Rather Unusual Parachute Descents

By Simon Titlark

This book is based on actual military parachuting experiences in the UK, the United Arab Emirates, Cyprus and Guernsey between 1972 and 1976 where it draws to a close in what remains of Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon Titlark
• Release date: Oct 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386263449

Simon Titlark

Living in South Wales in the Vale of Glamorgan I am currently enjoying my retirement with my wife Elly plus our black lab Bill and our cat Fonzie. With a lifetime love of books and writing I enjoy sharing my rather unusual and at times immensly fulfilling life experiences with others.

Book preview

Introduction – 2018

My wife Elly, our black Lab called Bill and our cat Fonzy live in a small bungalow with panoramic views of the beautiful Vale of Glamorgan in South Wales.  While recently clearing dried sludge from the guttering the ladder began moving sideways and although, being a bungalow rather than a house, I wasn’t far from the ground I felt a fleeting pang of fear, not to mention wind in my Y-fronts before I stabilized the ladder and climbed down.  Mentioning the near fall to Elly, who tersely comments I shouldn’t be on a ladder at age 73, I grin and head for the large oblong garage we’ve converted into part workshop and part man cave where, using an easy to remember name - Simon Titlark - I’ve written and published two E-books. Reflecting about falling to earth from that ladder sets me thinking back to my mid-twenties when, as a medic in a Territorial Army Airborne Unit I fell to earth, and on one occasion into the sea, doing forty parachute descents in four countries while accumulating stories ranging from hilarious to chilling. Deciding to write about them and rummaging in my desk for the perfect diary, my airborne logbook, I turn on my PC and type a suitable title.  Rather Unusual Parachute Descents. Immediately coming to mind as I begin writing are images of two starving little girls, one Jewish, the other African who impart a lesson I still think about more than four decades later.

Smiling down at Bill, settling as he always does beside my desk, I’m also reminded my sole reason for enlisting in the TA was to try to overcome traumatic events as a teenager leaving me entirely bereft of self-confidence.* Joining the Royal Corps of Transport to be trained as a driver, but discovering the TA had volunteer airborne units, in an all or nothing gambit I transferred for training as a paratrooper/medic and in February 1972 was sent to Keogh Barracks in Aldershot for two weeks medical training beginning every morning with rigorous billet inspections by a Sergeant in the Coldstream Guards who expected to see sheets and blankets folded into a perfect box and boot caps virtually gleaming. Breakfast was followed by what seemed to be his favourite pastime, an hour of square bashing. On the course I soon became matey with another trainee medic, a lad my age from Belfast named Tony.  When we pulled a night guard together, patrolling the perimeter of the barracks armed to the teeth with pick axe handles, inevitably we talked about ‘The Troubles’ and the tragic events of bloody Sunday a month earlier. Telling him I had little understanding of the increasing turmoil in Belfast, when I added that as a boy my Protestant School was opposite a Catholic School and the only time I ever witnessed anything remotely hostile was when it snowed and, teachers included, we bombarded each other with snowballs, that we were children being children, listening intently Tony nodded and resolutely answered...

"When people segregate other people because of their colour or their religion, whether it’s Arab and Jew, Muslim and Christian or Catholic and Protestant, horrendous violence is certain to follow!  As far back as the 16th century Ireland has known little except unrelenting bloodshed because of segregation! It will now begin decades of mayhem and tit for tat killings for the same hate that’s plagued it for centuries!"  

As Tony was about to continue the Coldstream Sergeant loomed out of the shadows positively enraged we were conversing while on guard duty. Giving us a severe bollocking to the effect we were two dickheads who couldn’t guard chickens in a hen house he immediately separated us. 

Back home, as my training continued, Tony and I wrote to each other for a while until his letters stopped. I never saw or heard from him again but would never forget him. His dour prediction about his country’s future would endure until a fragile truce came with the Good Friday Agreement twenty-seven years later...  

* Ref my book - ‘Mindset of Fear’

Chapter One

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Mid-Summer – 1972

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Future airborne soldiers who wait to do their first parachute descent from an oblong metal box tethered by cables beneath a huge grey barrage balloon will admit they were mightily apprehensive, if not quietly terrified. Nobody forgets their chilling introduction to military parachuting.

To get this far, part time volunteers from all over the country, and more so regulars, have endured a gruelling selection course known as P Company which,  under the watchful eye of the selection staff, in my case professional soldiers from the 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment, progressively take men to their limits with such things as the backbreaking log race in which eight very fit young men are attached to a length of telegraph pole by hand held toggle ropes and run for several miles, a test of endurance where  legs and