SKY TROOPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 January 1942, Page 3

SKY TROOPS

HOW THEY ATTACK BRITAIN’S BEST SOLDIERS. FIRST PARACHUTE BRIGADE. In one of England’s lovely parklands I stood and watched a “mass descent” practice of Britain's first Parachute Brigade, writes a “News of the World” reporter. For a time there was calm —the placidity of the England we once knew; the avenue of ancient elms; the vista of rolling land; the browsing sheep and the cawing rooks. Then, out of the westering sun, came the bombers. Those black-skinned Whitleys—there were six of them —kept an even keel and their insistent course, so that you thought the} 7 must hit the trees on the little hill. Then their bellies opened, and flying mosquitoes darted in the sky. The mosquitoes changed in a second to a kaleidoscope of vivid hues; and then to a gentle drifting toward the earth. The sky seemed filled with a multitude of slowly falling parasols. Then men came rushing toward us with Tommy-guns at the ready and all the paraphernalia of destruction. “ON TOP OF THE WORLD.” Exercises over, I met these men, the chosen of Britain's armies, who have volunteered for this craziest of jobs. They are a grand lot. Eating and drinking and talking with them was like being in a South Wales Rugger changing-room before one of those classic games. You had the same feeling of keyed-up fitness; the same absurdly youthful “feel” of being “on top of the world, and who wants to stop us?” I learned how patient English designers have made their inevitable improvements on Germany’s—and Russia’s —experiments, in this new business of parachute fighting; how the scientists set to work on a new form of ’chute called the statichute. You don't have to pull the ripcord. You just jump through the hole, bearing .in mind the “drill” to keep your feet and legs pressed tightly together and set yourself squarely into the “wind drift.” The scientists have seen to the rest, with a cunning device whereby your canopy opens a second after you have jumped. SECOND JUMP WORST. After their “mass descent” I went “up” with them and watched how it all was done. You sit round the “hole in the ground” on a narrow circular bench. When the time comes the pilot of the aircraft flashes a red light. That is the “make ready” signal. A few seconds later comes a green light. And your turn has .come. “It’s not the first jump that worries you,” said any number of these great lads. “You don’t know what it’s all in aid of then. You know what you have to do and you just do it.” “But,” said they, “it's waiting for the second one that gets you just a little bit. And after that it’s all a matter of getting on with a job.”

I helped a majoi* of a famous Scottish regiment unbutton his harness. It was his 21st jump. I spoke to one warrant officer who has done 72 jumps. Britain is making ready with this force whose activities hitherto have been a closely-kept secret,