By Spc. Michael J. MacLeod

1/82 AAB PAO, USD-C

CAMP RAMADI, Iraq – “Black hat” instructors from the U.S. Army’s elite Advanced Airborne School refreshed the parachuting skills of paratroopers here Feb. 5 to prepare them for a tactical airborne exercise soon to follow.

  Three jumpmaster instructors from the Fort Bragg parachuting school recently traveled to Camp Ramadi, where they taught a one-day basic airborne skills refresher course to paratroopers of 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division (Advise and Assist Brigade).

   “You want to knock the dust off [airborne] skills and bring them to the level of proficiency where they need to be,” said Sgt. 1st Class Robert Shultz, air movement operations committee chief for the Advanced Airborne School and lead instructor conducting the training at Camp Ramadi.

   “It’s a perishable skill, like marksmanship or physical training. It’s something you need to be on top of all the time,” he said.

   Instructors led the paratroopers in a series of exercises, simulating every movement that a paratrooper must make before, during and after a jump to exercise muscle memory, said Shultz.

   Paratroopers practiced parachute landing falls – a way to safely roll when landing to dissipate the energy of impact. They also received a brief on how to exit the aircraft under various scenarios, and then practiced mass exiting from a training apparatus; designed to simulate a C-130 aircraft.

   The last skill paratroopers reviewed was rigging their packs with a harness that allows them to lower their packs to the ground before they land, preventing injury and protecting equipment.

   “To get these guys out here touching their equipment – rigging their stuff up, putting their parachute on – makes them feel like paratroopers again,” said Schultz. “They’re out here [in Iraq] doing different things.”

   Sgt. Brandon Reynolds, a mortarman with 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, is looking forward to the jump. A paratrooper since 2006, Reynolds said he loves being a paratrooper with the 82nd because of the high standards of soldiering they uphold.

   “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to come out here and jump and show the Iraqis exactly what an airborne division can do,” he said.

   The legacy unit of 1/82 AAB, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, has five jumps into combat zones under its belt, including four during World War II and one into Panama in 1989.

   If executed as planned, the 1/82 AAB training exercise could be the largest mass parachute jump into a combat zone since the paratroopers of 173rd Airborne Brigade dropped onto Bashur Airfield in northern Iraq March 26, 2003; a combat jump known as Operation Northern Delay.

   According to the 173rd Web site, nearly 1,000 paratroopers took part in that operation. More than 500 devil paratroopers are expected to jump at this one.