by Andy McNab
I soon found myself getting into the Ice Cream Boys' swing of things. Each time we landed, we ripped off our jumpsuits and stood around in shorts, boots and shades as we sorted our rigs. We took turns riding a couple of motorbikes cross-country to the nearest medieval settlement in search of ice cream.
The next big challenge was to stop the stuff melting during the thirty-minute return journey. It was Nish who came up with the idea of soaking a couple of Arab shemags in water and wrapping them around the plastic box bungeed to the backrack. As we caned it back across the desert to our C-130, the evaporating moisture acted as a makeshift refrigerator.
58
Most countries don't take kindly to military aircraft encroaching on their air space. They'll scramble an intercept, and if the pilots don't like what they see they'll hose you down with air-to-air missiles. On the other hand, commercial 'friendlies' blip across their radar screens every day of the week. A lot of our jobs would therefore start with freefalls from military aircraft flying along commercial air lanes, or from the cargo holds of commercial jets belonging to colluding airlines. They'd nearly always involve relative work, and almost never be clean fatigue.
We eventually started jumping with weapons and full kit, including a Bergen strapped to our arses. It was a whole new ball game waddling to the tailgate; the extra weight also restricted your leg movements in the air and made your body sit up as you fell. Even so, you could still do relative work – as long as you packed the Bergen right. Leave just one of the side pouches open and symmetry was lost. The air caught it and you spun like a corkscrew.
It only took one fully laden jump for Nish to start fuming. As far as he was concerned, this wasn't the way to jump with kit. 'It's safer on the front. It helps you fall, gives you a lower centre of gravity.'
But the crabs' manual said that was the way we had to pack it – on the back.
He argued non-stop with the RAF instructors. 'The whole planet banned this years ago – it's unsafe.'
They didn't budge. The manual was gospel.
The RAF pissed on our parade even more as the week wore on. They'd decided that equipment could be dropped in a big, bulky MFO box, the kind of crate Frank had been packing that day in Hereford. They'd rigged it up with a parachute designed for heavy equipment drops, and insisted it would work.
'All you have to do is jump out and fly relative to it.'
Nish took a suck on his cigarette. 'Which means we can't do any relative work. It'll be like Wacky Races trying to keep with this thing.'
Tactically, it would be a pain in the arse following it, because nobody would have control over the box. Not even the box would have any control over the box; that was why aeroplanes weren't box-shaped.
'Trust us.'
'Jesus fucking Christ,' Nish muttered. 'Two words you never want to hear from the air force.'
They took us to the truck upon which it was proudly displayed. The parachute rig was fitted with an automatic opening device (AOD), exactly the same as ours. As it encountered a specific level of barometric pressure (at whatever height you set), the AOD would pull the pin from the rig and let the canopy deploy.
We used them if we were jumping with equipment at night. It didn't take much to have a mid-air crash when you were tracking in the dark. If two heads collided you might knock yourselves out. The AOD would bang out your rig for you, even if it wasn't guaranteed to save you. As you spun and tumbled, the canopy might become tangled, or the lines so twisted it couldn't fully deploy.
We tried a daylight jump with the RAF's new toy and it just wasn't happening. The box fell at what seemed like more than terminal velocity and skidded across the sky. It was almost impossible to follow.
The moment we were on the ground, we gave the box a good kicking. Tiny tried opening it to see if it contained anything worth having. It was just filled with bricks and general rubbish as ballast. He wasn't impressed.
The RAF insisted we try again. 'Practice makes perfect, lads.'
The MFO box was mounted on a conveyor with stainless-steel runners, ready to be pushed into space. The opening height for the AOD was set at 3,600 feet this time. As soon as we were at 12,000, the loadmaster leant over and pulled the 'cherry' – the red plastic safety catch – from the AOD. We did the same with ours.
Nish sat and brooded over it. He seemed to be in his own little world.
As we neared the drop point, Saddlebags and I got up and stood by the bundle. No waddling: this time we were jumping clean fatigue.
While everyone else jumped with racing jockeys' goggles – much smaller and with vents on both sides – I still had the standard-issue monsters with no ventilation, so I had them lifted as usual, to clear the condensation. Next trip I was going to make sure I had a Gucci pair, to go with my own rig.
We got the 'ready' and 'set'. On the 'go', Saddlebags and I pushed the bundle off the tailgate and followed it out, tracking down fast and steep, but it was a lost cause. The fucking thing somersaulted and scudded across the sky, like a suitcase falling off a roof-rack on the fast lane of the M25.
