Part 7 of the Man Who Fell: "Hang in There..."

To catch up, click on parts 1, 2, 3, 4 , 5, and 6.

Being a reservist with a house and family back in Oklahoma, and after not having seen them all those months, all he could think of in that crushing moment was, ‘Oh my God, I’m stuck in this tent!?”

He quickly came to terms with his predicament and adjusted best he could. Right off the bat he established a “new relationship” with the skinny corporal. He left the tent intending to take a trip to the Post Exchange.

“Whoa. Where do you think you’re going?” the corporal demanded.

“I’m going to the PX. If you have a problem with that then you can come along with me.”

“Come on man. I’m just doing what I was told. If I let you go I could get in trouble,” the redhead practically pleaded.

“Well, I’m going, so you do what you got to do.”

From what he can remember of it, for the rest of his tent-living time George pretty much came and went as he pleased. The corporal continued to hang around, but they just ignored each other—a mutual agreement to live and let live.

The next two months passed in a blur. George would walk to the barracks for a shower and shave and then find himself at the sink without remembering the walk. Or, he’d walk to the PX and then he’d magically be back in the tent with a bag of sundries that he couldn’t remember buying. Even with his painful injuries he walked everywhere, but rarely remembered the actual walking part. Perhaps it was his body’s defense mechanism shielding him from the worst of the hurt.

On the day of the court martial George clearly remembers getting squared away in his best uniform and being nervous as hell. Two serious looking MPs showed up at his tent, probably sent in part to check out his state of mind for the colonel. They put George in handcuffs, and then one of them left. The other MP told George, “Wait a minute.”

And so he did until at last Colonel Bank entered the tent wearing fatigues and a soft hat. George came to attention and the colonel stood directly in front of him and in a very solemn voice spoke to George, “Sergeant W, I’ve thought it over and I have decided to drop all the charges.”

After spending so many months thinking about his predicament, George desperately wanted to say his piece, to explain why he said the things he said and did the things he did, and so he began earnestly, “I apologize sir, however, due to the circumstances…”

The colonel interrupted him harshly, “I don’t care if you were in five different pieces—you will never speak that way to an officer ever again. Do you understand?”

George shut his mouth, locked his body, and kept his explanations to himself.

To this day, considering what happened, he doesn’t understand why the colonel put him through the charade of an impending court martial. Knowing what I know now about military legal procedures, such as the requirement to provide counsel which was never done, its obvious there was never any intent to press charges. George theorizes that maybe the colonel wanted an excuse to come back to the USA from Bad Tolz Germany, but that is pure conjecture.

Incredibly, as far as the results of the parachute malfunction investigation George was told that the findings were secret and could not be disclosed! I asked him if he had any enemies, because it sure sounds like someone was out to kill him. We’ll never know.

Remember earlier in this story when George’s mere “living” presence caused people’s eyes to grow as big as plates in surprise? Well, the third time is the charm. When he at long last got back to Oklahoma and walked in the door of his home, he was delighted to see his wife and his mother in the living room, but instead of rushing up to him to deliver hugs and kisses they looked at him in shock, like they were looking at a ghost. The army had dutifully sent a telegram to his wife informing her that he had died during a military operation. This must have been during that time he had found himself in the Womack morgue. His family had spent the entire summer thinking him dead-and-gone in some faraway place.

George stayed in the army for four more years before his injuries pretty much forced him to call it quits. Believe it or not, he managed to stay in SF until the end. He even continued to jump albeit with great pain on every landing. Clearly it’s true that these Green Beret fellows are made of incredibly tough stuff, but that fall from the sky ruined him for the rest of his life as he freely admits.

Since that day he has never been without pain, and his physical and mental conditions have kept him from following most of his vocational dreams. The amazing thing for me is that he has little bitterness in him for the army or the SF. He is very proud of his service and most of his friends and acquaintances to this day are fellow SF veterans or "normal"vets like myself. (Most of us "normal" veterans consider these SF guys to be just this side of supermen).

