By Bob Jannarone

The kick-off for the Bob Hope USO tour in 1970 was at West Point on December 15.  Since my dad was the Dean of the Academic board, one of three generals on the post, my mom and dad got to meet him after the show.  Mom mentioned that two of her sons were in Viet Nam, so he said he would get them together for Christmas, and asked for their names and addresses.  She thought nothing of it, and didn’t tell us.

Lo and behold, on December 23, an Army Major showed up at Danang where my brother Jack (USMA ’65), an Air Force pilot, was stationed.  He was supposed to get my brother to Bien Hoa airbase the next day, for the show on Christmas Day.  My brother, a Captain, went to his Commanding Officer with the Major, related the situation, and the CO said, “Well, if Bob Hope says so, I guess we better do it.”  There was no provision for in-country leave, but a plane with my brother on it left Danang for Bien Hoa the next day.

Also on December 23, a civilian came to Xuan Loc where I was an Engineer Platoon Leader, a First Lieutenant, in the 25^th Infantry Division.  He explained that there was one seat left on a chartered aircraft from Tan Son Nhut Airport, (Saigon), to JFK in New York, and if someone wanted to, he could take leave, pay the airfare, and go home for Christmas. I asked the junior enlisted soldiers first, then the Squad Leaders, then the Platoon Sergeant.  I turned to the man and said that no one wanted to go.  Immediately the Squad Leaders and Platoon Sergeant insisted that I go.  They said that there was no need to be a hero.  We had no missions, and all we would be doing is pulling Motor Stables (vehicle maintenance).  Reluctantly, I agreed.

I left the next morning for the flight.  I flew to JFK and was met there by my sister-in-law, Jack’s wife, who was, with other waiting wives, living at Stewart Air Force Base.

She drove me to West Point.  I rang the back doorbell at 2:00 AM Christmas Day.  My youngest sister came to the door, saw me, and screamed “Bobby’s home”.  I went upstairs to my bedroom.  When my mother saw me, she fainted.  It was a wonderful Christmas.

I had to go back on New Year’s Eve.  We left about 10PM heading west to an airbase near Anchorage, AK for refueling.  The crew had hats, whistles and confetti for the New Year’s celebration on board.  We went through several time zones, moving the clock back each time, so we never got to midnight before refueling.  We got off, and saw the Northern Lights.  Once back on board, and still before midnight, I and most all the passengers fell asleep instantly.  I was awakened by a stewardess who handed me a breakfast tray.  We were somewhere over the Pacific under a clear blue sky and had crossed the International Date Line.  It was now January 2.  I had missed New Year’s Day.

When I got back to my unit, the Platoon Sergeant said someone came looking for me an hour after I left.   The man didn’t say who he was, or why he was looking for me.  I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

I didn’t know Jack’s part in this until the next Christmas, when I saw him for the first time since he had come home from Viet Nam, and he related what had happened to him, and I pieced together the rest.

It turns out that an hour after I left on the 24th, someone from the USO tour came to get me.  Finding that I had left, he called back to Saigon, who called Danang, who radioed the plane in the air and had it return to Danang.

Unwittingly I had spoiled Bob Hope’s plan to get us together for Christmas.  It’s no wonder that he never spoke to me for the rest of his life.

The first place I went after West Point was Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia.  This was a three week course.  The first week was mostly the mechanics of something called “parachute landing falls” done over and over and over from a two foot platform.  These were interspersed with group exercises and a daily run of two miles or more.  The second week was Tower Week.  First was a thirty four foot tower done innumerable times.  Late in the week a two hundred and fifty foot tower was employed three times.  The third week was Jump Week.  There were five jumps in all.  Four were from a C-130 aircraft, which is a propeller driven plane.  One of those jumps, the fourth overall, was to be done in full field gear including a rifle.  The fifth jump was from a jet—in my case a C-141.  All of these jumps were from one thousand two hundred and fifty feet.

The whole idea of the course is that everything should be done without thinking.  I recall one of the sergeants running the course saying “the trouble with legs (non-airborne troops) is that they think.”  I thought to myself, what is wrong with thinking.  What indeed.

