My buddy Foster frequently lost his oxygen mask and passed out under canopy. He’d wake up after his automatic opening deployed his main chute.
After dozens of jumps, we were ready to try for thirty thousand feet, but I was worried. The rear ramp lowered. A ■■■■■ support para-rigger stood behind me on the ramp as I tightened my straps. I cinched down my mask and did a couple practice wave-offs.
My heart pounding, I was ready to go.
But just as the red light turned to yellow, I heard a loud crash. When I looked behind me I saw the ■■■■■ ■■■■■■ on the deck convulsing. His arms, legs, and neck were thrashing uncontrollably. The jumpmaster immediately radioed the cockpit. The ramp was closed and we flew back to the base.
The doctors discovered that the ■■■■■ para-rigger had cocaine in his system. He was kicked off the team, and we were pissed that he’d ruined our world-record attempt.
A legendary badass from New Jersey named Al Morrel taught us defensive tactics (DT)—commonly known as hand-to-hand combat. Al was a heavy man who wore thick glasses and had huge bear-paw-like hands. He’d served as General Westmoreland’s personal bodyguard during Vietnam and had worked as bodyguard for Elvis Presley.
He stood before ten of us and said, “I can’t prove everything I’m going to tell you, but I can tell you this: The ten of you can’t take me down. There’s no one on this planet who can take me down. But all I can prove right now is that the ten of you can’t.”
The ten of us looked at him, thinking, Is this old man crazy?
Al said, “Give me about a second apiece and come at me one by one. Try gouging my eyes out, putting me in a choke hold, whatever you want to do.”
We charged, one after the other. Being one of the smaller guys in the group, I figured I’d jump up at his neck and put him in a choke hold. But when I ran up to him, that mountain of a man threw me, and I landed flat against a wall. He smeared all ten of us good.
Al had an amazing ability to use the assailant’s own energy against him. If the guy came at Al with a knife or a baseball bat, Al would use the weapon against the attacker.
Al loved knives. He said to us once, “If I really get to know my knife, I can cut a person without the blade even touching them.”
What?
He made incredible statements, and proved many of them to be true.
One day Al walked up to the biggest guy in our class—Mack. Mack stood out not just for his size and his big mustache but also for the big, ugly scars on his face, which he’d gotten from his wife. He explained that he’d been in the shower with his wife and she’d pissed on his leg because she thought it was sexy. Mack didn’t agree and slapped her face. She reached up and gouged his face with her long fingernails, which resulted in the scars.
Al said to Mack, “Kick me between my legs as hard as you can.”
Mack didn’t want to do it.
“Go ahead and kick me!”
Mack kicked Al in the balls. Al didn’t even twitch.
The rest of us guys couldn’t believe what we had just seen.
Al said, “If I wanted a freakin’ girl to kick me, I would have asked one. Go ahead and kick me like a man.”
Mack reared his leg back and kicked him so hard it was painful to watch. Al’s body rose a couple of inches off the ground, but his face didn’t register even an iota of discomfort.
Holy shit!
He straightened his shoulders, walked past us, and said, “Men, I never want you to show how much pain you’re in. Under any circumstances.”
He never explained how he did it, but we couldn’t have been more impressed.
Unfortunately, Al’s tolerance for pain knew no bounds. Al had developed a triple hernia years before we met him, which protruded quite a bit. One day before class, he accidentally sliced open his protruding belly, causing his large and small intestines to spill out of the wound. One of the guys in our class found him bleeding on the floor and called an ambulance. Al died from complications in the hospital. We couldn’t believe it, and we’d never forget what he taught us.
The diving at ■■■■■■■■■■/■■■■ was much more complex and dangerous than anything we had attempted at ST-1. Now, we dove as a boat crew of six rather than in pairs. And the six of us swam while holding on to a five-foot-long telescopic pole with a caving ladder secured to the end.
Try to imagine swimming with five other guys for four hours underwater at night. All of you are holding on to this pole, all trying to swim at the same depth, in and around pilings and piers. It is fairly difficult maintaining buoyancy as a single diver in the darkness, and trying to maintain the buoyancy of yourself and five others while diving in and around pier pilings is extremely difficult.