| History 1997 |
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DUTCH BASIC PARA COURSE . TEXEL 1997
Texels briefing room used to welcome new Pathfinder
members Parachute packing is an important part of the course. It encourages team
work. As well as giving the novice parachutist complete confidence in the kit he is
using GQ and the end product is some very happy jumpers
The typical Pathfinder
course
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRAINING WITH THE ESTONIAN SPETSNAZ I had been invited over to jump in Estonia with a bunch of former Soviet Spetsnatz. The organiser was Rob Krott USA Army with whom I was to become a life long friend. Sure Id love to jump in Estonia Rob. I hung up. Where the F**k is Estonia. I got out my atlas. Finland, Latvia, Lithuania...oh there it is on the Baltic coast. Former Soviet country. Could be interesting. Estonia. It was a bit short notice but I managed to rope three other Pathfinder members into coming with me. Flights hurriedly booked, equipment hurriedly put together and we were off. We were going to arrive an hour before the American and South African jumper who were attending the course so we didn't really know what to expect. Our flight transferred in Copenhagen and we flew on to Tallinn. In all about a 2 hour flight. Airfare was a bit expensive but then how many times do you get the chance to jump with a bunch of Spetsnatz. We landed at Tallinn and walked through customs. The customs shed looked like a throw back to Russian days with bleak black wooden cubicles all manned by rather butch females in Brown uniforms. Once through it was a different world. A modern airport with all the usual shops and amenities lay beyond. No sooner were we through customs then half a dozen large characters with shaven heads lead by the biggest, meanest son of a bitch I had ever seen accosted us. The leader grabbed me by the hand and crushed my puny mit in his shovel for a hand. Hello, you must be Roy, he said. His English was very good but his accent was very Russian like with the unmistakable American twang in his voice lead me to believe he had improved his English by watching American TV. (I now know that if I say he sounds Russian Andrie will kill me).The leader of the group of Estonians was Andrei Ambros, Commander of the Estonian SOG. We chatted while we waited for the rest of the party and had the customary beer (Sakoo, very nice larger). Andrie had been in the Russian Army until the Wall came down and then reverted back to the Estonian military. They had no Special Forces so they started from scratch using the former Russian Spetsnatz to start the new SOG. Andrie had trained with various countries Special Forces and had spent some time in the States.
After a room clearance demo. Roy talks to Sgt Ragner Reitsakas, Estonian SOG.
The next few days were spent seeing the sights of the city. They have
seven months of daylight so most places are open 24 hour. Tallinn is
definitely a city that never sleeps. Most younger people speak English and
speak it very well. Unlike many other countries they speak English around
you when they realise that is your mother tongue. They are very friendly
people and go out of their way to make you feel at home. That is not to
say they don't have the usual muggings and robberies if you go down the
wrong streets but our Estonian friends made sure we were well chaperoned.
A diving trip had been arranged for those of us
who were qualified and we would be doing a navigation dive. It would be a
long circular swim around the bay. Unfortunately I had not dived for a
while and had forgot how tiring it could be. It was a good dive using
state of the art diving equipment. When we finished the dive and everyone
walked out of the surf to the Bar-B-Q that had been prepared in our honour
I amused everyone by crawling out of the surf and could hardly stand.
Every muscle in my body felt like I had ben hit by a baseball bat. Adrei
slapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I wanted a beer. What a stupid
question.
Usually Ragner or Ingmark accompanied us on our
trips out. We soon found out that they were poorly paid and would sit in a
corner, almost on guard duty while we enjoyed ourselves. Luckily we found
this out the first night and offered to pay for our hosts food and drink.
They were very proud and totally refused to accept what they saw as
charity. So we had to trick them buy buying their drink and food, plonking
it down in front of them and forcing them to eat. Iv have never had to
force a paratrooper to drink beer before and this was something completely
alien to me. We looked after our guides and in turn they looked after us.
Soviet system deployment
A demonstration of house clearing had been
arranged for us. The training establishment was the old Russian Baltic
coastal Headquarters which the Estonians seemed to enjoy blowing bits out
of. It was also in the heart of the city but the locals didn't complain
about the noise. The demo started with Black clad SOG members repelling
down the side of the high building. Some were upside down carrying mirrors
to look for gunmen in the rooms. Other covered them by going down face
first carrying pistols and MP5's at the ready and the assault team went
down the conventional way popping in through the windows and throwing stun
grenades. There ensued a load of grunting and groaning and the sound of
terrorist being overcome. There then followed a few seconds of quiet and
then a couple of conscripts dressed as enemy and hog tied with plasticuffs, were
thrown out of the bottom window to land in a heap on the floor. Im glad
they remembered to do it on the bottom floor. No one seemed badly hurt
although there was at least one cut lip and a bit of blood. There was a
demonstration of their fire power which was very impressive and we got the
chance to walk into the building behind an assault team as they blew off
doors and ran up the stairs carrying their ballistic armoured shield which
they assured me would stop 7.62 at close range. I felt the weight. I
believed them.
