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.12 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.
Along the way, they frequently applied a bit of Yankee ingenuity to their problems, with sometimes surprising results. When several of Lee’s officers saw towers with parachute-drop rides at the New York World’s Fair, they felt that the towers might be of value in training paratroopers. So when the fair closed down, the Army acquired them, and moved the 250-foot /76.2-meter-tall towers to Fort Benning. Today three of them survive on the parade ground, and are still used by trainees who attend Jump School.
The results from Lee’s early tests were so promising that by early 1941, he had been authorized to enlarge his test group to 172 prospective paratroopers. His leadership abilities were so well respected that he had over 1,000 volunteers for the enlarged group. Bill Lee was a man with a vision who recognized the qualities of the men who would be his first paratroopers. He encouraged their swagger and dash by his own example, leading from the front and never asking them to do anything that he himself would not do. That was why, at the age of forty-seven, he made his first parachute jump. At an age when most other Army officers might be thinking about retirement, he was building a new combat arm for the nation.
By 1942, the Army had seen the worth of Lee’s ideas, and was endorsing them fully. Now a full colonel, he helped stand up the first two parachute regiments (the 502nd and 503rd) in March of that year. Three months later, he was a brigadier general coordinating plans with the British for future airborne operations. Then, in August of 1942, the real breakthrough came when the U.S. Army decided to form two airborne divisions from the shells of two infantry divisions, the 82nd and 101st. Command of the 101st fell to Lee, now a major general. Over the next year and a half, Bill Lee worked himself and the 101st into combat shape. Seeing the need for the division to have heavier equipment, he added gliders to the 101st, and laid out the basic airborne plan for Operation Overlord, the coming invasion of France. Unfortunately, ill health kept General Lee from fulfilling his personal dreams of leading the 101st into combat. He suffered a debilitating heart attack in February of 1944, and was sent home to recover. Disappointed, he handed over command of the Screaming Eagles of the 101st to General Maxwell Taylor for the invasion. In his honor, though, when the troopers of the 101st jumped into the night skies over Normandy on June 6th, they replaced their traditional war cry of “Geronimo!” with “Bill Lee!” Though Bill Lee never fully recovered, and died in 1948, he had created a lasting legacy for the airborne forces. It’s still out there, on the training ground at Fort Benning, where new young men and women still use the tools that Bill Lee built for them half a century ago.
For today’s student paratroopers, very little has changed since Bill Lee and his test platoon first jumped at Fort Benning. Surprisingly, most of the course and equipment at the U.S. Army Jump School would still be familiar to those early airborne pioneers. For the young men and women who come here to be tested, it is a journey to someplace special in the Army. On this same parade ground, all the great names in airborne history have passed: Ridgway, Taylor, Gavin, Tucker, and so many more. The students know this, and realize that they have started down a difficult road. Three weeks on the Fort Benning training ground at the hands of the 1st of the 507th frequently breaks men and women who truly believed that they had the stuff to be a paratrooper. Some do, and it is their story that we are going to show you now.
The Schoolhouse: The 1st Battalion, 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment
For over fifty years there has been a paratrooper Jump School at Fort Benning. While some elements of the training have been altered in the course of a half century, the core curriculum is essentially unchanged from World War II. The course is taught and maintained by the 1st Battalion of the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment (1/507th). The staff of the1/507th acts as the Army’s parachute schoolhouse, maintaining a training curriculum that has trained paratroops from all over the world. Also,1/507th provides these training services for more than just the U.S. Army. Since other parts of the U.S. military require parachute-trained personnel (Navy SEALs, Marine Force Recon, Air Force Special Operations, Coast Guard Air-Sea Rescue, etc.), the 1/507th provides the training to certify their personnel as jump-qualified. As an added responsibility, numerous
other nations frequently send their soldiers to Fort Benning to become paratroopers.
The 1/507th is currently commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Steven C. Sifers, with Command Sergeant Major William Cox as his senior enlisted advisor. The 1/507th is composed of a headquarters company and four training companies (Companies A through D). Within the headquarters company are branches which control the curriculum for the Basic Airborne course. These include ground tower and jump training, as well as separate curriculums for the jumpmaster and Pathfinder courses, which are also managed by the 1/507th. There is a separate support unit (Company E) which provides maintenance and packing services for the battalion’s pool of equipment and parachutes. The 1/507th also controls a command exhibition parachute team (the Silver Wings), does off-site (non-resident) j umpmaster and Drop Zone Safety Team Leader (DZSTL) training, certifies airborne instructors, conducts airborne refresher training, as well as writing and maintaining the Army’s standard airborne training doctrine. The 1/507th has the enormous job of training up to 14,000 jump-qualified personnel every year. That’s a lot of work!
