Officer + Medical Training

WINEGARNER: My name is Hunter Winegarner. I'm a Captain in the Army, and I'm stationed with the 10th Special Forces Group here at Fort Carson, Colorado. I'm a doctor for our unit, and our unit is an airborne unit, which means we jump out of helicopters or airplanes on a pretty frequent basis. Myself and a lot of the guys that will be jumping today are cooks and medics and other MOSes that help the Green Berets get their job done.

This is me, in a parachute, ready to go.

Today we're going to jump out of Chinooks, which are CH-47s. They're the double-rotor, kind of funny-looking helicopters that kind of look like big school buses up there.

The helicopters will pick us up here and they'll bring us up to about 2,000 feet, and we'll fly at about 90 knots.

It's a static line jump, which means that we don't pull the rip cord - the rip cord's actually attached to the aircraft, and as we jump out it gets pulled. And then they give us the signal that we're one minute out, 30 seconds out, they tell us to stand by, and then somebody says "go." Before you know it you can see outside the door, and as soon as the arm goes up you just kind of charge off the back and get into position, chin to your chest, and then pretty hard shock as soon as the chute opens. Jumping out of a helicopter is probably the most extreme thing that we do, as far as adrenaline goes.

All right. So we just landed. Pretty sure my feet still work. Aah, gonna shake it out a little bit, put that off to the side. We've got our chest strap, leg lift, leg loops, throw all that stuff out. This is where I sit up straight and start putting stuff away. After the jump we need to go check in with the jump master at the chute turn-in, one, to let him know that I'm safe, I'm OK, and the other, to turn in my parachute, because I don't want to be walking around with this thing the rest of the day. And then we're free to go.