Each man, starting where the static-line hook hung from the cable, ran his free hand down along his gear, touching snaps and links to ensure that all were closed and secured. When he finished his own gear, he checked the parachute of the man to his front that could not be reached by the wearer.
When the men had settled, Evans pointed down the line and yelled, 'Sound off for equipment check.'
Starting from the front of the transport, or the rear of the stick, the first man slapped the butt of the man to his front and yelled, 'OK.'
Each of the others, in turn, slapped the butt of the man to his front, yelling, 'OK.' When the last man facing Evans had been slapped, he looked at Evans, pointed to him and yelled, 'All OK.' They were ready.
Thetwo-minute warning flashed. Evans looked down the line of his men one more time, then turned to face the rear of the aircraft. He was the stick leader and, as such, would be the first to go. As the statue known as 'Iron Mike,' which stood before Building 4, Infantry Hall, at Fort Benning, implored, he would lead his men into combat.
From his position, he could see the light gray of the Persian Gulf change to blackness as the transports crossed the coast of Iran five hundred feet below them. Behind the C-130 he was in, Evans could see several other transports. They were flying a tight formation, the tightest he had ever seen. At least the battalion would be together when they jumped.
Suddenly, Evans saw flashes on the ground and then several streams of red that streaked up, reaching for the transport. He felt himself go numb with fear. Tracers. They were being fired upon by antiaircraft guns.
Never before had he felt so helpless and exposed. The aluminum skin of the transport would not stop even the smallest round if it was hit.
There was nothing he and his men could do but stand there and wait until they were over their objective and it was time to jump. He felt a sudden urge to run out onto the ramp and jump. The sooner he was out of the aircraft, the sooner he would be on the ground, where at least one could hide or, better yet, fight back. Standing there, in a transport, he and his men could do nothing but get hit.
He watched the tracers continue to race up in wild and random patterns.
The urge to escape was replaced by a fear that when the time came he would not be able to go out onto the ramp and jump. With a great deal of effort, he turned and looked at his men. Blank expressions and the smell of urine and loose bowels made Evans conscious that the men behind him shared the same thoughts and fears. He wondered whether he was the source of the smell.
A brilliant flash caused him to jerk his head back to the open rear. To his horror, he saw the wing of one of the transports behind them snap off in great ball of fire. The transport had been hit. It rolled over to the side that the wing had come off and started to go down.
Paratroopers began to jump from the rear of the transport, but the sudden explosion, the turning to the side, the low altitude and the steep angle of descent prevented many from escaping. The impact of the stricken transport was spectacular and terrible. Half a hundred paratroopers, America's elite, men who had trained long and hard for battle, had died in a flash without ever having a chance to fight.
The green light, the signal to go, wrenched Evans' thoughts away from the tragedy he had just witnessed. Without thinking, he yelled, 'Go!' and ran off the ramp. As he felt himself fall away from the transport, he wondered whether anyone had followed him. No time to worry about that now. He was ready. He was confident. In a few minutes he would be doing what he had spent years training and preparing himself for: leading men into combat.
Evans tucked his chin into his chest, held his arms tight against his sides, his hands resting on the side of his reserve chute, and waited for his main chute to deploy.
The body of Captain John Evans was traveling close to one hundred miles an hour when it smashed onto the concrete runway of the Bandar Abbas airfield.
In the rush of events, Evans had forgotten to hook up his own static line before jumping.
The jerk of the static line going taut was followed by the shock of the canopy opening. Instinctively, Lieutenant Cerro looked up and at the same time reached to grab the parachute's risers. With a quick circular motion, he checked his canopy and suspension lines. All was in order. Next he reached down and unsnapped his equipment bag and let it fall. When it had reached the end of its suspension line, it gave Cerro a slight tug. He prepared for landing. From an altitude of five hundred feet, a paratrooper has only little more than a minute from exit to impact with the ground when the chute deploys properly.
Only when he had completed his preparations for landing did he notice the tracers rushing up from below him. He looked down into darkness that was punctured by muzzle flashes and explosions. Paratroopers are taught not to look down. As one nears the ground, he experiences ground rush, the sensation of seeing the ground appear to rise; this causes an instinctive tension as the body prepares itself for the shock of impact. Paratroopers are supposed to look out to the horizon and relax, prepared to allow their bodies to collapse in an orderly fashion. Cerro, however, had never been able to do that in training.
As a consequence, he always hit hard. His first combat jump was no different.
Cerro landed. Instead of turning and rolling onto the ground on his side and his back, he hit feet, butt and head in rapid succession, which knocked the wind out of him. After coming to rest, he lay for a long time, unable to move, struggling to get himself together as the sound of battle began to grow around him. The tug of his canopy, now reinflated by the wind, motivated him to get moving. Reaching up to the quick-release button located at the center of his chest, he pulled the safety clip, turned the large button and hit it with his fist, so that the harness popped open.
Sitting up, he began to gather his gear from the tangle of webbing, bags and parachute around him. A hand on his shoulder caused him to jump.
Whipping around, he found himself face to face with one of his men, who said, 'The sarge sent me to get you.'
For a moment, Cerro was speechless. Then he yelled at the soldier,
'Jesus!
Don't ever do that again, Stevens! You scared the shit out of me.'
'I'm sorry, Loot. But Sarge wanted me to see if you was alive.'
Cerro continued to police his gear while he hit Stevens with a stream of questions, the first one being how they had found him. Answering without hesitation, Stevens told Cerro that that was easy, since Sarge-Sergeant First Class Arnold, the platoon sergeant-had seen Cerro hit the ground like a sack of potatoes and had known right away who it was.
When Cerro was ready, he got up and told Stevens to lead off to where the platoon was. The two of them, crouching low, ran along the edge of the concrete runway, which Cerro had landed next to. All Cerro could think about was how lucky he had been to hit the dirt instead of the concrete. That would have really hurt.
Cerro's thoughts were jarred back to the present when a large-caliber antiaircraft gun four hundred meters to their front cut loose with a burst.
As soon as he saw the muzzle flash and the stream of tracers rip through the darkness, he dropped to the ground. Stevens, however, continued on until he noticed that his lieutenant wasn't following. He stopped and called back in a nonchalant manner, 'It's OK, Loot. That gun don't know where we are. Come on. Only a few more feet.' Cerro looked up. Stevens was really beginning to bug him.
As the two continued running, Cerro became aware of a staggered line of men to his left lying in the prone position and facing out away from the runway. It was his platoon. Stevens hailed for Arnold, who called to them to come over to his location. They veered slightly and ran in that direction.
Arnold was in a shallow ditch beside the runway with four other men.
'Damn, Lieutenant, I'm glad to see you made it. Have you seen Captain Evans?'
'Sergeant Arnold, until Stevens came up, I didn't see anyone. How many men have we got and have you seen the XO?'
First Lieutenant Griffit, the XO, answered. He was one of the other men in the ditch. 'Hank, as soon as you can, get your platoon moving.
We need to get the perimeter out as far as possible before the second drop comes in.
The 3rd Platoon is immediately to your right and will begin its move once you go. The 1st Platoon is further down, getting into a position from where they can knock out an SU-23 dug in a couple of hundred meters down the line.' The XO indicated the direction from which Cerro had seen the antiaircraft gun fire. The XO continued, 'The gun
