Sergeant Airborne stood by the door, ready to kick me in the back. He grinned and shouted, “Don’t worry, jarhead. I’ll push you, and gravity’ll do the rest.”
When the light turned green, I jumped. No way would he get the satisfaction of pushing me. A proper exit puts a jumper’s feet together, his body bent at the waist, and his hands and elbows tight to the reserve parachute on his stomach. I hit the slipstream with my feet apart and my arms flapping. Head over heels. Sky. Dirt. Sky. Dirt. The shock of the chute deploying stabilized me.
“One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand. Check canopy and gain canopy control.” It was a testament to our training that I remembered exactly what to do, counting aloud as I tumbled through the sky. I checked the risers to make sure they weren’t twisted and looked up to see that the chute was round, with no panels blown out. Around me, parachutes filled the sky. Some jumpers were in a hover, caught in thermal updrafts. Hundred-pound ROTC cadets drifted down like fall leaves. My route to the ground was more direct.
During every jump, there’s a definite transition point between flying and falling. I learned this as the pleasant floating sensation ebbed away and the ground rushed up. I checked the canopy again, expecting to see panels missing, but it looked unripped. Finally, I grabbed the risers and fixed my eyes on the horizon as I had been taught. Don’t anticipate the landing. Back straight. Knees slightly bent.
Impact knocked the air from my lungs. Instead of rolling gently to the side and dissipating the force along the long axis of my body, I went from my feet to the back of my head. There was a flash of blue and then blackness. My chute refused to collapse, and filled by a complicit wind, it dragged my stunned body across the rocky drop zone. I finally pulled the D rings to release it from my harness and lay on my back as the next wave of airplanes passed over, pouring jumpers into the sky. Sergeant Airborne stood above me.
“Four jumps to graduation, jarhead. Only three more landings. Chute don’t even have to open on that last one. We’ll send the wings to your mom.”
Four landings later, I stood at attention while Sergeant Airborne pounded silver jump wings above my left breast pocket, drawing blood. It was the only time I would wear them. Unlike the other services, which decorate their uniforms with badges and patches, Marines wear no special insignia. I flew back to California with a skill I wouldn’t use and wings I couldn’t wear. My only memento of Fort Benning was the pair of red dots on my chest where Sergeant Airborne had taken out his frustration on the United States Marine Corps.
A few weeks later, I froze in the darkness as a spotlight washed over me. My heartbeat sounded like a gong in my ears. Surely, it could be heard a hundred yards away. When the light moved on, I pressed my body deeper into the gravel of the dry riverbed, squirming to put another millimeter of earth between me and the light. With the light were dogs. With the dogs were armed men. Capture meant torture, maybe death. I had to escape from the light. Our C-17 crashed somewhere in the Balkans, dumping me and a dozen others into the cold woods. We had to travel by night and hide by day, trying to link up with underground collaborators who would spirit us to safety.
At least that was the story. In the riverbed that night, I almost believed it. The woods were actually near Warner Springs, California, in the high country east of San Diego. I was a student at the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school. SERE trains “high-risk personnel” — mainly pilots, SEALs, and recon Marines — to evade capture behind enemy lines and to resist torture if caught. The school’s motto is “Return with honor,” a summary of the lessons learned by American prisoners in North Vietnam, the Gulf War, and other conflicts.
SERE’s first week was a gentleman’s course, half days in a classroom at Coronado’s Naval Air Station North Island. On the instructor staff were men who’d spent more time in foreign prisons than I had in the Marine Corps. The purpose of the course, they said, was “to learn to overcome the mind-fuck of captivity.” They taught us our rights under the Geneva Convention — food, shelter, medical attention, and mail — with wry smiles. “Don’t expect to get any of ’em.” They drilled us to memorize the six-article Code of Conduct. The code was written after the Korean War because so much information had been extracted from captured Americans through physical and psychological pressure.