Nish came screaming past us like a bolt of lightning, arms swept back. At first it looked like he'd crashed straight into the box, but he managed to get alongside it and gave us a thumbsup before pushing himself away and dumping his canopy with the rest of us at 3,600.
Saddlebags and I looked round for the bundle. It wasn't above us. We looked down.
The canopy hadn't opened.
It plummeted towards the desert floor.
By the time I'd sorted myself out and joined the CRW stack, bricks and debris were strewn in a huge circle all round the point of impact. Such a nice box. What a shame.
We landed within twenty metres of each other and Nish was laughing his bollocks off. By the time we'd stuffed our rigs into their bags and were waiting for the transport, he still hadn't stopped.
'That's enough of that fucking bundle jumping, eh?'
In the middle distance, the C-130 came in to land.
'How did you do it, Nish?'
He grinned. 'Spare cherry. When I tracked in, I stuffed it into the AOD. Safety catch back on. I'd better go and collect it before the crabs turn up.'
59
Nish mightn't have been too happy with things, but I was. This was the stuff of recruitment posters. Sometimes I'd be floating under the canopy as the C-130 landed on the desert strip below me. Sometimes I'd be eyeballing the little Portuguese forts and watchtowers on the hillsides, looking like something out of the Crusades. History was all around me. I loved this game.
We moved on to jumping with oxygen, from 18,000 feet, then 24,000, going higher and higher. Unfortunately, gas has a tendency to expand as you climb, and where Nish led, we followed. The back of the aircraft stank like a drain; everybody farted uncontrollably.
You had to make sure your teeth were in good nick for the same reason. Any air in a tooth cavity would expand. It wasn't unheard of for teeth to explode. Guys had also been badly injured when they flew with blocked sinuses.
Until the last minute, we were breathing oxygen supplied by the C-130. Two RAF jumpmasters moved around with orienteering torches attached to their heads, glowing a dim red so as not to destroy our night vision. Each had an umbilical trailing from his face mask, and their hands moved instinctively to make sure it didn't get snagged or detached from the oxygen supply.
The inside of the aircraft was totally unpressurized, so masks had to go on at 12,000 feet. And the higher we went, the colder it got.
One particular night, we were jumping from 24,000 feet. I checked my alti, one on each wrist. They weren't the old Lancaster-bomber type now but small plastic commercial ones. Like pretty much all sports gear, they were much better than standard issue. We were just below jump height. The command came to rig up. Because of the noise, the jumpmasters did this by holding up A4 flashcards and illuminating them with their red head torches. These were always presented in a set order to cover all the safety checks.
I pushed m
y Bergen behind my legs and put my boots through the shoulder straps, attaching the hooks on each side of it to my rig's harness. I was carrying in excess of a hundred and fifty pounds now. Besides my parachute, I had twenty-four pounds of GPMG rigged up along the left-hand side of my body. The main butt was detached so it didn't stick up above my shoulders and get in the way of the canopy lines, and secreted in my Bergen, along with four hundred rounds of ammunition, weighing another twenty-four pounds, spare batteries for the patrol radio and, of course, my own kit.
We detached our oxygen masks from the main console and switched to personal bottles. They held just twenty minutes' worth and were attached to a belly-band.
We got the order via flashcard to stand. The Bergen hung upside-down from the bottom of my rig. I tightened the shoulder straps around my thighs so I would be able to use my legs to fly. With so much weight hanging off me, my back wanted to arch. The main jumpmaster talked to the flight deck on his head mike, and the tailgate yawned open. Even though I had a helmet on, I heard the massive rush of air, and then a gale was thrashing at my jumpsuit. Far below, just the odd pinprick of light punctured the inky blackness way in the far distance.
The aircraft pitched left and right and gained and lost height continuously as the pilot lined it up towards the drop zone. We were formed up in two lines just short of the tailgate. I was number three in the left-hand line. We got the order to move, and the two lines leant into the weight before waddling forward like ducks. I had to grip the back of Tiny's rig for support.
The front lads, Nish and Chris, got their toes right on the edge of the tailgate. We braced ourselves as the aircraft swayed from left to right and the wind tugged.
The jumpmaster commanded the final pin check. I ripped open the Velcro flap on the back of Tiny's rig to eyeball the steel ripcord pin that kept his canopy in place. Easier said than done in the dim red glow – and by now my oxygen mask was soaking wet inside and my goggles were starting to steam up.
