Donnie’s Life Right Now: As Imagined By Blackfive

Posted By Blackfive

"Airborne...All the way!"

Donnie (Ain’t Done It!) is going through the Army's Basic Airborne Course (BAC) right this second.  My hat is off to the guy.  I have an immense amount of admiration for someone who is willing to risk life and limb for his country.

First, some things you should know about my friend Donnie.
1. Donnie is 39 years old
2. Donnie is a Major in the Georgia National Guard.
3. Donnie is a Ranger but not Airborne Qualified; hence, he is known as a “Leg Ranger” because he has to walk rather than parachute into enemy territory.
4. Donnie is most certainly to be the highest ranking Officer in the Airborne Class.
5. Donnie is afraid (deathly afraid) of heights.

Next, some things you should know about Black Hats.
1. Black Hats are the equivalent of Drill Sergeants at Airborne School.  They mostly come from the Army, but some do come from the Marines.
2. Black Hats are the meanest MF’s in the Airborne Corps.
3. Black Hats hate Officers.  They really hate Field Grade Officers (i.e. Majors).
4. Black Hats hate Legs.
5. Black Hats hate Leg Rangers the most.
6. Black Hats usually have some very creative ways to punish infractions at the BAC.
7.             Donnie is in for a "world of hurt"...

Donnie’s day starts off between 0530 and 0600.  Physical Training formation.  First, a Black Hat usually asks if anyone wants to quit...sometimes, there are a few takers on the offer.

Since Donnie is the senior officer, he is the student commander – responsible for as few as 240 soldiers.  When a soldier is out of uniform, missing from formation, or sneezes in formation, Donnie will end up doing push ups with that soldier.  Of course, since Donnie outranks every Black Hat there, the Black Hat First Sergeant will extend the utmost courtesy to Major Donnie.

“Get down and give me 20!…Sir.”

See?  They have complete respect for the rank of the Officer.

Of course the push ups are four count push ups.  The cadence is called by the Black Hats and the repetitions are called by the students.  It goes like this:

Black Hat:  "Ah, one!" (down, with you shoulder blades making a straight line across your back).
Black Hat:  "Two!" (up, arms extended fully).
Black Hat:  "Three!"  (down again).
Student:     "1!"  (up again).

So it goes like this – One, two, three, 1!  One, two, three, 2!  One, two, three, 3!  And it keeps going all the way to 20.

However, the Black Hats like to make things less boring (and ridicule the Leg students).  So the cadence might go something like this:

One, Two, Three, 1!
You dirty, nasty, Legs, 2!
You don’t, brush, your teeth, 3!
You don’t, comb, your hair, 4!
Wah, Wah, Wah, 5!
I want, to go, home, 6!
Where’s, my, mommie, 7!
I want, some, cookies, 8!
You dirty, nasty, Legs, 9!
One, Two, Thee, HALT!

By the time you leave BAC, you can do 100 push ups without breaking a sweat.  I used to laugh my ass off when they would call some interesting varieties of the cadence.  Most find humor in the misery and mockery...

Anyway, back to Donnie’s day.  Next, the Physical Training formation conducts calisthenics – nothing too tough.  Lots of push ups, leg lifts, side straddle hops (jumping jacks), etc.  Then comes the run.

Airborne School has certain criteria needed to met for qualification as a parachutist.  One is completing certain runs.  If you fall more than two steps behind a formation during a run, you are disqualified.  Two disqualifications and you are kicked out.

Also, the runs are advertised to be run at about a 8 minute/mile pace.  This is B.S.  The Black Hats run the formation at an AVERAGE pace of 8 minutes/mile.  So the first few miles might be at 6 or 7 minutes/mile and the last one at 9 or 10 minutes/mile.  That way, soldiers start quitting during the first mile or so because the runs are too tough.  It is a classic mental fake out.

After the run, you get to dine in a mess hall complete with paintings on the wall of paratroopers falling to their gruesome deaths.  This is meant to get the ones who have a great amount of fear to quit the course.  However, Officers can choose to dine elsewhere.  Donnie should dine elsewhere (Hey, D, the food has got to be better elsewhere!).

Then, the fun begins with training.  Parachute Landing Falls (PLFs) are the staple of the first two weeks.  Basically, these are exercises designed to teach you how to land in a variety of conditions (wind speed, direction, etc.) and terrain.  If you land with your legs straight out, you WILL break them.  The key is to keep your feet and knees together and to keep them slightly flexible to absorb the shock of landing.  Imagine jumping off of a 3 story building - that's what it's like to land.  Army parachutes are not like civilian ones - the idea is to get you to the ground as soon as possible because people may be shooting at you.

Also, Donnie will get to try out the 34 foot tower.  34 feet, by the way, was the height determined by Army psychologists as being the most frightening.  The tower has a mock up of an aircraft door.  You are attached to a cable that extends from the tower to a point on a berm about 100 meters away.  You practice exiting the aircraft by jumping out of the 34 foot tower and hoping that your harness is attached to the cable.  Then, you move rapidly along the cable practicing a four count wait, then checking your canopy before hitting the berm at a high rate of speed.

The last training piece that Donnie will tackle is the Swing Landing Trainer (SLT).  It is a bitch of an exercise.  You get up on a 12 foot platform in a harness and are swung out in an arc over a saw dust pit.  Once you hit the angle that the Black is looking for (usually almost horizontal at the high end of the arc – 15 feet), the Black Hat will release the harness and you fall to the floor trying to make a perfect PLF.  I equate qualification day on the SLT to the worst football practice you ever went to – simply put, you get physically beaten up pretty well.

The problem is that Donnie, even though he might execute all of the exercises perfectly, will be rated as a No-Go most of the time just so the Black Hats can put the pressure on him.  Not only that, but he might have to do push ups every time one of his company’s soldiers fails to perform properly.  He'll be more tired and beat up (mentally and physically) than any other soldier in the company.  And, on top of it all, he is thinking of quitting blogging.

He's got a long way to go, yet, so keep him in your prayers and send him some encouragement.  I have placed a post on HIS NEW BLOG.  Go there now and let him know to keep going as a soldier and a blogger.

---

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Donnie’s Life Right Now: As Imagined By Blackfive

"Airborne...All the way!"

Donnie (Ain’t Done It!) is going through the Army's Basic Airborne Course (BAC) right this second.  My hat is off to the guy.  I have an immense amount of admiration for someone who is willing to risk life and limb for his country.

First, some things you should know about my friend Donnie.
1. Donnie is 39 years old
2. Donnie is a Major in the Georgia National Guard.
3. Donnie is a Ranger but not Airborne Qualified; hence, he is known as a “Leg Ranger” because he has to walk rather than parachute into enemy territory.
4. Donnie is most certainly to be the highest ranking Officer in the Airborne Class.
5. Donnie is afraid (deathly afraid) of heights.

Next, some things you should know about Black Hats.
1. Black Hats are the equivalent of Drill Sergeants at Airborne School.  They mostly come from the Army, but some do come from the Marines.
2. Black Hats are the meanest MF’s in the Airborne Corps.
3. Black Hats hate Officers.  They really hate Field Grade Officers (i.e. Majors).
4. Black Hats hate Legs.
5. Black Hats hate Leg Rangers the most.
6. Black Hats usually have some very creative ways to punish infractions at the BAC.
7.             Donnie is in for a "world of hurt"...

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» A message for Donnie from Random Fate
Blackfive has posted over on Ain't Done It! that he won't let Donnie quit blogging. Damn, I wish I had thought to do that since I suspect the username and password I had from guest-blogging for Donnie is probably still valid. You should go read what Bl... [Read More]