The day before the jump we walked the DZ passing a
few rusting AN 2's Luckily it turned out that was not what we were
jumping. Our AN 2 was in much better condition, well it had a fresh coat
of paint. We met the Russian "Advisors" who were training the
Estonian Special Forces and they turned out to be good guys who also spoke
good English. Hang on, weren't these guys supposed to be our enemies once
and they spoke English as good as we did? Now that's worrying. They wore
the faded, wishy washy camouflage overalls of the Russian Spetsnatz with
the traditional blue and white t-shirt underneath. Igor was to be our
jumpmaster. A stocky bloke, built like a brick shithouse and rumoured to
have killed several Taliban in an ambush. He had run out of
ammunition and rather than be taken alive and tortured had waded into them
with a fighting knife and his bear hands. It must have worked as there he
was standing in front of me. I don't think I would have liked to have met
him on the battlefield. We had a presentation of Russian Parachute wings
from an old Army quartermaster and his daughter who acted as translator.
This guy had one of every parachute wing that had ever been presented to
the Russians and their satellite states. It was a hell of a collection and
I was sorry we never had more time. I could have stayed there all day.
Suddenly the customary vodka appeared and that's all I remember until the
following morning when I was woken suddenly by an alarm clock ringing
somewhere down the corridor. I staggered down to breakfast and eat what
ever was put in front of me. Most of us were suffering and we only had a
few hours before the jump. I told one Russian that we are not usually
allowed to drink ten hours before a jump. He looked me square in the eyes
and said "You must drink, Parachuting is scary".I think he was
serious.
Tony, Roy and Mike pose by the AN2 'Colt' We were bussed out to the DZ and kitted up. We were jumping the D9 which was their version of the Russian retard parachute system. You can make your worst ever exit and about 1.6 seconds after you leave the aircraft the static line has deployed a stabilising chute. Its a small device but enough to check your rate of fall and stop any tumbling. Although a previously set clockwork device fires you main chute you can override that by pulling the good old rip cord.
The four intrepid Brit's wait to emplane. Kendel, Brownridge, Bleasdale and Mobsby
As we were being checked out on the flightline we watched some
of the other sticks jumping. The weather was good and everyone seemed to
be getting good landings. No injuries so far so that was a good sign.
A cross between free fall and static line,
the Russian system works well. its a good system. We would be jumping
first stick from our aircraft and a civilian stick would be jumping behind
us. The two groups were mixed to help offset the cost of the fuel as we
found out later. The AN2 took off and seemed to take for ever to get to
drop height. We would be leaving the aircraft at over three thousand feet.
Igor leaned out of the aircraft to check the DZ, looked at me in the No1
position and then walked back passed me to check the girls parachute who
was in the No1 position in the second stick. Almost as an after thought he
looked at me and said"Oh,yes that's right your English? OK you can
go! and he carried on checking the girls gear.
I walked to the door and looked out. I couldn't see the airfield, just
fields. I was used to getting a slap on the shoulder from a jumpmaster who
was standing beside me. Hell, Id been told to go so I looked back at the
others shrugged and jumped. Like good little British soldiers everyone
followed me. I found the novelty of falling feet first under a baby canopy
exhilarating and it was almost an anti climax to open the chute. The D9
didn't deploy, it arrived. I suddenly found myself under a big round
canopy with some strange holes in it. I remembered to disarm my reserve by
removing the landyard. Failure to do this would have meant the barometric
device nestled inside, would have popped the reserve open when I got down
lower. It could have caused a nasty malfunction so I followed the training
we had been given and disarmed it. I looked around.
Nothing but corn fields. I came down with a thump
right in the middle of one. The corn was about six foot high and I had a
hell of a job recovering my chute and getting out of there. Someone
shouted my name. "Who's that?" I said jumping up in the air
"Tony!" said a voice somewhere over to my right. I jumped up
into the air again to see over the corn just in time to see Mike doing the
same. The "Where the F**k are we tribe" from a famous old song
came to mind. After about 30 minuets we all met up and worked out the
direction of the airfield. We could see the canopies of the second stick
coming down in the distance. It took about 40 minutes to walk back to the
airfield. Because the group was so large, some 50 jumpers form about
five different nationalities we only had time for the one jump. I was glad
about that because by the time we had reached the RV point to drop off the
chutes we were knackered.
I found Igor on the ground taking a break as
one of the other Instructors took his place in the aircraft. I informed
him about the bum spot. He laughed. "You came to see Estonia, you saw
Estonia, no problem". He laughed again. As I had already found out
Igor like a joke. Bastard. We had been dropped deliberately about a mile
and a half off the DZ.
and afterwards sporting their new Estonian SOG wings
I think I can definitely say we had earned our Estonian SOG wings. Our
American friends had to leave early to get flights back. Some where flying
onto Amsterdam to continue their holiday in Europe. This gave us three
more days before we flew back to England. Rob had made arrangements for
Andrei to look after us. We said our goodbyes to our American and South
African friends and sat in the hotel and waited and waited. The
contact phone number we had been given just rang and no one answered.
I was beginning to feel we had been
forgotten when all of a sudden two SOG vans and a couple of cars turned up
to move us into the barracks. Ragner, Andrei and a couple of the guys
threw our gear into the vans bundled us in and charged off back to Tallinn
to put us up in one of their standby rooms. We had the run of the barracks
and still had one of the SOG to look after us each day. What would you
like to do said Andrie. We had thought about this and if given the chance
we wanted to have at a look at a normal working unit of the Estonian
SOG. They still had conscription so I was interested in how that worked as
all the SOG were volunteers. We also wanted to put some rounds down range
if we could get permission.
Roy tries out the AKM on the ranges
Roy
Mobsby
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