Word: jumped
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most are in bed; the day ahead will start at 4 a.m. The Paratrooper lies there thinking of what his brigade commander, Colonel Charles Ferguson, said that afternoon: "It's exciting. You get up for it. You have to do everything right. If you jump from 1,000 ft. and your parachute doesn 't open, you hit the ground in eight seconds." The Paratrooper does not sleep well, and he suspects most of the others do not either...
...amusement at the troopers around him. Their faces, like his, are smeared with camouflage grease paint, blending with their mottled uniforms and helmet covers, as in some military minstrel show. The order to board the plane snaps him from his reverie. "The only way down now will be to jump," he says to himself, just as he has said to himself with every takeoff before every jump...
...whole division is so much larger that there may be barely enough planes to deliver it across the sea). The exercise did something for the individual paratroopers as well. Said Tackaberry: "Psychologically, it helps a man to know he's part of a big unit." Every jump is a re-validation, a reassurance that the paratroopers are special...
...Paratrooper hits the ground and rolls into a proper landing fall. It is a good jump, a good landing. He looks up at the dense cloud of green parachutes, and he explodes with joy. "You are bea-u-ti-ful!" he screams...
...Florida sun, the Paratrooper shoulders his 60-lb. rucksack and his M-16 rifle and joins his squad. The jump is a mere memory. Here on the ground, there is soldiering to do. -By Don Sider