CHAPTER 42 A PILOT REMEMBERS THE PARACHUTE EVALUATION COURSE 1959

A few years ago I asked for ex members of the Rhodesian Air Force to share their memories regarding the Rhodesian Air Force  Parachute Training School at New Sarum and was surprised to receive a contribution from Rex Taylor. I was previously unaware that Rex was on the parachute evaluation course in 1959 when the RAF sent a team to ascertain the possibility of utilising paratroops in the hot and high country of the Central African Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The team from the Royal Air Force No 1 Parachute Training School at RAF Abingdon consisted of one Officer Sqn/Ldr Errol Minter (born in Bulawayo) and two Sergent Parachute Jumping Instructors Sgt Red Summers and Sgt George Sizeland. This team was sent to train twelve black soldiers and twelve white soldiers - all were volunteers. The only regular regiment in the Federal Army at this time, was the Kings African Rifles, and the small number of Staff Corps used for training all the Territorial soldiers on national service. The all white units of  'C' Rhodesian Squadron of British 22 SAS Regiment and a Battalion Of The Rhodesian Light Infantry had yet to be formed. The result was a number of RRAF men were included in the mix - they included Chief Technician W.P.Maitland, Flying Officer Rex Taylor, Cpl/Tech Forbes, Flying Officer Basil Myburgh and W.O Wild. Chief/Technician Maitland was later sent over to RAF Abingdon with the original RRAF volunteers to be trained as PJIs and  became the Parachute Training School Warrant Officer. I have found a number of photographs of the 1959 Parachute Evaluation Experiment and have included them in the Rex Taylor Story below. Rex also recalled another name in his story - S/Sgt Bouch the man responsible for getting everybody physically fit before the actual parachute course started. W.O. Bouch later became a founding member of C Sqn Rhodesian SAS and was killed In action on 12 Oct 1966 at the start of the Rhodesian  Bush War. I remember W.O. Bouch teaching us unarmed combat in the very early days and his familiar shout to, "Grab your enemy by the Troat and squeeze t' life outta him." Everybody who had any dealings with Bob Bouch will never forget him. Thank you Rex for your contribution  of a time that is all but forgotten. Thanks to the experiments performed by Rex and his fellow guinea-pigs, the viability of parachuting in our particular conditions was confirmed and the dream of the Rhodesian Parachute Training School became reality. Derek de Kock

Hi Derek

I remember only one of the two RAF PJI’s, the name Sgt 'Red' Summers and he keeps pulling the slack on my memory cells! Sqn Ldr Minter was the third RAF member. I remember an RAF PJI trying a parachute with a blank gore onto runway 14, and I don’t recall us being impressed. I do recall “Butterworth”,a parachute-packer/Safety Equipment Worker, but until you wrote he was in the “delete” lobe of my brain! (Wasn’t the section and term “Safety Equipment” born post Federation?)

REX TAYLOR

Parachute Training School.  1959.

In 1959, I was on The Provost, No. 4 Squadron, based at Sarum. On returning from a short family trip to Beira I read in a discarded copy of the Station Routine Orders that volunteers were needed for a “Parachute Evaluation Course”. The following morning I submitted an application in a model “Formal Official Letter” to the station adjutant. (I seem to remember it was Flying Officer George Baverstock)

I never gave a thought to the staff work that brought a military parachute unit plan past Rhodesian  political compliance, then cooperation with the British authorities, and finally a plan with the RAF. 

The Rhodesian “C” Squadron of the Brit. Special Air Service had already been through parachute training in Malaysia and had carried out operational descents into the Malaysian jungle. Although the operational side of parachutists remained within the British army, the training was carried out by the RAF. At that time the parachutes in use were the “28ft X type”, which had  proved to be successful in European conditions. One of the objects of this evaluation course was to assess the effect our “hot and high” conditions upon the viability of parachute troops in “The Federation”. It had been accepted lore in the Air Force that the pilot “24ft canopy” was essentially a life-saver and that minor injuries on landing, such as an ankle strain were to be expected. The “28ft” would be a big improvement, - so we were told. The open or blank gore was in experimental use in Britain, we all knew about it but its value in military service was not yet fully accepted or appreciated.

The course consisted of about twenty volunteers, drawn from the Air Force (“RRAF”), Army Staff Corps, the “Kings African Rifles” and the ”Royal Rhodesian Air Force General Service Unit” . The latter two units were both black “African”.

