The Paratrooper Killing Game

Andy, well, it was like sitting on a large cushion. You'd hear your sergeant make the call and you'd get up, file out the door into mid-air. I was always right behind Jack, we called him “the innovator”To jump you'd just … you'd swing your leg around like this and out the door and just sit down. Like this. You're hand will be up here on your guide line and … Go ahead try it. Yeah now swing your leg out and sit in the chair. That was it. The air was like a cushion. Now, because I was stationed in Washington I didn't make it to the war. It was over as I was starting to ship out. And here … in here is the gun they'd give you. I don't …. I don't think it's loaded. Aim it over here, right there. And pull this right here. Ok, yeah, it's not loaded. Now, you see, in the basic, uh, the basic training camp we were only jumping from a platform. And it's not a soft landing when you're only a hundred feet up. They walk you up this high wooden platform and they'd trot you off the side one by one, and you didn't even get to enjoy the view. One at a time, like those lemmings, you'd go over the side. And once you step one foot onto the stairs at the bottom of the platform there's no turning back. Which is funny because how could the boys know how it would seem up there? Making people jump before they could understand the height.

On the ground we'd used aim the guns we were given at the jumpers. It was quite the thrill to watch yourself falling toward the black holes of rifles. We started putting blanks into the guns. Then Jack put in some bullets. Then we'd put one bullet in all our guns with the blanks and we'd mix them all up and we'd fire at the men dropping those hundred feet. When they'd go limp we didn't know whose gun had fired the live round. And when you don't know you killed someone you can easily get caught up in the game.

See, Andy, we were training for the enemy but there was no enemy around. The officers would look the other way all in the name of preparation. When no one kills the enemy, but they want to kill the enemy, you start killing people who aren't the enemy, you know? There were sergeants and privates and lieutenants all waiting for the next to jump. We started putting more and more bullets in different guns, and soon it was rare to be firing all blanks. The kid would line up and he'd look down on the rest of us waiting to try our hand at shooting him, at taking his life. He'd obviously not want to die, who would? But we were safe here on the ground having already jumped. So what went through their heads staring down at murderers, we could care less about. Jack again revolutionized our time, he started selling tickets and gambling on whether they lived or died. We'd bring in some alcohol and girls to screw us up between jumpers.

I suggested we burn the bodies but Jack quickly reminded me that a fire 20 foot tall would surely catch the troopers on fire when they leapt, we didn't want to knowingly kill someone. I nodded and smiled seeing that now, there's a line of boys lining up at the bottom stepping a foot onto the platform ready to try their jump, sit on the cushion, get killed randomly because we all think it's just a game when we can't really find an enemy. I remember the last one shot, too. It had gotten dark and the boys had trouble seeing the dark shapes floating to the ground. Somehow He had managed to drift to the left. He would have failed, not hitting the target but this bull's-eye was littered with the other men before him. He thought he had survived. He thought he had escaped, when Jack turned his gun on him and fired a single shot in the night hitting the private in the skull.

The earth fell silent and the officer's escorted Jack away. He had been the only gun to fire; he definitely killed a man, a fellow soldier. His face showed the incomprehension of one who didn't think he had gone too far. He looked at me and asked why I hadn't fired too, I replied, “He landed Jack”. And the game ended.

I know it wasn't what I wanted to remember from war. I really think I knew and understood that the pile of bodies lying still, forever attached to their chutes, was not … it wasn't everything I thought it was. And I know it's not the thing to tell grandchildren. But I don't know I killed anyone so… it's just a thing, a story, a way to get from point A to B, right? Why should I hide or be ashamed of anything? I wasn't the one that ended the killing game.