Airborne (1997) Read Free

about naked. How naked? Well, imagine yourself dangling from a parachute under fire. Rather like a duck in hunting season, except that you’re slowly coming straight down, and at least a duck can maneuver. Your unit lands scattered; not as a cohesive fighting formation. Your first job is to get organized—under fire from an organized foe—so that you can begin to do your job. Your weapons are only what you can carry, and tough, fit trooper that you are, you can’t carry all that much. It is a formidable physical challenge.
    In September 1944, Allied paratroopers jumped into Eindhoven, Nimegen, and Arnhem (in Nazi-occupied Holland) in a bold attempt to bring an end to the Second World War by carving open a path through the German lines. This was designed to allow the rapid passage of the British XXX Corps into the German rear areas, cracking the enemy front wide open. It was a bold and ambitious plan, and it went so wrong. Remembered as a failure, Operation MARKET-GARDEN was, in my estimation, a gamble worth taking. Laid on much too quickly (just a week from first notice to the actual jumps) and executed without full and proper planning and training, it very nearly succeeded. Had that happened, millions of lives in German concentration camps might have been saved. As it was, one battalion of paratroopers from the British 1st Airborne Division held off what was effectively an SS armored brigade at Arnhem Bridge (the famous Bridge Too Far ) for the best part of a week in their effort to save the mission. Outnumbered, heavily outgunned, and far from help, they came close to making it all work.
    What this tells us is that it’s not just the weapons you carry that matter, but also the skill, training, and determination of the troopers who jump into battle. Elite is as elite does. Elite means that you train harder and do somewhat more dangerous things—which earns you the right to blouse your jump boots and strut a little more than the “track toads” of the armor community. It means that you know the additional dangers of coming into battle like a skeet tossed out of an electric trap at the gun club, and you’re willing to take them, because if you ever have to do it, there will be a good reason for it. The Airborne doesn’t have the weapons to do their job with a sabot round from four klicks (kilometers) away. They have to get in close. Their primary weapons are their M16 combat rifles and grenade launchers. For enemy armor they carry light anti-tank weapons. There are lots of people around the world with old Soviet-designed tanks to worry about, and Airborne forces have to train for that threat every day. As you might imagine, life in the 82nd can be hard!
    However, that just makes them more enthusiastic for the life they have chosen for themselves. Visit them at Fort Bragg, and you see the pride, from the general who commands to the lieutenants who lead the troopers, to the sergeants who lead the squads and the new privates who are learning the business. You see a team tighter than most “old world” families. The senior officers, some of whom come in from other assignments in “heavy” units, almost always shed ten or fifteen years off their birth certificates and start acting like youngsters again. Everybody jumps in the division. In fact, everybody wants to jump and wants to be seen to jump. It’s the Airborne thing. You’re not one of the family if you don’t at least pretend to like it—and you can’t lead troopers like these if you’re not one of the family. These officers command from the front because that’s where the troopers are, and there is no rear for the Airborne. They walk with a confident strut, their red berets adjusted on their heads just so, because it’s an Airborne “thing.” They are a proud family.
    The most recent nickname for the 82nd is “America’s Fire Brigade.” If there’s a big problem that the Marines can’t reach from the sea, or one that is developing just too