Special Ops: Four Accounts of the Military's Elite Forces

by Orr Kelly

  We used to go out here to Oceana and get the reserves to fly for us and we used to jump. I’d take my wife and two little kids and they’d watch me jump. I liked to jump, so I jumped every time there was a chance. I got jump master qualified. And HALO qualified. Also HALO instructor.

  What is it you like about jumping?

  Well, I like individual sports. I guess that’s why I became a marathon runner. Skydiving is just neat. Falling through the air at 125 miles an hour. It’s a thrill. Opening up the chute, trying to hit a target on the ground.

  I quit logging jumps after—I quit logging after two hundred. I’ve got maybe four hundred. The highest I ever jumped was 21, 000 or 23, 000 feet at Fort Bragg on oxygen.

  It was over 20, 000 and that’s a ninety- to ninety-five-second delay. You just fall and fall and think you’re going to fall forever.

  You mentioned the time you had the cigarette roll. Have you had any other close calls?

  I was jumping at Suffolk one day. We had kicked out the static liners. Myself [and Petty Officers] Stan Janecka and Joe Hulse were in the airplane. I had never done any relative work, where they come in and do a hookup, touch hands.

  I was going to try it this day. I was going to go out, lay out in a stable position, and Stan was going to come down and hook up to me.

  I was out of the plane. Stan came down to me. And Joe dove out of the plane after us. We were jumping from about 12, 500 feet, which is normally about a sixty-second delay. Joe decided to make it a threesome. He tracked in just before I was hooking up with Janecka and he came in too hard. He spun off as he saw he was going to crash into me but his boot hit me.

  It hit me so hard that it spun me around. You have a radial artery and the nerve runs down your arm. You know how your arm goes to sleep and you can’t do anything with it? That’s what happened. And all of a sudden this arm is just flopping.

  I’m trying to stay stable but I spin around. I went into a real uncontrollable spin. And I started to black out.

  It was my right arm and I had a right outside pull. This arm was flopping. The last thing I remember before I started to black out, I reached over with my left hand and pulled my rip cord. Of course my chute must have opened because I’m here to tell you about it.

  The next thing I remember I’m sitting in the saddle. I looked at my altimeter and I was about five thousand feet. I looked at that beautiful Paracommander over me and you know how your brain thinks, you’ve got to get your arms up and steer the thing. But this arm [the left] is the only one that goes up. This one [the right] has no feeling. I couldn’t feel anything. I thought maybe it was broken.

  I’m trying to steer with one toggle. Then I started getting some sensation in my fingers. I lifted my right arm with my left hand and I grabbed the toggle and the weight of my arm brought it down to half brake position. So I could turn and make a landing. Of course when I got on the ground, Stan and Joe Hulse came over. Joe was all apologetic.

  I said, “Don’t you get near me!”

  CHAPTER

  38

  “Your Adrenaline Pumps”

  Rudy Boesch was for many years the SEALs’ Bullfrog—the longest-serving member of the teams. He retired in 1990 after serving as command master chief for the U.S. Special Operations Command. He tells about his experience in parachuting:

  Have you done a lot of parachuting?

  Quite a bit. But I wasn’t a fanatic like a lot of people were. Some of these guys, once they started, they’d go out on weekends. I did it when it was necessary or on a nice, sunny day, maybe, when there was nothing else to do. I didn’t really go out of my way to make parachute jumps.

  How many jumps have you made?

  I don’t even know. I told myself a long time ago, when I get out of the military I won’t be jumping again so I don’t care how many I’ve had. I wish I did keep it, now.

  Do you still get nervous after all the jumps you’ve made?

  Your adrenaline pumps. I always looked forward to the jump master inspecting me to make sure I was dressed right. You can always make a mistake. You probably don’t really feel at ease until you get out of the airplane and you get stable. You’re standing on the edge of the door, looking down ten thousand feet, and you dive out.

  Did you ever get in trouble on a jump?

