Hi all
A fun flirty conversation with a lady friend of mine resulted in me telling her about a real life episode that happened to me some 35 years ago. She loved it that much that she pleaded with me to put it down and submit it here. I being the shy retiring type (honest!) I said no, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I would surprise her. So small_town_girl, here it is...And thanks in advance to both her and funinthesungirl119 for editing it XX
Enjoy dear readers, and it really is a true life story with only a few names and places changed to protect the innocent.
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The story starts in the summer of 1978 when I was a young officer in Her Majesty's Armed Forces. We worked hard and played even harder, but I was only 19 so life held no fear for me. Not surprisingly I threw myself into all sort of risky activities, but the one that held the most fascination for me was parachuting. Freefall skydiving to be exact.
A perk of being in the Forces is that they actively encourage, and also fund, all sorts of activities which are deemed to enhance the overall skills and qualities that are essential to being a serviceman. Parachuting definitely falls into that category so to that end they had set up and funded a military sports parachute association at a disused airfield on the south coast of England. It also ran alongside a civilian parachute school and both shared the runway and hangers, thus reducing the overall cost to both schools.
We did however have our own training and leisure facilities in the form of long wooden huts. Luxury was not high on the priority list, but being typical soldiers we soon made the living area habitable and scrounged easy chairs, tables and most importantly an old bar nicked from a pub that was being refurbished and was surplus to requirements. Strange how service folk always seem to find these luxuries, but I digress.
It was one evening after a successful day's jumping that we were sat having a beer in the crew room when Jon, who was the senior of us service wise with about 15 years time in, brought up the subject of a comrade of ours who was recently paralysed in a car crash. Basically, how could we dig in and help him and his wife out financially. Various ideas were thrown around and out of the blue one bright spark, whose name I cannot remember, suggested a naked parachute jump.
You could have heard a pin drop while that particular thought was digested, but seconds later everyone started talking at once laughing and swearing at the guy who had spoken. But the upshot was everyone loved the idea. In the sober light of day I'm sure we all had a rethink, but that night with a few beers down our necks we were going to do it, and being young guys full of life, once we said we were going to do something... we did it!
The next hour was spent on the logistics of the jump, how to get sponsorship, the date and all such mundane things as that. I won't bore you with the details because I don't think that's what you want to read about, but there is one important part of all this that I will mention. It was decided that the best way to raise money was to sell tickets, and obviously as it was a naked jump, the sales focus was going to be on the ladies. It was decided that we would all try and sell as many tickets to family, friends, colleagues, wives, etc., and at £10 a head we hoped to raise about £1000 for the man and his wife.
10 of us were going to jump so we were all targeted with selling 10 tickets. On the day of the jump, the ticket holder was to be allowed to stand at the side of the walkway from the hut to the plane as we passed, watch us take off and then stand near to the landing area for our arrival back on terra firma. In the days before internet porn and the Chippendales, we thought that represented good value for money and were hopeful of hitting our target...
Oh Boy...how wrong were we to be!!
Now, a little aside before I continue. As a young officer I technically was the senior person of the group, but in our mob It was always wise to respect experience, so Jon was designated team leader and the majority of the organisation fell on his - and a couple of other senior guys' - shoulders. Hence once the tickets were produced by the base printer, all I had to do was basically sell my 10 tickets and turn up on the day. I also eventually realised that as I was the youngest, as well as being an officer, they were keeping something from me. Knowing that our lot loved practical jokes I was steeling myself for something embarrassing to happen, but for the life of me I couldn't work out what. I was to find out later.
From memory we only had about three weeks from conception to jump so things went pretty swiftly. I sold my 10 tickets in the first week and Jon was really lavish in his praise telling me that none of the others had completed their quota yet. Chest duly puffed up with pride I left him clutching another 10 tickets in my grubby paw, determined to be top of the pops when the money was handed in.
Those extras sold in a few days too and Jon was ecstatic. Only one other had managed to sell his quota so obviously I as an officer was leading by example. Happy as a sandboy I left with another book of tickets, determined to sell the lot. I am sorry to say that my head was so swollen with his praise that it never occurred to me that I was being wound up and having the piss taken out of me. Oh the innocence of youth. What made it even worse was try as I might, nobody was interested in any more tickets. It seemed everyone was washing their hair that day...oh well...at least I had sold 20.
SOOOO, without any more preamble let's get to D Day.
It was decided we would jump about 10.00, before it got too hot and before the coastal breeze picked up. We all arrived about 8.30 which gave us plenty of time to have a coffee, have a pre-jump nerves chat and check our kit. We were all then gathered in the equipment room to prepare. This room was right in the middle of the building, designed that way so that it could be secured against some light fingered Herbert deciding he wanted some good quality gear some night.