It was late afternoon two months ago when George came over to retell his incredible story over several rounds of coffee and tea. The fascinating tale took several hours to narrate and as I walked him out to his vehicle he thought of one last bit of irony. He told me that printed on his birth certificate are some very prophetic words to be sure. I couldn’t believe it when he told me what they are with that big toothy grin of his, “I must have had a very hard birth, in fact, according to my birth certificate it says that I was stillborn!”

It seems that from the very beginning of his life, George W has spent much of it proving to other people that he’s NOT dead! Hang in there buddy... I believe you!

Part 6 of The Man Who Fell: "The Spirit is Willing..."

To catch up, click on parts 1, 2, 3, 4 , and 5.

What I find incredible is that George “healed” almost completely on his own, but did he really? The army never treated him, never provided any real physical therapy and never even set a single bone. He found out much later--long after his discharge--that he had sustained a nasty green stick fracture to his right femur. (note: the sample photo of a greenstick fracture is of the lower leg) Instantly, he lost two and ½ inches of height. This is due to his vertebrae mashing together, as did the bones in his hips, knees and ankles.

Obviously, his brain came loose in its “housing” resulting in all kinds of brain function problems over the years, mostly to his short term memory. All his tendons, muscles, blood vessels, and organs ripped, tore, and hemorrhaged, as did every bit of connective tissue. The organs of his central body cavity ripped loose from their moorings and ended up in a painful jumble in the pit of his belly where they still sit unrepaired to this day. Even his heart is not where it should be having shifted in his chest.

His femoral arteries, the big ones that run down into the legs through the big pelvic bones were so badly damaged that they are now completely closed. Over the years his body developed alternate vessels around them. This reduced blood flow has caused his lower limbs to atrophy and weaken.

George gets a chuckle every time he has a CAT scan or an X-ray done. It doesn’t matter what part of his body they look at, there’s always something remarkable to see. Essentially, he is one big internal lesion. Every joint shows space narrowing (to say the least!) and extreme damage, and none of his organs are where they should be. What does upset him though, is the reaction he gets whenever he tells the medical people what caused the injuries—inevitably, they voice disbelief. No one, especially civilian medical personnel, can believe that a man can fall almost unimpeded from 1250 feet and live; and George does NOT like being called a liar (especially by the VA!).

Because his mind would no longer consistently record the days or even the minutes, George can’t tell you today exactly how long he spent recovering at Womack Army Hospital that summer of ’61. To him, it felt like no more than 3 to 4 days instead of the more likely 3 to 4 months he actually spent mending there.

His army medical records from that period do not exist anymore. Somehow, the army lost them, not an unusual story from what I’ve seen helping other veterans like him. Maybe they were burned in the Great St. Louis fire of ’72, or maybe they are just misplaced in the huge archives building called NPRC. The VA doesn’t care why they can’t find them; once the records are lost it then becomes the veteran’s responsibility to prove his conditions resulted from active service.

It's hard to imagine considering what he went through, but the VA actually gave George a difficult time when he first claimed his condition back in the ‘70s. Mostly because once again, no one could believe what happened to him. And over the years his injuries have become worse and worse until now he is practically an invalid, although still the tough Green Beret, you’d never guess the extent of his physical problems if you met him.

But all that heartache was years in the future. The immediate effects of George's parachute mishap still had to be suffered through. The furthest thing from his youthful macho mind was ending his army career, but that’s exactly what the medical staff was proposing. A doctor offered him an immediate medical discharge, but George turned him down flat. Sometimes, being a tough guy can work against you, especially when you can’t see the future, because taking that medical retirement is exactly what he should have done.

“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” is a paraphrased quote from the New Testament that fits George’s situation back then perfectly. In his mind he was still the undamaged rough-and-ready Green Beret he had been before “the fall.” The 21-year-old was not ready to accept how horribly injured his body and mind actually was, and soon, he would learn another astonishing truth—the army still had one more surprise in store for the resilient young sergeant.