At the first command, “Stand Up,” the sequence should start.  Hook Up, Shuffle to the Door, Assume the Ready Position, Hit It, Leap into the air assuming a tight body position with the chin down, hands on the reserve parachute, feet and knees together should all be automatic.  At the count of four, see that your canopy was fully deployed.  Just before landing pull up on the parachute and execute a parachute landing fall, landing on the five points of contact.  Again, all this should be done without thinking.

Each side of a plane had a door, through which static lines were attached.  These lines were about thirty feet long, and these made the parachutes deploy.  We didn’t pull ripcords.  Each plane then had two sticks (A group of parachutists jumping from the same exit door of an aircraft on the same drop zone.) of troops, half the planeload.

When your stick was complete, that group was dismissed and could go to the ice cream truck.  That is, when everyone had landed, furled the parachute in the aviator’s kit bag that he brought with him, ran to the assembly area, unpacked the parachute, put it on a long pole and then very carefully folded it back up, moved to that stick’s area, put the aviator’s kit bag down with the reserve parachute on top of it, and stood at parade rest, then your group could be dismissed.

For the first jump, the day arrived hot and muggy. We were up early, it was a long wait for our plane to arrive and the reserve parachute made a comfortable pillow, so most of us dozed on the tarmac waiting for our plane.  Finally, we loaded up.  Away we went, and then came the command “Stand Up.”  I was first out on one side of the plane.  So I hooked up, shuffled to the door, and stood at the ready position, the jump master at my side.  But for some reason the plane made a circle of the area and then came around for a second time.  Meanwhile, the jump master kept pushing me out the side and then pulling me back.

Finally he said “Hit It” and away I went.  At three seconds the canopy fully opened.  Before I looked up I had to adjust my helmet, because it had slid down to cover my eyes.  But there it was.

Moving through the air was one of the most peaceful feelings I have ever experienced.  There was no sound, and no feeling of falling through the air.  The ground stretched below me like a painting.  Then there was an almost imperceptible feeling that I was creeping ever so slowly towards that ground.

Or was I?  It didn’t take long before I wasn’t so sure that I was going down.  For a few seconds, I thought that I wasn’t going down or up.  But then, very definitely, I was going up.

And then the next plane came.  I was maybe one hundred feet below it as it roared by, and then paratroopers jumped out, and soon were all around me.  One of them collided with the side of my parachute and then went on by me.

By this time, I thought again, what was wrong with thinking?  I was caught in an updraft.  Others had no problem, but I was the lightest person there, and I was moving away from the Drop Zone, too.  In fact, I was in danger of landing in Alabama instead of Georgia.  It might even be that I would land in the Chattahoochee River, the boundary between them.  I had visions of snapping the quick release buttons on the parachute just before entering the water.

What I did do was to pull on one of the risers that extend down from the parachute.  I saw quickly that I had gone too far, as part of the parachute collapsed.  I quickly let go, and up I went again.  I tried a second time, with the same result.  But the third time, I got the hang of it, and even came a little closer to the Drop Zone, although I was still a long way away.

By this time, the other stick of troops from my plane was long since gone.  Two other plane loads of troops were also down.  But the other troops from my stick had to wait for me.  As I got to maybe two hundred and fifty feet from the ground, a chorus of people started yelling at me, “Get down here, Jannarone.”

I did.

I had a Fudgsicle.

There were supposed to be two jumps in Ranger School, but one was canceled because of high winds.  The other one should have been, too, but wasn’t, and everyone landed in or very close to a stand of pine trees.  We jumped after dusk, and couldn’t see the drop zone well, anyway, but I was also turned around compared to where I was going.  I tried to turn my chute, but didn’t figure out how to do that.  Every time I used the risers to turn my body, the chute didn’t turn as well, and I kept going backwards.  So I kept turning my head to see what was ahead.  When I landed, my chute was stuck in a pine tree, and only my feet had touched the ground.  It took a good half hour to climb up the tree and untangle the chute from the branches.

Six jumps in all, that’s my experience with jumping out of airplanes.