  Three different times I had to pull my reserve. One time, the main chute didn’t come off my back. The flap opened but the chute stayed in there. They call it a burble. The suction keeps it in. You do a couple of flips, twist around, and try to shake it loose. And if you can’t shake it loose, right about then you pull your reserve. I pulled the reserve and the shock when that opened knocked the main chute out. The main fell down, the reserve is up there. But the main is bigger than the reserve and that started coming up and filling with air and then the reserve fell down.

  Aren’t you supposed to get rid of the main chute when you pull your reserve?

  This was the MC-1, before they came out with the squares. When you pull your reserve now, it cuts away your main. It’s automatic. The square is like a Cadillac compared with those round parachutes. It’s almost like flying an airplane. You can land on a tabletop.

  You said you had several problems?

  I had some panels blow out. There are thirty-two-some panels. Some panels blew out. The chute started twisting, getting smaller and smaller. So I pulled my reserve. The other time I had a line over the top—what they call a Mae West. All the malfunctions were with round chutes. I never had any with square chutes.

  With those new chutes, you can go thirty or forty miles. You jump at thirty or thirty-five thousand feet with oxygen. You jump and pull and start flying. They have instruments. They follow a leader. When you see ’em coming, it looks like a big snake. They do all this at night. They have strobe lights and they all have radios. It’s called HAHO—high altitude, high opening.

  When you make a high jump, you can feel it in the air. As you get to about eight thousand feet, you can feel the air getting thicker.

  I understand your wife has made a jump.

  My wife took up parachute jumping about ten years ago. She made nine jumps with somebody else, tandem jumps. [In a tandem jump, the novice is strapped to an experienced jumper who has the parachute on his back.]

  Did she free fall?

  Yeah, they jump at 10, 000 to 13, 000 feet and fall to 3, 000. She had sixty to ninety seconds free fall. As you do it, he says, “Do you want me to turn some flips?” Whatever she wants to do, he does. The second time, she opened her eyes.

  Why did she take up parachuting?

  I don’t know. She just told me one day that she’s going to make a parachute jump Saturday. This was Monday. I didn’t think nothing of it. Tuesday she tells me the same thing. Thursday she says, “I’m going to jump Saturday.” Friday she told me, “I’m going to jump tomorrow.”

  I figured if she’s going to jump tomorrow she probably won’t even sleep tonight. She slept like a log all night. We got out there and she jumped. I couldn’t believe it. A week or so later she was out there again and my daughter was out there and she was watching them make a jump. And I’m standing there with her and she looks up and she says, “I would never do that.”

  About three hours later, she’s chuting up. She did it.

  What is her name?

  Barbara. We have three daughters and two jumped, Barbara and Ellen. Marjorie is my wife.

  Marjorie sounds pretty adventurous.

  She wants to try everything I do. For a while, I was on the navy bobsled team. I took her on the bobsled in Lake Placid. She’s made parachute jumps, rode the bobsled. She skis. She does everything but diving. She doesn’t want to get her hair wet.

  Do many SEAL wives do these things?

  Not many. A lot of them would like to but they figure they can’t do it, physically. She did convince a few other wives to do it [parachute] but they only did one or two.

  Has she continued to jump?

  Three days before I retired
[in 1990] me, her, and the guy she jumped with went out of the same airplane. A little Cessna. And since then, the guy she jumped with got killed, parachute jumping. He creamed in, went all the way in. Him and another guy, a student in front of him.

  What happened?

  They never did find out. The guy had over eight thousand jumps. He was a sergeant major in the army. His name was Santos Matos [Santos A. Matos Jr.].

  The last one my wife made was when me and her went out of the airplane. That scared her, that guy getting killed. She was pretty close to him. The other two women who she talked into jumping, they both jumped with this guy, too. When I told her about it, she was shaken. She was that scared.

  CHAPTER

  39

  “I’m Going to Jump”

  For years, Marjorie E. Boesch had seen her husband, Rudy, go off to do all the dangerous things SEALs do, leaving her to raise their three daughters. And then, one day, she decided to take up parachuting herself. She tells what it was like:

  Why did you decide to jump out of a plane?

  After the girls were in high school, I started to work at the beach hospital here [in Virginia Beach], two days a week. This nurse took up skydiving.

  She said, “You’ve just got to try it, Marge.”