George’s memories of the next two plus months are hazy. It’s as if his life was a movie and whole segments of the film were snipped out. When he was "well enough" (a relative term in his case) to leave the hospital, he was instructed to make his way to the “Smoke Bomb Hill” Special Forces area for further orders. Even though he wasn’t stationed on Fort Bragg, he knew the layout of the base from his many visits there. He made his way on foot, feeling that "things" were "not right" inside him. He simply ignored the internal discomfort and kept trucking.

There was a large open field on the edge of Smoke Bomb Hill and he noticed a lone 12-man squad tent pitched on the edge of it. As he neared the tent a skinny red-headed corporal greeted him, “Are you Sergeant W....? All your gear is in the tent. I’ve been instructed to tell you that this will be your quarters until further notice. When you need to shit, shower and shave you will do so only in those barracks across the way.” The corporal pointed to some distant non-SF barracks buildings across the road and continued, “You are only to go to those barracks and to the chow hall over there. You are under detention here and you are not to go anywhere else on the base except for this area, the chow hall and to the barracks.”

George ignored the corporal and entered the tent. A cot was set up on the grass floor on the right side with all his gear piled on the cot. He had noticed a post driven into the ground in front of the tent with a document thumbtacked to it and he went back outside to check it out. Reading it, he shook his head in disbelief. It seems he was under house or “tent” arrest until a court martial in 6 to 9 weeks time. The charges were listed as disobeying direct orders, insubordination, and destruction of government property.

That was the appreciation he got for crashing into the ground and living!

Continue to part 7, the final installment, and learn the shocking details of what finally happened to "The Man Who Fell..."

Part 5 of The Man Who Fell ... "the morgue?!"

To catch up on the story, click on parts 1, 2, 3, and 4

At the assembly area there was a truck with a couple of “riggers” gathering chutes. With no little hostility George threw his bagged chute on the ground next to the failed reserve chute that the colonel had brought up. This caused one of the riggers to shout, “You’d better straighten them out!”

“They came out that way and they are going back that way!” George responded bitterly, “And I want two parachute malfunction reports filled out and I want a damned investigation!” He demanded.

At that, with the last of his superhuman will and strength used up, George collapsed and this time he could not get back up. At long last his team reacted and came to his aid. They picked him up and awkwardly placed his lanky frame across the back of the colonel’s jeep. By the time they made it to Womack hospital at Fort Bragg he was out of his mind and began to resist and struggle. He no longer knew any of the men with him and didn’t even know where he was.

At the hospital emergency room, before the medics could move him they had to restrain his combative body by tightly strapping him down on a gurney. One of the doctors when told that the struggling trooper had fallen asked, “What, was he getting on or off the aircraft?” One of his buddies responded, “No doc, his parachute failed and I think it knocked his brains loose.” This retort turned out to be truer than he knew.

Georges’s memories of his experiences in the hospital are sketchy, mostly because his injured brain at the time would no longer consistently hold those memories.

There is one disturbing incident that stayed in his bruised grey matter and for good reason. When they first brought him into Womack, he dimly recalls the doctors working on him before his consciousness switched “off” again. When he woke up he felt cold, icy cold in fact. Curiously, he saw that he was lying on a stainless steel table with just a thin sheet over him. Turning his eyes, he noticed another guy on an adjacent table. He couldn’t see the man’s face but he could clearly see a toe tag dangling from his foot.

Putting two and two together, George realized he was now “parked” in the morgue. An unsuspecting guy bumped through the doors with a mop and bucket and began to swab the floor. George watched him intently until eventually the fellow looked up and saw an obviously “living dead guy” looking back at him. Once again he saw a man’s eyes grow as big as pie plates. Needless to say, the surprised fellow stopped mopping and went for help. Evidently, against the army’s continuing insistence that he be deceased, George just refused to go along with that notion.

