains and all the troubles in them. The appeal of flight struck the young man. Desiring wings of his own, Kentuck admired the birds, even the lowly crow. Kentuck stowed this dream with all of the others in a corner of his mind where children keep dreams too wonderful for adults to know. Alas, the reality of gravity and the fetters of traditional life anchored his feet to the ground.

      In his first year of high school, Kentuck studied the science of flight. The teacher launched the lesson with the story of the brilliant engineer Daedalus who fashioned wings from feathers and wax to escape Crete. Daedalus and his son Icarus experienced man’s first flight. The curious Icarus flew higher to observe the brilliant sun. Daedalus warned his son against soaring to the heights. Icarus ignored his father flying so near to the sun that the wax in his wings melted. The wings of the young man disintegrated, Icarus fell into the abyss. Daedalus flew on to freedom. The teacher continued the lesson describing lift and drag, noting the shape of a bird’s wing. As always when discussing the pioneers of flight, the Wright brothers figured prominently with their American invention, the airplane.

      It was a dream come true for the young man to fly in an airplane. Kentuck had never flown before and now he found himself committed to jumping from airplanes. He reported for Airborne Training—”Jump School,” thirty-day special military training conducted at Fort Bragg.

      Airborne Training is physically demanding. Yet, the institutional routine comforted Kentuck. Every morning broke with the metal cock crowing “Reveille,” and the barracks exploded with beehive intensity. Kentuck, with the forty other groggy boys, sprang from his metal bed. They shaved, dressed, and made their bunks. The meals came routinely like waves in the ocean. Each flux nourished the hungry young men. Exercise and adventure filled each day.

      The men marched wherever they went. Marching in formation developed uniformity in the company. The recruit felt camaraderie and togetherness each time his left foot hit the pavement at the same moment as a hundred other men. The cadence call measured each step like the beat of a drum. In some calls, the recruit joined in. The DI sang, “You had a good girl, but you left.” “You’re right!” the recruits responded with the right foot hitting the pavement in unison. “You had a good home, but you left,” sang the DI. “You’re right!” sang the troops. “You want to go back, but you can’t,” reminded the DI. “You’re right!” responded the men of the company as one, with every right foot hitting the pavement as the men shouted “right!” The rhyming cadences kept time and occupied the mind. Cadences were funny, vulgar, or occasionally fatalistic, “If I die in a combat zone, box me up and send me home.”

      Jump School challenged the soldier. Youthful, tough Kentuck drove to succeed. Of all the exercises, squat jumps demanded the most physically. To perform a squat jump, the recruit placed his hands behind his head. Then, he stood with one foot far in front and the other foot far behind, and in this wide stance the recruit squatted down low. Then, jumping high, he reversed his feet in the air and squatted down again upon landing. That is one squat jump. After about a hundred squat jumps rubbery legs made standing difficult.

      Physical challenges ejected marginal troops from the elite Airborne like a spent cartridge shell. Those lacking the physical toughness or, more likely, the mental toughness failed. The grueling training passed only the best. An Airborne troop is a top troop.

      Each day the men faced the regiment of eating, running, climbing, push-ups, sit ups, squat jumps, and finally, sleeping. When the moon slipped into the blanket of the night sky, each recruit slipped into his bunk. After weeks of sleeping bags in the field, the bunks felt like heaven. At the end of the day, Taps eased them into the comfort of slumber. Like anything else in life that is reliable, the Army routine soothes. Routine, not religion, is the opiate of the masses.

      Before the Airborne soldier could fight the enemy, he fought gravity. Each day the men conducted exercises designed to lessen the fear of leaping from heights. Kentuck’s company trained by simulating jumps, but nothing resembles that first leap into the great void. When the day of the first jump arrived, Kentuck’s company planned a jump from the “Flying Boxcar.” The Air Force C-119, the first plane designed for parachuting, resembles a flying box. The plane hauled men and equipment, thus, the boxcar. The jumpers sat nervously inside the rumbling belly of the plane. On the early training flights, apparent clues betrayed strained emotions of the virgin jumpers. Kentuck sat uneasily but quietly in the plane as the big propellers roared to life. The plane rolled down the runway and leaped into the sky. For the first time in his life, Kentuck flew. He felt the luckiest man on earth. Kentuck knew in moments, he would jump through the open door. Kentuck studied the potential outcomes acknowledging the bad. Suddenly, even fifty extra dollars a month didn’t seem worth it.

      The jumpers faced each other on narrow benches, checking laundrybags. (The flyboys called a parachute a laundry bag. A jumper carried one in front for emergencies and the main chute in the back.) Usually, eighteen jumpers sat in two rows of nine. With the aircraft flying at a relatively low altitude, a short flight lifted the jumpers to the drop zone. Upon the command, “Stand up and hook up!” the reluctant jumpers stood and attached their stay lines to a metal cable that ran from the front of the cabin to the back.

      “Make your final inspection and sound off!” the jumpmaster yelled in the noisy plane. Each jumper scrutinized his parachute and emergency parachute. Upon the final verification of equipment, the jumper nearest the port in the plane yelled, “Number One is OK!” The second from the front yelled, “Number Two is OK,” and so on until the last jumper verified his equipment. Then, the jumpmaster signaled the pilot. The pilot sounded the alarm, signifying “Ok” for the jump. Then, in single file the jumpers waddled to the loving arms of the jumpmaster.

      The jumpmaster was the master of ceremonies, ensuring an orderly interval between jumpers. One by one, the men leaped from the plane. The ripcord of the main parachute pulled the static cord dragging the chute from the bottom. It was almost impossible for the parachute to remain closed. Privates would die in droves otherwise. The Army is built on mechanisms that prevent the common soldier from error. If his chute didn’t open, the jumper waited three seconds and then pulled the ripcord of the second, emergency parachute. A jumper falls three hundred feet in three seconds. During a jump, a second seems like an hour.

      Kentuck waddled to the open door of the airplane. He looked down at the frightening view. Kentuck thought of the extra fifty dollars a month realizing something he heard all his life was true. Money is the root of all evil. The epiphany hit him like a lightning bolt. He turned his head to relay his insight to the jumpmaster, but the jumpmaster fixed his hand to the back of Kentuck’s belt. The jumpmaster tossed him out of the plane.

      Air rushed over his cheeks, causing them to flap like bloomers on a clothesline in a gale. His eyes watered. His helmet roared. When the cushion of air filled the canopy Kentuck jolted upward receiving the most intense wedgie imaginable. When the chute halted Kentuck’s