German Conservationists Score Win In Battle To Protect 1000-Year Old “Grimm’s Fairytale Forest” From Green Insanity

Yea, the 173rd was at Camp Darby for much of the cold war.

The first time I set in foot in Germany was a jump and I landed in one of those cultivated forests. It was a small DZ near Bad Tolz. We flew over to jump 3 C-141Bs that were doing a CARP exercise flying out of Pease AFB. There were just two to three jumpers per aircraft because it was just my 12 man team jumping and one had to stay in the aircraft to pull in and collect the D-bags.

The CARP calculated release point was about 2 miles off and we came around to the real DZ for a Jumpmaster release. That DZ was narrow and with a road with power lines running down on side and cultivated forest running down the other. The winds being marginal. Not a one of us landed on the DZ. All went into the woods.

When a jumper is coming down into trees they don’t release their rucksack and ride it in. Jumping an MC1-1B I had some steering capability and aimed for a pile of left over snow in the space between two rows of trees and hit it. That snow was hard, my feet and lower legs penetrated and my ruck frame stopped me dead bending me over my reserve parachute. Knocked the wind out of me. That was my introduction to Germany.

Now here is a war story for you.
When I enlisted to go Special Forces I first went to Ft. Jackson for Basic training. Then I went to Ft. Sam Houston for regular Army AIT to the 91B combat medic course. From there the next step was Jump School at Ft. Benning, GA. The next step after Jump School would be Ft. Bragg to start the Special Forces Qualification Course.

Coming out of AIT a few of us at the top of the class were promoted to Private E2 but I had not had a chance to get the single stripe (mosquito wings) sewn on my uniforms yet and was using the black pin on rank. Now pin on rank is a pain in a butt and if you don’t have it pinned on in the exactly right place it was sure to cause me to do pushups at Jump School.

So arrived at Columbus, GA a day before I was to report for Jump School to find a tailor to sew on my mosquito wings. I was successful and my uniforms were all done as I waited.

I had no intention of reporting early so I found a motel in Columbus to spend the night in. It turned out the motel I went to had been the place where the cast of the John Wayne movie The Green Berets had stayed while filming at Ft. Benning. They had pictures of the various cast members all over the place. And here I was trying to become an SF soldier.

The next morning I reported. Shortly after getting my bunk and locker set up a messenger from the Company HQ came up and told me I was to report to the Training Battalion SGM (Sergeant Major).
I had no idea what the hell was going on. Trainees don’t see the Bn SGM unless they are in trouble or perhaps if there is bad news having to do with family back home.

Now I was to be a 2nd generation paratrooper. When I was two years old my Dad was in the 101st Abn. Division. He was a draftee but volunteered to go Airborne because it would get him to Ft. Campbell, KY which was a lot closer to home than where he probably would have been sent otherwise. Also the $50.00 a month jump pay was nothing to sneeze at back then.

He had arrived at Ft. Campbell and reported in for Jump School there. He told the 1st SGT that he had to move his family and the 1st SGT assuming that he meant a local move said OK. Well what Dad did was drive all the way up to Elwood, IN to get Mother and I and put us in an apartment just off post. Obviously he was gone far longer than the 1st SGT had intended and was AWOL.

While he was gone a young trainee set up his locker and bunk for him and tried to cover for him. That young man was Art Hill and with that action he and Dad became fast friends and remained so for life. Art would babysit me when Mom & Dad would go out.

So 22 years later there I was reporting to Battalion HQ, They pointed me to door of the SGMs office, and I knocked, and entered when told “ENTER”. There the SGM was at his desk with his back to me pouring a cup of coffee and I at parade rest. He turned around and it was Art Hill!

He had me close the door and sit down and we talked. Told me not to let anyone know that I knew him because if they found out I would get special attention of the kind I would not like. Told me that if I liked, on the weekends I could come to his home to stay. And that is what I did.

Of course towards the end of the 2nd week, called “Tower Week”, the Airborne Instructors we called “Black Hats” found out and one morning I was gigged for supposedly not doing the pull ups correctly and went to the gig pit. The gig pit was a covered area with a sawdust floor where PT is done. I did grass drills and push ups and sit ups and flutter kicks to no end. I was the last one out of the gig pit.

It was August and hot. Hot enough that each PT (Physical Training) area had one of those galvanized elongated tubs one sees sometimes being used as a watering trough for horses or cattle that was fill with ice water to submerge a heat casualty in.

By this time I didn’t give a damn. I would die before they got me to quit. I never ended up in one of those troughs either. That attitude is what got me through the SFQC. I would die before I would fail and that was all there was to it.

On Jump week Art came out and put me to the front of the stick and I went out the door for my first military jump behind Art.

On the fifth and final jump one runs off the DZ, gets into formation and has their wings pinned on them. Dad and Mom were there and Dad pinned HIS silver wings upon my chest. They are the solid sterling silver wings and not the cheap crap they issue now.

As for jumping? I loved it and became a Jumpmaster and went through the training to be Rough Terrain Qualified.

The simple fact is you strap on 35 lbs of parachute, weapon, LBE, and an 80 lb. rucksack so you have a total of 160 lbs on your body and then your stuffed in a C-130 flying nap of the earth with guys around you puking.

So now all of you that ever wondered why a perfectly sane person would want to jump out of perfectly good airplane have your answer. And that’s with nobody shooting at you!

BTW, nothing to a mirror spit shine. Just lots of elbow grease, the right rag or cotton balls, both black and clear Kiwi, some cold water, and more elbow grease. My last pair of Jump boots are in my closet and you could shave looking into them. Some things remain even if they really are not a part of you life anymore, they remain a part of you. But that was the thing. SF wasn’t just serving in a unit. It was an all consuming way of life.

And with that one more comment. My wife of 38 years was with me through most of it. She is the one that is tough a nails. Raising two kids while I was gone 8 months or so of every year. Counseling the younger wives that were having troubles. Putting up with the O’dark 30 alert phone calls where we packed up and two hours later were flying off to God knows where. Keeping it all together. She was every bit as proud as I was.

BTW I always love the smell when he hot loaded a C-130.. The smell, the fog from the AC blowing in the hot moist air of the cargo bay. Here we go! It caused a pavlov type response in me.

Oh yea! Sicily DZ, the biggest of the sand boxes. I only jumped it once and that was a voluntary Saturday fun jump from a Huey while was waiting between courses.

No DZ I ever jumped any other time was anything like that huge Sicily sandbox!

I guess I was lucky. Lots of night jumps. Italian, German, and Belgium “Balloon” wings. You can hear the rubberbands in which the shroud lines are stowed breaking when you jump a balloon.

My first jump as an SF soldier on a team was at about 01:00 jumping full combat equipment and skies off the ramp of the C-123 onto a snow cover frozen Turner DZ at Ft. Devens, MA.

I came down between the steel posts of a German grape vineyard. I came down in an Italian pig farm. Attending German jump school I had two partial malfunctions, neither one of which required deployment of the reserve. I landed in trees several times.

I only got hurt on my 100th jump when I landed on the end of the runway at Wright Patterson AFB. I hit so hard my hip flattened my coveted aluminum Italian canteen. My right elbow hit so hard the joint capsule of the right elbow was exposed by evisceration.

That was the only time I got hurt.