American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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that I made the mistake of looking up to check my canopy as I left the
plane.
They tell you not to do that. I was wondering why when the chute
deployed. My tremendous sense of relief that I had a canopy and
wasn’t going to die was mitigated by the rope burns on both sides of
my face.
The reason they tell you not to look up is so that you don’t get hit
by the risers as they fly by your head when the chute opens. Some
things you learn the hard way.
And then there are night jumps. You can’t see the land coming.
You know you have to roll into PLFs—parachute landing falls—but
when
I tell myself, the first time I feel something I’m going to roll.
The first . . . time . . . the f-i-r-s-t . . . !!
I think I banged my head every time I jumped at night.
I will say I preferred freefall to static jumping. I’m not saying I enjoyed
it, just that I liked it a lot better. Kind of like picking the firing
squad over being hanged.
In freefall, you came down a lot slower and had much more control.
I know there are all these videos of people doing stunts and tricks
and having a grand ol’ time doing HALO (high altitude, low opening)
jumps. There are none of me. I watch my wrist altimeter the whole
time. That chord is pulled the split-second I hit the right altitude.
On my last jump with the Army, another jumper came right under me
as we descended. When that happens, the lower canopy can “steal” the
air beneath you. The result is . . . you fall faster than you were falling.