July-August - Air Defense Artillery

Sweat Blood And Smile
TAKE your hands off of your hips,
Colonel," the sergeant said.
The sergeant was a slender man of
medium height. He stood, erect and soldierly,
and looked me straight in my surprised
eyes. In twenty-five years as a
commissioned officer in the United
States Army this was a new experience.
\Ve looked at each other a moment in
silence, while I struggled inwardly for
self-control. The sergeant waited for me
to obey his orders, as the quiet assurance
and tense lines of determination in his
face made clear. I dropped my hands to
my sides without a word. The sergeant
walked away, also without a word.
This makes more sense than you might
think. It rests on the solid foundation
that when a man jumps out of an airplane
in Right ... well, the law of
gravity does not salute. This is one of
the first things you discover as a student
paratrooper at the Airborne School, Fort
Benning, Georgia.
You also develop a certain stilte of
milld which is not the unrelieved grim
determination you might imagine it to
be. There is a constant awareness of
danger, but it is viewed with a special
kind of humor that keeps things in
perspective. Then there is the esprit de
corps of the paratroopers ... but come
with me to jump School, and you will
see what I mean.
Our first hour was a vigorous exercise
period. It was in the ten minute break
following this hour that the sergeant instructor
so tactfully informed me, in
eight words, that when you are engaged
in this business it is no time to be standing
around with the mental attitude that
accompanies having your hands on your
hips. That back-on-your-heels posture
is verboten at jump School.
In the second hour we reported to
wooden replicas of airplanes for what is
called Mock Door training, practice in
the details of how to get out of an airplane
in Right, doing e\'erything the way
the sergeant said.
t4Go!"
By Col. Strode Newman
The sergeant slapped the man in the
door sharply across the rump and the
jumper leaped out in space. After the
leading man jumps, all others automatically
shuffie forward and literally
pour out of the door.
"Hold it! Stop where you are!" the
sergeant roared.
He walked up to one scared looking
youngster, took his hand from the static
line, turned it around and made him
grasp it the proper way.
"Listen," the sergeant said, "in this
business you do what you are told, exactly
the way you are told."
There was a pulsing silence.
"You had that line under and over
your wrist, when you have been told to
have it over and under.
"Now," the sergeant continued, "I
don't give a damn what happens to a
guy what can't do what he is told. \Vhat
would happen to you is that line would
tangle around your arm when you jump-
l'airchild Aircraft Photo--bll Dan l'rankfurtrr
Drop zone.
JULY-AUGUST, 1951 63