If George had been a normal man instead of the tough Green Beret that he was, perhaps things would have been different for him over the next 4 or 5 months. If he’d refused to jump when he saw the suspect parachutes waiting for him; if he’d just said his prayers when he saw it was hopeless during the plunge to earth; if he’d gone quietly into the darkness instead of fighting for life while lying paralyzed there on the ground; if he’d lain still when the colonel ordered him to; and if he’d shut up instead of responding so vociferously to the colonel’s commands… IF, IF, IF! But then again, if he’d done all those things he wouldn’t be George.

After the morgue incident, one of his next recollections was waking up, in a real bed this time, when a nurse came into the room. “She asked me if I’d like to sit up and helped me into a sitting position.” That moment with the nurse was the beginning of his active involvement in his physical recovery. Unfortunately, it was a rehabilitation that was done almost entirely on his own with very little help from the army.

When I asked him what it felt like during his recovery, George describes it as a “sickening hurt.” And why would he not feel terrible? His body had sustained punishment that would certainly have killed the rest of us. The fact that he didn’t die has to have a lot to do with luck and his extraordinary will to live.

Consider the forces acting on him when he bounced off the ground at more than a mile a minute. His bones, tissue and fluids were hurtling through space, and then, instantaneously, reversed course into the opposite direction--a sure formula for death.

The g-forces must have been in the hundreds. His neck should have snapped, and probably would have if not for the rope of twisted risers holding his head mostly immobile, and as such, what almost killed him probably helped to save him. Also, George’s tightly tucked Parachute Landing Fall caused him to “roll” back into the sky instead of sticking into the ground like a broken fleshy dart. This masterful maneuver kept him alive but did not prevent some horrible physical damage. And who knows which of his many injuries he sustained from that 20-foot secondary fall?

Click to continue on to Part 6 of "The Man Who Fell." He's not quite done yet with getting back up and dusting himself off.

Part 4 of The Man Who Fell ... "I guess I'm dead"

To catch up on the story, click on parts 1, 2, and 3.

The ambulance drove off. In his peripheral vision George saw a soldier walk over to him and then kneel at his side. The man checked for a pulse at both wrists and at the neck. He took a small signal mirror and held it to George’s nose and mouth looking for any sign of exhaling breath. Evidently finding no sign of life, he unhooked George from his equipment before once again checking for a pulse at his wrists and neck. He even laid his head on George’s chest listening for a heartbeat.

“I remember him looking down at me and he had a real sad look on his face” says George. “He walked away for a time, but then he came back and for the third time checked me for a pulse, and still he found nothing. He walked off again and then I thought, ‘I guess I AM dead, but a dead man can’t see… I have got to MOVE!”

George was literally trapped inside his body. “It was like I was tied down in every sense. I tried and tried to move but I couldn’t. Then the thought of my wife and baby daughter filled my mind. I struggled even harder to move and then “BING,” suddenly something “let go” and I found myself popping over from my back and unto my knees.”

Hearing the commotion, the old soldier hurriedly returned. Like all SF troops, he wore no rank or name tags on his fatigues, even so, George assumed the man was an officer because of his older age and air of command presence. George laughs when he tells it, “When he saw that I was suddenly alive after all, his eyes got as big as I’ve ever seen. He was in total shock. I was moving back and forth trying to collect my equipment, but I kept falling over.”

Later, George isn’t sure how much later, he found out that the older officer was none other than Colonel Aaron Bank, the famous founder of the Green Berets. If indeed it was Bank and it probably was, he told George, “Soldier, lie down and don’t move.”

He wasn’t about to lie still and let that deathly paralysis take over his body again and adamantly rebuffed him with a, “Go to hell!”

Haltingly, painfully, George continued to look for his equipment, but in his befuddled state he could find none of it and all the while he kept falling.

