The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

I had taken off many times and landed each time but never jumped out halfway. Perhaps that was the answer. I asked around for a good parachute club. A friend in the armed forces advised me the best (by which I mean the safest) was the Combined Forces school at Netheravon in Wiltshire. Having been paid for by that ultra-generous philanthropist, the taxpayer, it had state-of-the-art equipment and had never lost a trainee to the forces of gravity.

I was of course a civilian, but the RAF stretched a point and let me in, so on the given date I motored down there. Even that recently, things were far less formal than now. There was no medical, just the signing of that amiable document the “blood chit.” It simply said that I accepted that if I were to become a tent peg in the middle of a Wiltshire meadow, it would be entirely my fault and my estate could sue nobody.

The course on which I found myself had thirty to forty volunteers, all drawn from various branches of the army and air force and all in their late teens and early twenties. In other words, they were all young enough to be my offspring. They seemed to have insatiable appetites and were able to consume up to half a dozen big meals a day. They also had terrifying levels of energy.

Perhaps due to my age, a billet was kindly found for me in the officers’ mess, which was familiar enough because Netheravon is an air force base. On the first morning, I joined the three-day course in the main hangar.

The CO was Major Gerry O’Hara of the Parachute Regiment but the instructors were Flight Sergeant Chris Lamb of the RAF and Corporal Paul Austin of the Royal Marines, both younger than me and slightly puzzled by my inclusion.

We started with classroom explanations of the forces of gravity, wind drift, and speeds of descent. Then came lectures on the equipment yet to come. We would be using the Aeroconical ’chute; none of your flying wings or stunt ’chutes, which were for real experts. The Aeroconical was a simple dome of parti-colored fabric, and we would not even have to open it. There would be a static line attached inside the aircraft that would open the ’chute automatically as we jumped. The instructors would be in the airplane with us and would affix the static lines for us. Simple enough.

We would be jumping over the airfield from the side door of a de Havilland Dragon Rapide from about three thousand feet, and descent speed would be about fourteen mph. The remainder of the “ground time” was dedicated to coping with the thump of impacting with Mother Earth at that speed and coming to no harm. This involved landing and rolling over at the same time.

The rest of day one and the morning of day two were spent in the hangar, leaping from platforms, landing and rolling, until we could do it without feeling more than minimal impact. All this took place between pauses for the inevitable brews of tea, without which the entire British defense structure would collapse. Lunch breaks involved my going back to the mess for a served lunch with the attending stewards, while the youngsters repaired to their refectory for yet another massive fry-up. I failed to understand where they were putting it all. The trick came at the end of the second morning.

The two instructors told us that the next morning would see the first jump. It was a lie, just in case of any middle-of-the-night disappearances. After lunch, the first of the two Dragon Rapides landed and we were told to draw parachutes. There was also to be a draw for the dubious position of “first out, first stick.”

The elderly but still very serviceable biplanes were standing by, with propellers ticking over and side doors open as the draw was made. Due to cramped conditions inside, the “stick” would be sitting on benches down both sides of the interior and would rise to clip on static lines only at the last minute and on command. But the first man out would have to sit in the doorway all the way, clambering to his feet only when tapped on the shoulder by the jumpmaster. Then a hat was passed round.

It was full of small scraps of paper, each with a pupil’s name on it. With his eyes closed, Chris Lamb groped inside and came out with a scrap. When unfolded, I was surprised, as the odds were thirty to one, that the name was mine.

Only later, back on the ground with a chance to examine the hat, did I learn they had all got my name on them. The two rogues had calculated that if the old codger did not freeze in the doorway, none of the teenagers would dare do so, either. Freezing up and refusing to jump meant immediate RTU—return to unit.

In reverse order of jump, we piled into the Rapide’s fuselage, the “last out” group disappearing toward the tail. I found I had no seat at all. I had to sit in the doorway with legs and feet in the slipstream. We took off and climbed sedately to a point three thousand feet above the airfield. I began to get the “skyscraper balcony” syndrome. The fields were postage stamps, the huge hangars thumbnails. I thought longingly of my home in Tilford.

Paul Austin had a word through the cabin door and the engine noise died. The whirling propellers still seemed about a foot away from my face and I wondered if I would not jump into the blades. It was easy to forget that even with engines throttled back, there was still a fifty mph slipstream out there and gravity would do the rest.

There was a tap on the shoulder and I stood up. A fist with a raised thumb appeared, meaning “static line attached.” Then the final tap. Deep breath, lean forward, and kick. Within a second, it was all gone—engine noise, slipstream, airplane. Just silence and the soughing of a gentle breeze, the hemisphere of silk above, the harness tight all around the body, the feet dangling over nothing and the postage stamps very slowly coming closer.

Then it became quite restful. Time for a good look around. Spectacular views over many miles of lovely countryside; surely one was not descending at all. But at fourteen mph, the airfield came up at a rush, then a huge thump as the jump boots hit the turf. Twist, roll, absorb the shock, turf under the backside then the shoulders, roll again, and stand, hauling in the billowing silk before it collapsed in an untidy pile. Then pick it all up and start the long walk back to the hangars.

Willing parachute packers took it all away: collapsed ’chute, shrouds (which are not sheets but nylon lines), and canvas harness. Time for a relaxing cigarette, then the Rapide was landing for the second jump.

I strolled over to the discarded hat and realized that mine was the only name on any of the scraps of paper, then had a few well-chosen words with Chris and Paul. But there had been three no-jumps, so the disgraced ones were being led away to change out of overalls and back into uniform. No second chances.

On the second jump, I had a small problem. The landing was too heavy. A gust of breeze lifted the ’chute, then dropped me from too high up. A low click in the left ankle. On the walk back to the hangars, it began to hurt. I was damned if I was going to miss out on my three-jump certificate, so I hid the limp until we were back in the Rapide for the third time. At least now I had a bench to sit on.

The third landing was a one-footer, then a Tilly (a blue RAF Land Rover) came to meet me. Someone in the group by the hangars with a pair of binoculars had seen the limp. At the medical bay, an RAF doctor cut the boot off with a scalpel. The meat was beginning to overflow the top of the boot and no one was going to try to pull it off for fear of having to cope with a very noisy author.

That exercise cost me a new pair of top-of-the-range jump boots to replace the ones I had borrowed and ruined. Luckily, it was only a sprain and, duly strapped, I was able to hobble along to the celebratory piss-up.

My Jaguar saloon had automatic shift, so the next morning I could drive home one-footed, using just the right one for all the controls.

I got my certificate, signed by Gerry O’Hara, and it was suggested I should graduate to skydiving: coming out at ten thousand feet with a pull-your-own D ring and lots of time to plunge back to Mother Earth at one hundred miles per hour. But on balance, I have preferred to stick to skyscrapers and nice, fast elevators made by Mr. Otis.

But I still have Major O’Hara’s piece of paper on the office wall, and fond memories of Netheravon and it

s cheeky jump instructors.

THE AMAZING MR. MOON

There must be a reason for it, but I have never met a man who has confronted the mighty rage of the oceans in a small boat who does not believe in God.

Man spends most of his time running around in crowded cities convincing himself how important he is in the scheme of things. But there are five places where he can confront the reality of his utter insignificance.

Two of these are the great deserts, of sand and gravel or snow and ice. Lost in these, he is but a speck of dust on a huge sheet of pure barrenness. Then there are the mountains, also clothed in snow and ice, peaks among which he will vanish to invisibility.

The sky is a huge and lonely place, but here at least his lack of importance is short-lived, because when his fuel runs out, gravity alone will end his solitude. But most fearsome of them all is the towering, pitiless might of the enraged ocean. Because it moves.