When you need a parachute

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience!

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, ' You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!

Plumb assured him, 'It sure did. If your chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today.'

Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, 'I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, how are you?' or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.' Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn't know.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, 'Who's packing your parachute?' Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory - he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachutes.

I am sending you this as my way of thanking you for your part in packing my parachute. And I hope you will send it on to those who have helped pack yours! Sometimes, we wonder why friends keep forwarding jokes to us without writing a word. Maybe this could explain it! When you are very busy, but still want to keep in touch, guess what you do - you forward jokes. And to let you know that you are still remembered, you are still important, you are still loved, you are still cared for, guess what you get? A forwarded joke. So, my friend, next time when you get a joke, don't think that you've been sent just another forwarded joke, but that you've been thought of today and your friend on the other end of your computer wanted to send you a smile, just helping you pack your parachute.

While in the 82nd Airborne Division, we always checked the log book which is tucked in the shoulder harness of each parachute for the name of the parachute rigger. If you got a Mickey Mouse of Donald Duck, that chute was tossed aside for investigation. Trust is integral to a paratroopers mission. If I did not think my parachute would work, I would not have jumped over a 100 times on active duty, because that spare parachute has a user decision making process window of about 3-4 seconds on a training jump. If you are going in hot, you hop and pop and hit the ground faster than you could reasonably pull your spare chute.

I remember going down to 3d Brigade from the Div HHC to do a strap hanger night jump. I was an E7 and the IG NCOIC Assistance and Investigations. The pre-jump and trip down to green ramp and sitting on bird before the jump took about five hours and I struck up a warm conservation with a Captain. The next morning someone asked me at work if I heard about the guy whose static line was cut and he died before he could pull his reserve chute... it was the captain. I wish I could remember his name for I was the last person on earth he conversed and spoke to before he died. He and I checked each others equipment but there is not way to check the Static Line in the middle of the chute inside. Trust. I trusted him and he trusted me and we trusted the Assistant JMs and Jump Masters who were also double checking our equipment; we trusted the equipment even though we all knew there was some Bastard that was Cutting the Static Lines in Parachutes. They caught the guy but hundreds of chutes were unpacked and repacked looking for this murder’s work. Several other troopers from the Division escaped death using their reserves during that period of time. This incident happened in 87-89 tunefrane, but it had happened before in 74, and 75-76.

Needless to say I was directed up the Division Chapel for the Captain’s Memorial Service. Highly shined Jump Boots with an M16 Bayonet/Muzzle down with his Helmet was front and center, as is customary when we lose a brother in arms. It is all the more personal when you know the person who was murdered by an unseen Parachute Rigger.

On a lighter note, my first night jump back after returning from Korea in Jan 85, I literally was knocked out. It is night and you hit the ground and there is this Brilliant Flash. Sometime later you wake up tangled in your static lines and equipment, fumbling around in the dark trying to gather yourself and get your A$$ to the turn in point and on a truck back to the Division area from the drop zone. The next morning I became dizzy and was personally afraid something was very very wrong. I tried to walk thru the door and I hit the right side side of the door frame, backed up hit the left side and then missed my chair in front of the Colonel and his Secretary. I was sent to the Hospital and they in turn handed me over to the Dental Unit to irrigate my ears for sand. Yup, I had a left ear packed with sand from hitting my head the night before. It was funny. Even after the sand out my body and head hurt, but it was still funnier than hell, as we used to say.

“a strap hanger night jump. “
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Wow.

Two thoughts, or rather memories flashed through my mind’s eye as I read your post.

First, it reminded me of NCIS’s Season 1 Episode 2. A murder centered around a jumper whose chute was deliberately screwed with by the chute packer. I remember thinking as still think when I view that episode that it must be hard trusting someone who you’ve never met.

The second, is of an event related by a Pastor whose name I cannot recall for the life of me. He talked about one of his jumps and spoke of a chute that didn’t open and of the chute packer’s intense grief that a man lost his life because of something overlooked. Chute packers know they have lives in their hands (literally), and for true and honest chute packers it’s an extremely serious job. This poor guy just cracked, knowing a man was dead because a chute he packed didn’t open.

I recall the 2nd story because the pastor spoke of Jesus as being the person we would be trusting with our souls, like a jumper would physically trust the chute packer.

The 2nd story about the chute not opening is what I heard many years before the Season 1 Episode 2 of NCIS. Still, viewing the episode really brought back memories of that sermon.

What could possibly motivate such evil?

It's the very same evil that lives in every single one if us:

"“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Romans 3:10-18

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