“I’m giving you a direct order soldier: Lay down!” Colonel Bank demanded.

“Kiss my ass!” George responded. (Although other Special Forces troops who were there say that he actually said something even MORE forceful—and it rhymes with “pluck dew.”)

The colonel could see he wasn’t getting anywhere with this contrary “Lazarus” and gave up, saying, “Well, I guess the best thing I can do for you is to try and get you the hell out of here.”

Staggering around and falling down, George concentrated on trying to straighten out his traitorous main chute. He noticed with disgust that it had dried up old cockleburs and twigs stuck all through it, none of which was in any evidence on the ground around him.

Unable to find the bag for George’s failed reserve, Bank picked up the chute and started dragging it up the hill. For a while longer George looked in vain for his lost gear but to no avail. Incredibly, he managed to get his chute inside the bag and began to carry it, following after the colonel. He would take a few unsteady steps and fall down, then get up, walk a bit more and fall again.

Finally, he found his team lounging beneath a large shady tree. He realized it was the tree he had seen from above on the way down. As he finally drew near, his team began to cheer and applaud. Hunt called out, “Good show W.!”

I asked George why none of his team had come out to help him or at least to pay tribute to his carcass when they must have thought he was a goner, but George could not say why. I think it bothers him today that they did not, but after speaking to another SF veteran I did get one semi-plausible answer for their apparent callousness.

Here’s what a local Green Beret vet told me, “When I had my jump accident and broke my leg, I didn’t want any help, and my buddies all understood that. It’s a Special Forces thing.” I’ll take his word for it, but it sure goes against my own natural inclinations to rush out and try to help a fallen buddy.

Click here to read Part 5 to see what happens to George next. He was hurt much worse than anyone could have imagined; and even though George survived his deadly plunge, “The Grim Reaper” was not yet done with him. Oh no, George’s problems are FAR from over—he hasn’t QUITE completely cheated Death just yet!

Part 3 of "The Man Who Fell" ... "Terminal Velocity"

Part 1 of "The Man Who Fell:" ... "Uh oh!"

Part 2 of "The Man Who Fell:" ... "malfunction"

George recalled the final seconds of his fall chuckling, “I heard Captain Jack Abraham Junior the III hollering at me from below. I saw him trying to direct his chute in an attempt to intercept me by pulling on his risers. T-10s are certainly not steerable, still, he tried. In trying to help me he was sacrificing himself because if I had hit his canopy, there was a good chance it would have killed us both. More from instinct than anything else, I reached out and made a swipe for it, but I just flashed past him.”

He paused, taking a sip of coffee before continuing, "It’s very quiet up there. You can hear everything. I heard another SF jumper yelling something at me. I remember seeing red hair under his helmet as I went past him, but I couldn’t catch what he was saying."

"I could see the ground coming at me very quickly. You don’t really have a sensation of falling; it’s more like the earth comes up at you. I knew there wasn’t much slowing me down if anything. I saw a tree below go from tiny to big in a matter of a second or two. Since that day I’ve tried to gauge what my falling speed was by watching trees flash by along the highway. You know, as you approach them and they get bigger and bigger? From that, I figure I was going faster than 60 miles per hour—at least.”

Note: (Terminal velocity of a sky diver is about 125 mph, so considering the drag of his chute materiel and equipment, plus the fact that he slowed down initially by glancing off two of his buddies’ chutes, a 60 plus miles per hour closing speed sounds reasonable).

“I assumed the tightest PLF I could.” (PLF stands for Parachute Landing Fall). Sitting on my couch across from the room from me George demonstrated the PLF. With knees bent and tightly held together, he twisted his legs as far to his left as he could from the hip, while also twisting his upper body as far as possible in the other direction. He looked like a human spring or a corkscrew.

He explained, “The way it’s supposed to work, when a jumper hits the ground under his chute at 16 to 18 feet per second, his body rolls up the earth and the force of the impact is a glancing one up the jumper's side that actually flips him back into the air and unto his feet. That’s the theory anyway.”

