Airborne Jump Training

Heroes Remember

Airborne Jump Training

Transcript

When you, when you do airborne training they, in those days they had a, you did it in, we did it in rivers, in Shilo, Manitoba, okay. Now in Shilo, they had a high tower 250 feet up eh and they had arms extending from the high tower and the parachute would be deployed and they'd take, and they take ya up there and they, they'd stop you about two or three feet from the top and they'd yell at you, "What are you doing up there? Why are you up there?", you know , and you had to yell down "I'm in the airborne" you know and all this stuff eh. Then all of a sudden you hear this cable moving again and then you hear "clunk" and then a parachute is deployed and you're in it of course and "psht" you go down eh and I liked that, I didn't mind that. That was 250 feet up. But what I didn't like was the mock tower which is a tower you have to jump out of. It's 33 feet high, its psychological height. You look at the ground and you say "Shucks its too close to the ground." and then you think "Oh shucks at the same time it's too high." and all you do is jump out and you go down a cable, its almost like a clothesline and "psht". That's the only thing that scared me. So when the first jump, when I had to do my first jump, they noticed I was hesitant on the mock tower so they put me, the last man in the stick, you know when you line up in the plane they call it a stick eh, so they put me as last man. So anyways, they thought I was gonna chicken out. To put it bluntly eh and anyways... when it came my turn at the door no hesitation at all, jumped out and I enjoyed it because it was like going down a big slide eh because you jump out and then the propeller blast hits you and "psht" your gone and by the time you turn around and look at the plane because you're supposed to look around, check your canopy and all this stuff, the plane is way gone eh. And we used to jump out of planes called boxcars, CC19, C119 eh and they were so, oh, oh you were glad to get out of them because they just vibrated they just shook eh. Oh God. Years later we jumped out of the Hercules eh but that was a year and a half, two years later, we jumped out of them. But my first jump, I enjoyed it. And my sergeant, he's on the ground eh and the sergeant like each, there was oh, shucks, about 300 of us jumping at the time and each sergeant had a section, you know thirty men or whatever in his jump platoon and I think amongst them they made bets, "OK, so and so's gonna jump". It was almost like poker eh. "OK, he's not gonna do it, he's not gonna do it". You know and I think they had a bet on me chickening out eh. But anyways I as I landed, he's yelling at me, "Nice that you didn't have your feet together" and at the same time he winks at me and goes ( thumbs up), more or less to say "Way to go!".

Description

Mr. Nystad is explaining jump training and also how well his first actual jump went without a hesitation.

John Nystad

John Nystad, was born in 1941 in Holland. He never knew his mother as he was separated from her at a very young age during the Second World War and his father, a member of the Dutch Army, ended up being taken as a prisoner of war. As a result Mr. Nystad lived in an orphanage with several other children where they were served one meal a day and shared a bed with five or six others. After the end of the Second World War he was reunited with his father and in 1953 they immigrated to Canada. Mr. Nystad lived in southwestern Ontario until he joined the army and became a member of the Royal Canadian Signals. During his 12 year career in the army he served overseas in Egypt, Gaza and Cyprus and had many jobs ranging from a truck driver to being an electrician.

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