Last Man Out by Jr. James E. Parker Read Free Book Online Page A

sky was filled with chutes as jumpers from other planes were descending to the ground, and then I looked back to the light, but it stayed red and the jump master yelled that we were too far over the jump zone and had to come around again. I stood in the door as we flew over trees and a lone country blacktop road and some houses. My legs, tense from standing at the ready, began to ache and then started to shake, so I relaxed them and continued to look down. I began to lose the feeling that anything could stop me from falling out of the door to the ground below, and I suddenly lost all enthusiasm for jumping. I stood there paralyzed with fear and the drop zone came into view and the jump master yelled for me to get ready, but my grip on the door remained loose and I swayed back and forth. The light turned green, the jump master yelled “Go!” and I just stood there, and the jump master yelled again “Go! Go!” and something hit me squarely on the butt. I was out the door, tumbling, then jerked up when the canopy opened, and the ground rushed up and I landed with the most jarring thud yet. I hit so hard that my teeth hurt. Mercifully, no one ever mentioned my hesitation. Cottonpicker would not have been proud.
    The Saturday after our third jump I was at the bar in the main officers club when President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a speech to the nation. Sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, he began by saying, “My fellow Americans, we have been called on to stem the tide of Communist aggression in Southeast Asia. I have today ordered the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) Division at Fort Benning, Georgia, to Vietnam.”
    Some officers in the bar cheered. A colonel bought a round of drinks, and the bar buzzed with excitement. Men came in from the dining room and were told the news. Some scurried out to make telephone calls; others, especially those from the 1st Cavalry (Cav), left for their units.
    I tried to call Pete at Fort Riley to find out if the 1st Infantry Division was on alert, but couldn’t get through. The next day Fort Benning was alive with troop movements. Tanks moved through areas they had never been in before. Truck convoys clogged the streets.
    Monday started our last week at jump school. We had two more jumps to make, one at night, but they were anticlimactic. The real interest was in the buildup of the 1st Cav for deployment to South Vietnam. The base was on a war footing. There was a sense of breathless anticipation.
    We made the last two jumps. Neither of mine was noted for artistic performance. Both hurt when I landed. I was proud to get my wings, but I was sure that I had developed a fear of heights and had no interest in making future jumps. Graduation was on a Friday afternoon. By nightfall I was on my way to Fort Riley and assignment to the 1st Infantry Division.
    I went over again and again what I planned to say to the men of my platoon at our first meeting. Though we had had numbing hours of lectures on leadership at OCS, I thought back to conversations with Dad and Cottonpicker, and remembered lines I had heard in movies and read at college. As I developed phrases that seemed appropriately firm and yet reasonable, I remembered General Heintges’s comments at OCS graduation and felt a sense of destiny.
    I drove with the top down most of the way and the radio turned up. Occasionally I would just howl with joy and pump my fist at the moon.
    Arriving at Fort Riley late Saturday night, I got Pete’s BOQ room number from the post locator and woke him up. We went to a seedy after-hours beer joint in nearby Junction City, Kansas, and talked. Pete said that the entire division was on alert, although most of the able-bodied men had been grouped into the 2d Brigade, which was being readied as the first for deployment to Vietnam. Pete was in the 1st Brigade and had asked an old enlisted friend who worked in division personnel to have me assigned to his battalion.
    Early Monday morning I was not surprised to learn