I laughed, interrupting him, "And you say you did THAT for a living? Are you nuts?!" I said it trying to pull his chain a little.

George laughed right back, "Hell yeah! I loved it!"

When he saw that tree far below seem to instantaneously blow up to full size he concentrated on doing the tightest PLF he’d ever done. Instead of going into a screaming panic and fixating on the probability of death, he concentrated on following "the numbers" of his training. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing, allowing one to act even under the most unthinkable of circumstances.

With very little emotion he describes nonchalantly what it was like to hit the ground going as fast as a speeding car on a highway, “It was like a black explosion.” When he said it I could tell it wasn’t the first time he’d done so. He’s probably been asked that question dozens of times over the years.

He went on, “I was told that I bounced at least 20 feet back up into the air. All I felt was that black explosion and then moments later I felt a terrible “Whummp!” when I landed the second time flat on my back. Everything stayed dark, but then, next thing I knew, I could see blue sky and clouds, and then I heard a man screaming.”

George’s vision was stuck in an eyes-open straight-up gaze. The way he describes it he had only two senses still working; he could see and he could hear—that was it. He couldn’t move, not even his eyes, and he had no sensation of touch anywhere in his body.

Perhaps strangest of all was that he could not breathe, yet he did not have the panicky sensation of oxygen starvation that normally comes when a person can’t draw in air. The thought crossed his mind that maybe he WAS dead, but then he figured if that was the case then he shouldn’t be able to see and hear.

The fellow doing all the screaming was the red-headed soldier that had yelled at him as he plummeted past. Evidently the guy had been so transfixed at the sight of George streamering into the ground that “he hadn’t taken care of his own business,” as George says. The man suffered a nasty compound fracture to his leg and he was letting everybody know it.

George could hear vehicles approaching and then stop nearby. One was a jeep and the other an ambulance. He heard an authoritative voice say to the medics in the ambulance, “Nothing you can do for that guy. Go ahead and take the man with the broken leg in. I’ll pronounce that one dead and we’ll bring him on in ourselves in my jeep.”

George knew that he was the deceased fellow they were talking about and he struggled to move to prove that he was still alive if not kicking. Evidently the sickening sight of a man bouncing off the ground from 1250 feet at high speed had convinced everyone who saw it that no one could possibly have survived such a thing.

Note: I found a website that includes a description of the Sicily Drop Zone, the place on which George “bounced.” The person who wrote it seemed to have George in mind while writing the blackly humorous description:

“Sicily Drop Zone: One of the main spots at Bragg for testing whether or not you’ve packed your chute properly. The ground is nice and sandy, so if your pack malfunctions, they can just cover you up like a cat turd.”

Part 4 of The Man Who Fell ... "I guess I'm dead"

Part 2 of "The Man Who Fell:" ... "malfunction"

If you haven't read it yet, click on: Part 1 of "The Man Who Fell:" ... "Uh oh!"

The reason for George's "uh oh" is that normally at the “one thousand and three” count the chute would snap open with a violent jerk and he’d start riding it to the ground. This time, in the split second before he got to “four” he knew instinctively something was wrong. Sure enough, in an instant he could see nothing but the inside of his helmet. His head was being forced down so that his chin was firmly clamped to his chest.

Trapped under the confined darkness of his tilted helmet he felt his body land on the side of one of his fellow jumpers’ chutes. He fell down the side of the chute, partially collapsing it, before falling freely away again. Immediately he felt himself fall into another chute only this time he merely glanced off it before continuing his plunge.

He tried to push his helmet back up, but it would not go. He managed instead to push it far enough to the left to see with his right eye. Through his now uncovered right eye he saw that he was falling almost horizontally on his back with his feet slightly lower than his head. In this position he could see above him that his chute had malfunctioned in several critical ways.

