Mark Owen - No Hero

I finished the climbing trip that week with a new perspective. Staying in my three-foot world became a mantra for me. It is liberating once you let go of the things that you can’t control. It seems to work for just about any situation. The three-foot world helped me get through everything from climbing to skydiving to night dives where the only way you can keep your bearings is to focus on the glowing compass on your wrist.

Of course, the other part of being a SEAL that makes a fear of heights a little bit of a problem is skydiving. I had been to jump school even before joining the Navy, but I was uneasy with every jump and it took years before I started to love it.

I remember one jump, just after I graduated S&T. My troop was on a military free-fall training trip in Arizona. I was “new meat,” which meant I was the new guy. I had to jump all the gear the more senior guys didn’t want to jump, like the collapsible ladder, sledgehammers, and extra ammunition.

The inside of the C-130 was lit by red lights. I couldn’t stand up straight as I shuffled onto the plane. It was hot in the cabin as we took off and climbed to twenty thousand feet above the Arizona desert. My mouth was dry and my breathing was ragged. The backpack I was jumping was new, and much bigger than the pack I usually used. It sat at my feet, full of ammunition and extra gear. The straps from the rest of my sixty pounds of gear cut into my skin.

I tried to adjust the weight of the pack, hoping to balance it better, but I didn’t have any luck. My body ached from dragging the pack, oxygen tank, and parachutes onto the plane. I rolled my neck, working out the kinks from the heavy helmet and night vision goggles strapped to my head. I just didn’t feel comfortable at all. Instead of focusing on what I had to do, I complained to myself about how much everything sucked. All I wanted to do was jump because at least I’d be closer to getting all of the gear off.

Most of the time we wear so much gear that it literally takes all the fun out of something. Jumping at a civilian drop zone wearing a small “sport parachute” can be fun. For our work jumps, I had a minimum of sixty pounds of personal combat gear strapped to me. Add another one hundred pounds from the parachute, an oxygen bottle, and a mask, and then strap an additional sixty-pound backpack of extra “new meat” gear in front of me, and I was weighted down with well over two hundred pounds of gear, doubling my weight.

All my attention was focused on my discomfort when it should have been on the task at hand, a proper exit from the aircraft and the rest of the jump. We were conducting a night jump into an unknown drop zone, meaning we hadn’t been there before. I’d studied it on the map—an intersection of two dirt roads near the base of a mountain—but I wouldn’t get eyes on it until I was under canopy and looking through my night vision goggles. All I had to do was exit the plane; after a several-second delay, open my chute; and fall into line behind the lead jumper; and, if all went well, we would all land together. We all had the landing zone programmed into the GPS on our wrists in case we weren’t able to link up with the lead jumper, but that was usually an unused contingency plan.

It was the lead jumper’s job to guide the entire stack to the ground safely. When you are flying collapsible canopies in the middle of the night sky with more than twenty other SEALs, this is easier said than done. Since parachutes aren’t rigid like the wing of a hang glider or an airplane, if two parachutes collide with each other, the chutes collapse or wrap around each other, causing you to fall to your death.

I scanned the cabin, looking at my teammates, who were just shadows in the red glow of the lights by the ramp. Most of the guys just sat there silently, occasionally shifting the weight on their laps. It was impossible to see faces or expressions, but no one looked like I felt, which was nervous.

I fiddled with my oxygen tank and repositioned my rifle for the third time. I was so wrapped up in my own suckfest, the whoosh of air as the ramp slowly opened startled me. The jumpmaster gave the signal for “Ramp” and then “Stand up.” My teammates, like old men under all the gear, slowly got to their feet and shuffled toward the ramp.

The wind was deafening. We huddled near the edge and waited for the green light to jump. For a second, it dawned on me that I was inside one of the movies that I’d watched growing up. It was surreal, as I looked over my brothers lined up in front of me. I’d worked my ass off to be here.

Had I really made it?

The stars bobbed up and down as the plane settled into its cruising altitude. At this altitude, the black sky was littered so densely with stars it was hard to tell them apart. Beneath us, the clouds slipped by, occasionally breaking open, revealing the black desert below. It was so dark that it was hard to tell the difference between the lights from buildings on the ground and the stars shining in the night sky. I looked at the green numbers on my altimeter.

We got the “One minute” call from the jumpmaster and my mind began to wander. I could feel myself starting to question if I could really handle what was about to come my way. The what-ifs started to circle in my mind.

“What if I screw up my exit?”

“What if I didn’t pack my parachute correctly and it doesn’t open like it should?”

“What if I can’t find the lead jumper and I am lost in the night sky?”

Then the green “go” light lit up.

“Green light. Jumper, go!”

My teammates waddled forward and disappeared off the ramp. Just like in the fifty-meter underwater swim, I needed to force all the what-ifs out of my mind and focus. As my boots reached the lip of the ramp, my mind was still racing. I wasn’t focused.

I squared my feet on the ramp with my toes hanging slightly over the edge and pushed off. Nothing about my exit was relaxed or graceful. I was stiff off the ramp and my body position was bad from the start. My head should have been up, and my arms and legs out, controlling my body angle. But as soon as I hit the jet stream flowing off the plane, I started to spin. A spin is the last thing you want exiting an aircraft, especially when you’re carrying a lot of weight from extra gear.

The stars were just a smear of light as I rotated like a top. I struggled to get my bearings. A feeling of panic welled up from my chest. I was gulping down air as I flailed in a desperate attempt to stop the spinning. I was in trouble, but I couldn’t clear my mind and think, which only compounded my problems.

Instead of worrying about my body position, instead of worrying about getting under control and getting into a stable position, belly to the earth, all I could think was how I had to save myself.

“This is not good; this is not what should be happening right now,” went around in my head in a loop.

Out of pure instinct driven by fear, I reached in and pulled the handle to release my main chute. It was too early to pull my chute and I was in an uncontrolled spin; it was the last thing I should have done, but there was no reversing it now. I could feel the chute jump off my back as it came out of the container. In the split second I waited for the jerk of the parachute filling with air, I scolded myself for being so unfocused. I knew everything I did wrong. I fucked up my exit from the aircraft. My body position was stiff and I’d caused the spin to occur. I didn’t stop the spin before pulling my chute. I panicked and simply stopped thinking and acting and instead made another mistake by not getting into the proper position before I pulled. I knew better than to make any of those mistakes.

I felt the parachute jerk and the spinning begin to slow, but when I looked up to check my canopy, I couldn’t lift my head. The risers that led from my harness up to the parachute blocked it. I could feel the risers pressing against my neck. I thrashed my head back and forth, hoping to wiggle free, but it only put more pressure on the back of my head.