Parachuting in Camp De Canjures France

In 2nd Anglico, a special unit in the Marine Corps designed to be attached to foreign allies and American special forces in order to call Marine air and ground fire support, we traveled the world and this is just one of those stories.

My first time working with the French Foreign Legion came early in my Anglico career. We were doing joint operations in Camp De Canjures France. I have lots of video and pictures which were awesome.

I found that the French were a lot different than any other organization I worked with. I worked with the Israel Navy Seals, the British Royal Marines, and close to 20 others. The most hard corps unit I ever worked with was the Israel Navy Seals. The French had two distinct division in their military. The enlisted which did all the dirt details and could never approach an officer without extreme humiliation and the officers which acted like they hung the moon. Many of the enlisted were Americans who had enlisted in the Foreign Legion to give them a head start on their mercenary careers.

Anyway, I can remember it being very cold and the Anglico team was staying in the tents with the enlisted FFL. The jumps in the gorgeous mountains were from helicopter as the jump zones were so small. Anytime you jump from a helicopter at 10000 feet AGL you can expect it to take a while for the chopper to climb to altitude. This is specifically true in a high altitude where the air is more dense.

Some of my favorite pictures were taken while I was under canopy at about 6000 feet above ground level. I took a picture of my boots and below them you could see the mountains we were jumping into. It was an awesome picture of beauty and the picture of a Marines boots which can literally take him anywhere.

One of my most memorable moments happened when SGT Harry Phillips was jumping HALO. He was very good and always prided himself on landing on a dime. This day was a little different because of the updraft of the mountains. At least that was the excuse we received. I had just landed on the ground and I heard this hollering from above. I looked and looked and finally I saw a parachute up the side of a cliff and Harry had found his dime on the side of the mountain. His parachute had caught on a tree and his feet landed safely on a 2 or 3 foot ledge. We would not help him until all the pictures were taken.

Once we got him on the ground one of the most frightening sites any paratrooper dreads to see happened right before us. We were watching some of our Marines exit a chopper and one of them looked like he jettisoned his combat pack because he had a line dropping from his Belt about 15 feet below with what looked like a Marine Pack at the end of it. We were all fine with that as it is a scene we are use to when you do a combat jump. You drop your equipment so that you don't land with a 120lb pack on your back. The 15 foot of line keeps you from landing on your pack and breaking an ancle. The only problem was we were jumping Hollywood. A Hollywood jump is when you have no combat equipment to jettison. We found out after the Marine landed on the ground that his leg had rapped around a parachute pull Cord which was attached to the chopper. When his parachute opened there was immediate tension between his parachute pulling one way and the chopper pulling the other. Usually the strongest part of a parachute is the pull cord. It has a tension strength of 7000 plus pounds if I remember correctly. That means the easiest thing to pull apart is the paratroopers body. Fortunately for him God was watching out for him that day. For some reason the pull cord broke and spared his leg.

I can't wait to share some of the other stories with you. I loved being a Marine around other Marines serving our country and learning about other cultures.