Coming out of the “sock” the suspension risers had twisted into a thick rope all the way up to the canopy. It was the thick bulk of those twisted risers that was forcing his helmeted head as far forward as it would go. There was no way he could resist it.

He could see the canopy was involved in a complete inversion. Here’s how Wikpedia describes parachute inversions: (An "inversion" occurs when one skirt of the canopy blows between the suspension lines on the opposite side of the parachute and then catches air. That portion then forms a secondary lobe with the canopy inverted. The secondary lobe grows until the canopy turns completely inside out.)

George also saw that the inverted chute was folded at the middle into the worst “Mae West” that he had ever seen.

Wikpedia: (A "Mae West" is a type of round parachute malfunction which contorts the shape of the canopy into the appearance of a brassiere, presumably one suitable for a woman of Mae West’s proportions).

Unfortunately, in George's case, instead of a full blown “Mae West” there was hardly enough unsnarled canopy above him to form even a training bra.

In another split second the canopy laid horizontal into a “cigarette roll,” defined as:

(The parachute appears as a vertical column of cloth (in the general shape of a cigarette), providing the jumper with very little drag. It is caused when one skirt of the canopy, instead of expanding outward, is blown against the opposite skirt).

In a fraction of the time it takes to tell it, George saw all of this through one eye and realized there was nothing he could do to correct it. He grabbed the rusted red handle of his reserve and pulled. To this day he remembers that the army warned them repeatedly that if they lost that handle it would cost them $6.75. Even in his dire predicament he was concerned about not losing it; but that worry was immediately forgotten as soon as he yanked it and nothing happened.

Normally, upon pulling the reserve handle located on his front, a jumper expects a small pilot chute to deploy, which upon filling with air draws the reserve canopy out after it. To his alarm, George’s reserve chute apparently had no operable pilot chute. Upon a hurriedly frantic inspection, instead of a carefully folded chute rubber-banded into place, all he saw was wadded-up squashed silk. His next thought was to start pulling it out of its canvas pouch with the aim of finding a skirt edge to try to get it to catch some of the air whistling past him.

Keep in mind he had jumped at just 1250 feet, so all this happened in the blink of an eye.

Frenetically, George pulled the clumped silk from its ancient canvas container. As it spilled out it gathered on both sides of his body and between his legs. All this flapping material around his body caught the wind causing his legs to fly up even higher, to about 45° above his head. He unstuffed and unstuffed, searching madly for an edge.

He lost all hope of getting his reserve to open however, when instead of an edge he came upon its apex or exact top middle. He knew then that inexplicably, there WAS no pilot chute, and he understood also that it was hopeless to try to get the chute to blow up.

At this point he remembers purposely trying to direct as much of the slick fabric up under him with the crazy notion of forming a cushion to land on. Again the attitude of his falling body changed so that now his head became higher than his feet.

George continued to plummet to earth. In the jumper vernacular he was known as a "streamer" because his double-malfunctioned chutes weren't providing any lift and instead were just "streaming" after him toward the ground.

Part 3 of "The Man Who Fell" ... "Terminal Velocit...

Part 1 of "The Man Who Fell:" ... "Uh oh!"

You’re going to love this story—I certainly do. I knew I was going to write it the moment I met the man and he told it to me. As Dean Cain says, “Believe it!”

Part 1. “Uh oh!”

I met George W. almost two years ago when he came to me for help in dealing with the Veterans Administration.

(Let me add that 99% of all veterans DO require assistance, as most of them soon realize, once they start the ordeal of filing for their VA disability benefits).

From the first I liked the guy. Tall and long limbed, almost gangling at his present 6’1”, he has a physicality that impresses even after what he’s been through. There’s a glint in his eyes that says, “Don’t trifle with me.” It’s an aura that surrounds Special Forces troops well into old age. He told me he’d like to get more of his ailments service connected, but he was leery about doing so after what the Veterans Administration had already done to him. (See what I mean?)

