Where the Earth Waits (Stories of a Paratrooper Trainee)
By: Madeline Pratt
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of interviewing a close family member of mine, Richard Manning, to hear his story firsthand.
He enlisted himself in the United States Army at the urging of a high-school friend. That same friend was quickly rejected from Airbone training due to his supposed ‘bad feet’, leaving Richard to endure the brutality of paratrooper school alone. Ironically, the unwavering physical and mental disciplines were greeted at night with postcards of his friend’s idyllic life playing baseball across Europe.
His mornings during the training period were welcomed with intense expectations; most grew reckless with “overcoming…emotions” from the unforgiving pressure and emotional torment by their sergeants.
Their methods systematically dehumanized the men, creating an onslaught that pushed them to the point where one would “hate them with every fiber of [their] bones”. Richard mentioned that the superiors “made you hate them…they’d harass you, they make you break”. Through the demeaning treatment, young men like Richard—just 19 or 20—were quickly forged into soldiers designed to jump out of planes from 1,200 feet above.
The grueling training period ended as abruptly as it started—three intense weeks that forcibly “peeled [their] skin back,” culminated in their first jumps from the C-47’s, a common cargo plane from WWII.
The men were expected to perform 5 jumps under the supervision of their superiors to ensure their technical proficiency and abilities were up to par. On his first jump, Richard witnessed an exceptionally harrowing incident. He and another trainee exited the C-47 aircraft from diametrically opposed doors; as they dropped, their parachutes drifted alarmingly towards one another, leaving them to entwine themselves. He mentions that his own parachute lines snaked between his legs and up past his shoulders, therefore trapping him and forcing his legs to straddle the top of the other soldier’s parachute canopy. Suspended in the sky, the two were “stealing each other’s air”—meaning that their parachutes were collectively compromised because of their close proximity. They shouted commands at one another in an attempt to force their chutes apart, “Pull left…angle your body right!”. Soon after their tense struggle, they managed to disentangle successfully.
Another major accident involved a malfunction colloquially referred to as a “Mae West,” which is referenced when the shroud lines become twisted on the top/middle of the canopy, forming two rounded protrusions (“looks like a bra, you know?”). While Richard watched from the ground: instead of catching air to slow the descent, the canopy collapsed and shrank. The trainee—not knowing how to properly deploy his reserve chute—continued falling as the lines constricted one another, closing off more air. Upon impact, the force of the hit caused irreversible spinal trauma. Richard recalls the memory of the man, the sight of his buddy’s “boots sticking straight up in the air” never leaving the speaker.
A third accident occurred in North Carolina during a jump exercise; a trainee descended at an improper angle and his chute collided with overhead power lines. The contact caused a great impact on his body, simultaneously causing his parachute to ultimately fail and snap. The now broken parachute rendered him defenseless. The force violently projected him toward the pole, essentially impaling or quite frankly, “staking him” against the pole. His death was instantaneous.
The stories Richard shared of his experience in training show us that we can never truly grasp what these men faced once they set foot on the battlefield. Although barely out of adolescence, their bravery and insistent drive to protect their families and future generations never wavered. As the month of thankfulness has begun, let us take a moment each day to honor those whose service and sacrifice have secured our freedom and protected the nation