Tiny's pin looked good. It was positioned correctly and there were no obstructions to stop it being released from the rig. When Tiny pulled his handle, the steel wire would in turn pull the pin cleanly from the rig and open up the flaps that hold the canopy inside it. Under pressure from a spring, the drogue chute would be forced out of the rig and grab air. The drogue, in turn, would pull out the main canopy and lines attached to the rig.
I hit him on the right shoulder to let him know. I got the same from Paul behind me.
The two jumpmasters were now fixed to the fuselage via a webbing strap and stood on the edge of the tailgate gripping both Chris and Nish to stop them falling as the aircraft lined up on target. They soon thrust two fingers in the front guys' faces, and yelled. Nish and Chris semi-turned and did the same to the two men behind, and it went down the lines.
Two minutes!
It had to be a yell. You can only just about hear it above the wind rush and the din of four screaming turboprops and, of course, we were wearing oxygen masks.
I pushed up hard against Tiny as the aircraft rocked from side to side. Beyond the open tailgate, there were no longer any pinpricks of light as reference. The sky and ground were one and the same.
I stared at the jump light consoles to the left and right of the tailgate. The two bulbs were unlit.
My goggles had steamed up again. I kept my left hand on Tiny, and with my right I lifted the lenses to let some air in.
'Red on! Red on!'
The red jump lights blazed each side of the tailgate.
Every one of us turned and screamed it to the guy behind him, in front, to anyone who was listening.
'Red on! Red on!'
The red lights changed to green.
Everybody screamed together: 'Ready . . .'
'. . . set . . .'
We rocked back in unison.
'. . . go!'
We pushed to the tailgate in a fast waddle, each guy propelling the one ahead. Tiny disappeared instantly into the blackness and I tumbled out behind him.
The aircraft's slipstream picked me up and took me with it. I felt huge relief as the weight came off, but I was upside-down and still being buffeted around in the slipstream. I spread my arms and legs and arched my back. Immediately, I flipped over into a stable position.
My goggles demisted instantly. Moving your head is about the only thing during freefall that doesn't affect your stability. I looked around, trying to spot other bodies in the pitch black.
It was going to be a two-minute freefall. I had just 120 seconds in which to find someone to link up with, and to try to make sure I didn't crash into anyone or they did to me. I knew they were just a few metres away as I stared into the darkness, but I still couldn't see a thing. The exposed skin on my face wobbled under the pressure of falling.
Some of the stars above me were blocked off for a second as someone tracked left to right above me.
My body jerked as someone gripped my arm and pulled me towards him.
Then another pair of hands from the darkness broke my right-hand grip to join in.
We held each other's jumpsuits, not knowing who was who, lengthening our legs to push ourselves closer together.
At 4,000 feet, we shook each other's arms, let go, turned, and tracked away from each other quickly to get some distance before opening.
I checked my luminous alti, and pulled the right-hand handle at 3,600.
The rig wobbled a little from side to side as the drogue pulled out the main canopy.
I waited, but got no bang from a frying-pan. It was more of a dribble as I got pushed upright; there wasn't any force. I was hanging in a sitting position.
60
My hands shot to the steering toggles. I ripped them off their Velcro and pumped both down rapidly in an effort to expose the canopy and help it grab some serious air. Sometimes they needed a couple of tugs to unfold.
Nothing happened. I knew I was still falling too fast. I looked up. It was too dark to see anything. I might have had a big bundle of laundry above me.
I looked down. There were no points of reference, just the rush of wind. I didn't need to check my altis to know I was well below 3,000. I had about thirty seconds to go before I hit the ground.
I couldn't think of anything else to do but scream, 'Shiiiit!'
As if that was going to help.
I kept on plummeting downwards. I stood a good chance of crashing through someone else's canopy and taking us both out.
I had to cut away.
I'd never done it before. I didn't want to do it now. But I'd run out of options.
I let go of the steering toggles. One hand went for the red cutaway pad on my right, the other for the reserve handle on my left.
I couldn't stop myself screaming again; as I grabbed I banged out my right arm as fast and hard as I could to cut away the main chute at the risers.
Immediately I fell even faster.
I was almost in a sitting position because of the Bergen, and it was starting to drag me backwards. I didn't want that. The emergency rig was on my back.
I yanked the left handle across my body. I could feel the risers of the reserve moving up and then – bang! – frying-pan time.
This wasn't a square canopy, just a basic round one. I had no control of it – not that I gave a fuck at that precise moment. The big problem was: it was so much smaller than the main canopy and I was carrying so much weight that I was still falling too rapidly. I had some other things to do.