I asked him, “So, what conditions are we talking about that we can prove began on active duty?” At that, George began telling me a riveting story that horrified and amazed, yet his joking manner kept me laughing from start to end.

In 1955, George joined the United States Army at the age of 15, or 15 ½ as he says in his deep Merle Haggard sounding Oklahoma drawl. Big for his age and toughened from years of breaking horses, his recruiting sergeant knew he was underage and processed him in just the same. Years later, when already in Special Forces, an anal-retentive admin officer, a warrant, learned of George’s secret and thought it his duty to begin discharge procedures based on fraudulent enlistment. It went no where though once his company commander, Colonel Clark, found out. Clark duly informed his anal warrant officer that if he proceeded to kick out “HIS” sergeant then he would see to it that the rest of HIS army career would be very miserable indeed. The warrant “saw the light” and George’s secret remained undisclosed. As it turns out, perhaps it would have been better for George if he HAD been discharged.

Before “the accident” George gloried being in Special Forces, also known as The Green Berets; and he REALLY loved jumping out of airplanes—with a parachute of course. He had transferred over to SF from the regular army as a reservist where he had worked in Operations and Intelligence. Actually, before that he had put in to fly helos, but his 6 feet 3 ½ inches made him too tall to fit into the pilot’s seat. So, with SF looking to build up its reserve component, he applied and was accepted. He made it through jump school at Fort Benning before following-on to NCO School. By 1961 he was a SSgt and a team leader. As such, when they jumped into battle he was the last guy out of the plane.

On the morning of the fateful jump George had a premonition that something bad was going to happen. He remembers telling himself, ‘something ain’t right.” He says it’s always been like that for him. Perhaps his part-Shawnee Indian genetics puts him more in tune with a mystical side that the rest of us just ignore.

He was one of 96 jumpers that morning. They had been alerted for an operation and as far as he knew it was “real world.” The packed chutes were always set up in rows on long tables with the mains on the left and the reserves to the right. He was surprised to see waiting for them immaculate new T-10s with risers still bright yellow and factory fresh. The same was also true with the reserve chutes—all brand spanking new and looking good—except for the very last set—his! The uneasy feeling came roaring back.

He remembers, “Those old things were so used up that the original olive-green canvas had turned a muddy brown.” The reserve handle, normally painted red, was more rust than red.

George recounted the moment, “My buddy, “Hunt” saw me pulling on that faded old T-10 and he said, “My God! Are you going to use that? It looks like a dummy chute. Let me check the packing list.””

He explained that there were times that they would throw a dummy out of the plane over a drop zone to see where it landed, to gage wind conditions and such.

Sgt. Hunt read the packing list and said it looked okay. George continued to shrug off the bad feeling and decided to go through with the jump. He said a man can refuse to go anytime he wants, but that was very rare, especially for Special Forces troops. As they inspected each others rigs they already began to bet each other on which team would get out of the plane first, the right or the left side jumpers of each airplane—whichever “side,” or “stick” of jumpers out last had to buy a round for the other. It seems like a funny thing to bet on, but competition is competition.

From Fort Campbell, Kentucky they took off in three C-123 “Providers” for parts unknown. Once in the air they were told that the mission was cancelled but they would go ahead and jump into landing zone D2, named “Sicily,” at Fort Bragg, North Carolina from 1,250 feet. George had jumped into it several times and knew exactly what to expect. “D2 shapes into a little valley,” he recounts.

Hours into the flight and the men were told to get ready. They stood up and hooked up. The green light came on and the men began to jump in a rush from the plane. George quickly followed the line of men in front of him pulling his static line clipped to a cable running along the left side of the aircraft toward the rear door. With adrenaline surging through him he jumped from the dark cramped noisy airplane into wide-open silent blue. As he left the plane he began counting, “One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four…!”

At four he remembers thinking, ‘Uh oh.”

Part 2 of "The Man Who Fell:" ... "chute malfuncti...