evening portwine imbibing sessions or the uncertain possibility of some ancient movies in Naharyia village itself) assumed insignificance when related to the coveted goal of that eagerly awaited summons to the airfield at Ramat David, for the parachutist qualifying course. The completion of the 25 mile route march in easy style must have convinced me that I was ready, lulling me into a mood of premature self-congratulation and resulting in a shameful over-consumption of port wine that evening. Maudlin self-pity – caused by an accumulation of factors though mainly the certainty of another Christmas away from home, among virtual strangers at that – seemed temporarily to have relaxed the stiff upper lip. It’s the only excuse I can think of. I deservedly suffered next day.
Hurling myself into the training over the following few days conspicuously promoted a cheerier mood, with smug pride exuding from diary entries about success at cross-country runs, swimming and football... Worse was to come. On 16 December the weather changed dramatically and dominated everything. The rain that gives Palestine its greenness, and had given rise to stories of monsoon-like storms which we had begun to consider mythical, started that day and heavily influenced everything from that day on. Training came to a halt, tempers frayed and discipline all but collapsed, as survival in already chaotic conditions became almost a personal matter. The camp was on a sloping hillside. Consequently, the rain, of torrential proportions, flowed through the camp as if the hilltop was an overflowing reservoir. We resited tents until the utter futility of the exercise became disconcertingly apparent. Flowing water spilled over the hastily deepened trenches around our tents, necessitating the digging of a canal through the tent also. Trying to find a dry area for our ground sheet and blankets became impossible. Perpetually wet, and surrounded by ankle-deep mud, we were virtual prisoners in our tents. After four continuous days of such conditions, the cheering news was broken to me that I was on the next course for Ramat David on the morrow, 20 December 1943. I think I could have uncomplainingly tolerated anything that nature was prepared to throw at me in those 24 hours, but escape was blissful.
Parachute Training
Although the weather had changed but little, my arrival at Ramat David, less than 20 miles away, represented a transformation equal to another world. For a start, we were accommodated in hutted billets where soaking wet clothes had a reasonable chance of drying before being worn again. But above all, there existed an undoubted uplifting of morale at the sight and sound of planes; at the presence of huge hangers (where training could cock-a-snook at the elements) and of Royal Air Force expert personnel. There was the excitement of reunion conversation with men from our unit who were already at variously advanced stages of their courses and who, without exception, effused with stories of the jumps they had already executed and thrilled us with their anticipation of those to come. The weather had held up their jumping too. Although they warned that the week or so of physical training ahead of us made Nahariya’s PT seem like maypole dancing, the prospect became hourly more exhilarating. The real truth of its value lay mainly in its difference: it gave added zest to our exertions, particularly when the urgency became more apparent. To condense the normal six weeks parachuting course which prevailed at home to a mere 10-14 days, implicitly to have us operational for the harassment of the enemy in the Balkans as soon as possible, provided the rare incentive of purposefulness to add to unbounded enthusiasm.
A group of 10 men constituted a ‘stick’ in parachuting parlance, and I found myself in Flight Sergeant Kent’s stick – a training group which was to remain together for the whole course. Not unexpectedly, a spirit of competition was fostered, both between and within sticks, which instilled pride at being one of Kent’s Angels rather than a Dixon’s Demon.
Many of the men had arrived at RSR woefully unfit, and there had not been time for Nahariya’s training to remedy much before they met Ramat David’s onslaught. They suffered. For me it was the exercises that hurt – the jumping from various heights and moving trolleys and the imperative forward rolling which had to follow. We rolled the day-long. The ideal descent, we learned, called for a forward-facing landing which required a roll from the left or right side on contact with the earth – to minimise injury from jolt – by the instant wheeling effect of rounding the body through using, in turn, the outside of slightly bent knees, thighs, hips, back and shoulders in as gradual a flow of contact as possible. Hence the accent on collapsed rolling.
The much less physical skills of plane exits and descent control had to be learned too. Flight Sgt. Kent almost apologised for the use of Lockheed Hudsons at Ramat David; hardly the ideal plane to jump from, but seemingly the only aircraft available. The barely five-feet-high door, the width of one man on the side of the fuselage, presented all manner of exit problems, so our training simulated the real thing by repetitive jumping from the door of a grounded Hudson fuselage. Without the realisation of the all-important hazard of the rushing slipstream of air which emanated from the engines, it all seemed so simple.
Descent-control was much easier to rehearse with reasonable realism. Two actions towards landing survival (at worst) or perfection (at best) could be performed by a parachutist once his canopy had opened. He could make a turn and he could correct unreasonable backwards, forwards or sideways ‘swing’ or, to give it its technical term, ‘oscillation’. Turning was effected by reaching above the head with both hands, grasping the binding of the parachute’s rigging lines, pulling down, and at the same time crossing one hand over the other, as on a playground swing, to execute a full about-turn. Practice from a parachute harness suspended from the hangar roof made everyone quickly proficient in this particular skill.
All of this implied that there would be plenty of time available between leaving the Hudson and reaching the ground, but when we learned that most jumps were made from a height of 1000 feet and that the average time for such a descent was a mere 23 seconds, most of us guessed that we would need that long to decide whether we were approaching backwards, forwards or even upside down, let alone whether or not we were swinging! We recited, to boredom, the recommended rhyming mnemonic: “elbows in – shoulders round – feet together – watch the ground”. We visited the parachute packing shed to see the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) girls carrying out that critically important task of correctly folding, stowing, tying and enclosing those vital nylon panels and rigging lines within the canvas pack upon which our lives would depend. The cheerful confidence that radiated from the girls and the stringent packing regulations which, among other surprising things, dictated the immediate halting of packing when the temperature was found to be outside certain specified limits, were very, very reassuring. Those regulations minimised the risk of a build up of static electricity in the nylon. Static was the parachutist’s greatest enemy, being the main cause of the dreaded ‘Roman Candle’ – the instance in which the nylon stuck fast to itself and failed to separate, even in the rush of air, as it streamed behind the doomed wearer like an oversized scarf or the cascading firework it was so aptly named after. There was a Roman Candle fatality whilst we were at Ramat David, and one of our own officers was killed there in that way a few weeks later on 14 January 1944.
Monday 27 December was pencilled in as the date for our stick’s first jump but on 23 December, a gale of terrifying proportions put the kybosh on that day’s programmed jumping by the previous course, adding to the backlog caused by earlier bad weather. With Christmas intervening, I had my doubts about performing any jumps in 1943. Christmas Eve brought fulfilment expectantly nearer, however. Kent’s Angels were suddenly summoned to a warmed-up Wellington bomber on the airfield for our ‘air experience’ – a first flight for each of us. In the modern world’s universal, daily acceptance of jet travel as commonplace, it is difficult to explain the measure of thrill which that first take-off provided for the group of young men in 1943 who, only a month or so earlier, had no chance of ever taking to the air. That dilapidated, pensioned off Wellington, which gave every indication of falling to pieces as it taxied to take-off, was converted into a magic carpet to paradise in the minds of a dozen or so starry eyed innocents, by the confident, almost carefree, approach to the matter by the RAF crew.
We ought to have been frightened. I’m sure we were. There seemed hardly anywhere safely secure upon which to place one’s feet: it seemed to have the scantiest of superstructure,