At the core of the 1/507th’s mission is the Basic Airborne Course (BAC) program of instruction, what the Army and the students call Jump School. The course of instruction is short and to the point. It teaches the students how to jump safely out of the two primary classes of cargo aircraft, and then how to land safely with the basic T-10-series parachute system. Jump School also is designed to test the physical and mental toughness of the prospective paratroopers.
A fully loaded paratrooper during a demonstration at Fort Benning, Georgia. Troopers jumping into combat frequently carry loads of over 100 1bs/45.5 kgs.
JOHN D. GRESHAM
The class runs over a total of 125 classroom hours (not including physical training) over just three weeks. Week 1 involves training on the ground, familiarizing the student with their new equipment and the basic physical skills required to operate it safely. Week 2 has the students training on a variety of towers, including the 250-foot/76.2-meter-tall World’s Fair units. Finally, Week 3 involves the students jumping a total of five times each from actual Air Force transport aircraft, and obtaining their final jump certification.
All this is in addition to a rigorous regimen of physical training or PT (that’s Army for running in formation). A lot of running! In fact, it is the PT that usually results in a student failing or being dropped from Jump School.
Each year, the 1/507th runs a total of forty-four Basic Airborne School (BAS) classes, each of which currently contains some 370 students. This could create, if all of the students programmed were to graduate, a pool of some 16,200 new paratroopers per year. A number fail to do so, through dropouts and rejections, so this generates the approximately 10,000 jump-qualified personnel that are needed each year. This number is going down, though, as budget cuts and personnel drawdowns take their effect. Current Army plans have the number of students per class going to just 307 in FY- 1998, dropping the number of possible paratroop graduates to just 14,300. Surprisingly, most of the students who report for Jump School actually pass. Over the past two years (FY-1994 and -1995), of the 31,976 personnel who reported for airborne training, 27,234 successfully completed the course, an average of over 85 percent.
Still, the staff of the 1/507th continually worries about the ones who don’t make it. If you are wondering just how the dropouts are distributed, the following table shows the tale of just who makes it in Jump School, and who does not.
U.S. Army Parachute School Enrollment/Graduation Data
As the table shows, women students are three times more likely to drop out than their male counterparts. This may be skewed somewhat by the fact that the male students outnumber females by about fifteen to one, though. The various reasons for the dropouts are quite obvious when you look at them.
Jump School Attrition by Cause
As the table shows, the vast majority of the dropouts are a result of medical problems. These range from simple sprains and fractures, to the heat injuries that are so common to Fort Benning during the terrible months of summer. Failed PT runs and administrative problems cover the majority of the remaining dropouts, with other causes (failed landing fall and jump qualifications, etc.) making up just 5 percent of the rest. Therefore, the high overall rate of graduation from Jump School is a tribute to the professionalism of the staff of the 1/507th.
That professionalism is most embodied in a small group of noncommissioned officers (NCOs) who make up the basic instructor cadre of the 1/507th. These are the Black Hats, the NCO drill instructors (DIs) who perform the drilling and generally care for the welfare of the Jump School students. While their headgear is less imposing than the Marine Corps DIs’ Smoky Bear campaign hats (they wear black baseball caps), they are just as caring and protective of their charges. Like the Marine DIs, the Black Hats provide an institutional memory and glue to the Jump School. The Black Hats are the tribal elders of the paratroopers, and the keepers of their traditions.
Jump School: Three Weeks at Hell’s Gate
“Is everybody happy?” cried the sergeant looking up,
Our Hero feebly answered, “Yes,” and then they stood him up,
He leaped right out into the bast his static line unhooked,
He ain’t gonna jump no more!
Gory, Gory, what a helluva way to die!
Gory, Gory, what a helluva way to die!
Gory, Gory, what a helluva way to die!
He ain’t gonna jump no more!
—The Airborne Marching Song “Blood Upon the Risers” (Sung to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”)
Nobody in the U.S. Army can be ordered to go to jump school, and everyone who does is a volunteer. Still, Fort Benning has an excess of qualified volunteers for the spaces at Jump School, so coveted is the airborne badge within the ranks of the U.S. military. Strangely, the qualifications to get in are not that tough. You start by being in the Army, and must have completed basic training or have been commissioned as an officer. A potential airborne trooper must also have their first specialty/technical school, which defines your basic Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) code. This means that a student could be a brand-new private first class (PFC) who has just completed training as an infantryman or a communications technician and then goes immediately to Jump School. Other than this, the qualifications to become a paratrooper are surprisingly easy. There are no particular job specialty requirements, nor is rank a consideration.
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: • Volunteer for the BAS course.
• Be less than thirty-six years of age.
• Pass the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT).
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:
APFT Scoring Chart3
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.13