  I said, “You know, Rudy has done it for so many years, I would like, just once, to try it. Yeah, I’ll do it.”

  It was a fellow attached to SEAL Team SIX that did this tandem jumping. He was an instructor.

  So I told Rudy, “On Saturday, we’re going to go to Suffolk and I’m going to jump.”

  He said, “Jump what?”

  I said, “Jump out of an airplane.”

  He said, “Oh, I don’t believe you.”

  He thought sure I’d be all nervous and I was the most calm person. Really. He thought I wouldn’t sleep and I’d be nervous. But I really wasn’t. In fact, we took one of our daughters, Barbara, with us. She’s the youngest. So we jumped and I knew right away there would have to be a second jump. You couldn’t take in everything in the first jump.

  Danny [Doyle], the fellow I jumped with, he said, “Did you see the numbers on the bottom of the airplane?”

  I said, “Well, I didn’t look up after we jumped out.”

  It was just great.

  And Barbara said, “That’s something I’ll never do!” Three hours later she went up in the airplane and jumped.

  What got into her?

  I don’t know. Just the excitement. Everybody’s packing their chutes and getting their chutes on and instructions. And this is just a little airplane where you’ve got to crawl out on the wing.

  I said, “Rudy, do you think I’ll be able to hold on?”

  He says, “The thing is, are you going to let go?”

  But that was no problem. It was so hard getting out there with the force of the wind. All he does is tap you on the shoulder and that’s it. The hard part was crawling out there. The pilot’s here and you’re sitting on the guy’s lap, more or less. There’s room for two more jumpers [in] back of you. Getting your legs out there, both of you, because you’re attached together, isn’t an easy feat.

  The second jump I made, my leg got tangled up. Thank God we had another jumper with us to push my leg out the door. The force of the wind is so strong. Gosh!

  A funny thing happened when Barbara was going to make her jump. The pilot asked if I wanted to ride along. Danny was the only one who did tandem jumps and Danny was taking Barbara. I said, sure. I sat next to the pilot. We’re on the ground yet. And this was a bigger airplane. They were just going to walk out the side door.

  I’ll say there were twenty jumpers on the plane. So the pilot has the engines going and we’re talking away. I guess we started to go and he isn’t looking where he’s going and there’s a building there and the wing went through a window on the building. Rudy and my friend were standing there and they thought, oh my God, Marge is flying the plane and she’s hit the building. That poor pilot got razzed so much. He just backed up and we went out.

  I had a total of nine jumps. The last time I jumped here, in Suffolk, was in the snow. It was exciting. And then down in Florida, it was a big airplane. All you had to do was walk out the door. You didn’t have to crawl out on a wing and hang on. There were like fifty jumpers on this plane. It was just wonderful.

  This Sergeant Major Matos, who since has been killed, he’d turn flips and somersaults and oh, it was just wonderful. And the scenery, it was just beautiful. You hated it to end.

  Did you have a chute?

  No, just him—a big one like a cargo chute. He’s behind me and we’re hooked together. I never got as far as wanting to do it myself. I thought there was just too much to learn. I said I’m too old for this. I don’t want to learn all that. It was really exciting.

  How old were you?

  I was fifty-one then.

  Was your first jump a free fall?

  Yes. It was just wonderful. I did nine jumps in two years. Everybody got the bug, I talked about it so much. Our oldest daughter, Ellen, she jumped, too. A couple of other women here decided they wanted to do it. And then down in Florida, too, there were others that went on to free-fall themselves, they liked it so much. Of course they were younger, too.

  Why did you free-fall?

  I didn’t know there was any other kind.

  You made your nine jumps and then stopped?

  Rudy retired. I was with Sergeant Major Matos and Rudy, in the same airplane, the three of us jumped that last time, the day after Rudy retired [in 1990]. And then, that was it.

  When was Matos killed?

  The next year. In fact, we were there, down in Florida, at MacDill Air Force Base. Rudy was going to go out in the morning to help look for him. It was over at Zephyr Hills [a popular sport parachuting site]. Before they got the group together, they had found him.

  Another fellow had jumped with him. I guess, to this day they don’t know what happened. I mean, he had hundreds of jumps. I can’t imagine what happened. I know the last few jumps with Matos, I’m the one who pulled the rip cord. I’d have to reach back here on his parachute. I don’t know why the guy himself couldn’t have done it if something had happened to Matos.

  What does it feel like to free-fall?

  When you’re free-falling you can see for miles. It was just a heavenly feeling. Of course when you pull the chute, you just float. With tandem jumping, you would be the last jumpers out of the plane. And then you could see all the other chutes. Especially at Zephyr Hills, where there would be like fifty jumpers. What a sight that was. Just beautiful.

  You could watch their formations. They were always doing formations. Matos and I hooked up with one formation one time. They come zooming in. I don’t know how they stop, why they don’t crack heads. I never learned. We got in one formation, just so he could show me—how simple he says it is. It wasn’t simple at all, I don’t think.

  Was it difficult landing with two of you hooked together?

  We never had any trouble landing. You just draw your legs up. As soon as his touched, yours touched. We always stood right up, never fell.

  Is it hard getting to your target?

  On the first jump, you think it’s way over there. How are you ever going to get there? He’ll tell you which strings to pull, which side to help pull, and you get there.

  Have you done any other adventurous things?

  I beat Rudy in racquetball. That’s one thing I can beat him in. I like to ski. I tore two ligaments in my knee this past March. I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to ski in February or not but we’re going out to Montana. Of course then Rudy was on the bobsled team. That was exciting, too. He was on the navy team up in Lake Placid. I went up for about ten days.

  They had a half-mile run and a mile run. I did both. That was great. I enjoyed that.

  I don’t like to dive. That never interested me. Rudy taught the three girls. But I guess I’ve got claustrophobia. I can’t imagine going in a submarine. I can
swim on top of the water, but never under. He never pushed me. He never pushed me into anything. I think he was the most shocked person when I jumped out of the airplane. He never thought I’d do it.

  CHAPTER

  40

  “I Hated Every One …”

  Jack Macione describes his experiences as a reluctant parachutist:

  I made my 549th parachute jump three days before I retired. That’s a fairly low number when it comes to team members. There are guys with 3, 000, 4, 000, even 5, 000 jumps.

  I’m going to admit to you. I did it all and I hated every one of them. I never felt comfortable parachuting, but I did it all. I jumped a jet from thirty-seven thousand feet. Jumped with rubber boats tied to me. Jumped even with a nuclear weapon tied to me. A little SADM [special atomic demolition munition]—forty-three pounds. One kiloton yield.

  Of those 549 jumps, all but about 50 or 60 were free fall. I went to five schools: basic airborne, HALO, light army aircraft, jump master, and parachute packing. I jumped every damn aircraft we had in the inventory up to that point.

  My highest jump was 37, 900 feet. There was about a five-minute free fall before we opened. It was out of an A-3D over Fort Bragg about 1963.

  Everything we did was dangerous. It was like everyday breathing. We would go out and do a mission that some army guy would get a Silver Star for and we would get a thanks.

  In high-altitude jumping, the danger is that it is the best way to execute somebody. All these things they’re doing to criminals. If you deprive someone of oxygen, you’re out. You don’t feel a thing. You don’t even feel yourself going out. It is not depriving someone of air. With a lack of air, you start gagging and choking. If you are deprived of oxygen, you are out. And if you continue to deprive them of oxygen, they die and they don’t feel a thing.

  I know because that happened to me. I didn’t die. I had a lack of oxygen twice. I’m talking to you like I’m talking to you now and the next thing I know, somebody is waking me up. So you’ve got to be sure your oxygen systems are operating. One of the dangers in those days was, we would be on ship’s oxygen. You’re breathing good. When we got ready to jump, we had bailout bottles. They used to call it “pull the apple.” There was a little green thing. You had to break this pin by pulling it. That pin was so hard to break! Guys would pull down on it and their minds would say, it has to be broken because you can’t pull any harder. And they’d go off ship’s oxygen and then pass out. They hadn’t broken the pin. You’d pull down until you thought you were going to dislocate your elbow and then you would hear it snap.