In this photograph Sgt Red Summers RAF PJI is seen assisting an African Soldier of the Kings African Rifles (K.A.R.) to carry out a parachute landing roll. During the Federation there was a Regiment of K.A.R.which was the forerunner of the Rhodesian African Rifles (R.A.R.) In both instances these Regiments were White Officered with Black African Troops and this also applied to the Royal Rhodesian Air Force General Service Unit. At the break up of the Federation in 1963. The K.A.R.unit in Rhodesia became the Rhodesian African Rifles which served with absolute distinction in Rhodesia's War against Terror. Derek de Kock 

This photograph shows Sgt Sizeland RAF PJI assisting one of the European soldiers in carrying out a parachute landing roll.In 1959 during the Parachute Evaluation Course it appears that the Royal Air Force decided to separate the two sections into a Black African section trained by Sgt Summers and a White European section trained by Sgt Sizeland. In later Years when the Rhodesian Air Force Parachute Training School was training paratroopers there was NO DISCRIMINATION. All the sections were mixed and training was exactly the same for everybody. There was no Black or White as far as the staff were concerned they were all GREEN and this included officers. Derek de Kock

 There was a minimum of classroom stuff and all drill was conducted “at the double”. The physical training was initially gentle but the pace quickened as the week and weeks went by. At no time were we stationary, even between exercises we ran “on the spot”. I had not been as fit since leaving school boxing circuit! 

A mock Dakota fuselage was built about one-and-a-half meters off the hangar floor, and some two meters away from the “door’ was a landing mat. Trainees had to launch themselves straight and hard to land on the mat. When jumping into the slipstream of an aircraft at about 110 knots (200 kph), a parachutist’s body must punch through that slipstream to avoid being thrown back against the fuselage. Nor must he twist in flight, in either case the tethered straps would, or could, become twisted and tangled, resulting in a failed exit and worse!

 The landing had been evolved to minimise injuries. Legs hard together to absorb the landing jolt up all the leg bones; trunk curled into a roll position to dissipate the shock of landing up the entire body and arms folded tightly across the chest. The technique sounds easy, but the split second between exiting the “aircraft” and hitting the landing mat gives no more than nano secs to jump hard, wrap arms together, lock legs and land without any residual twist! The student was required to do all this and still be clear of the next jumper’s hobnailed boots! This aspect of training seemed to go on interminably, and very few of us ever earned a “well done” from our eagle-eyed instructors!

The acme of the training schedule was “the fan”, better than any Zambezi Gorge “foofy slide!”
( Flying Fox in Australia)!  “The Fan” was just a series of paddles on an axle, -no more complicated than a paddle-steamer’s water wheels.  A long rope wrapped itself around the hub of a fan, and as the rope unwound it spun the fan which acted as an air brake. The weight to spin the fan was a trainee parachutist, who was required to leap hard off the platform in the approved fashion, arms folded, legs outstretched and firmly together. At first the rope offered little resistance to the trainee’s descent and there were always several moments (minutes?) of apprehension as it seemed that one’s high speed descent was only slowed as one’s boots touched the landing mat for the approved landing roll! Terrifying, and exhilarating! Apparently it was an evil aptitude assessment device, a student who hesitated and baulked at the jump could conceivably refuse to jump out of an aircraft. I don’t remember any of our course not wanting to play on this delightful apparatus!

Much of our physical training was disguised as play and we enjoyed playing hard. Rugby was one game played almost every day either before tea or lunch. The black troops had never played rugby before, but took to the spirit of the game rather than the rules. This suited the instructors anyway whose aim was exercise rather than exhibition rugby! One of our Air Force GSU members gravitated to fly half and would have displaced many first league half-backs!

Some of the black soldiers were unable to swim, but nevertheless had to jump off the 3-meter diving board into the water. Two or more of our able swimmers were on hand to assist the non-swimmers to the side after their jumps off the platform. Tea and delicious sandwiches were delivered from the Sergeants Mess, and this usually coincided with the pool drill. At tea time it was perfectly natural for white and black soldiers to join their own racial groups for laughter and banter. On one occasion the black guys were literally rolling on the grass, holding their sides and screaming in giggles and unconstrained loud mirth! It was difficult to get any of them to explain the reason for their joviality! Eventually, between peals of laughter, we learnt that the guy who always had to be rescued gasping and spluttering after his jump was the butt of their laughter. It was a few more minutes before the rest of the story emerged. This non swimmer did not know that he had to hold his breath in water, he had never held his breath in his life, at the age of twenty he still was unable to do so! So, on each jump he still carried on breathing under water! His courage in continuing to jump in spite of near drowning each time was amazing, and demonstrated the typical bravery and discipline of KAR soldiers!

The morning of the first jump eventually arrived, crisp, bright and with only a slight breeze.  The landing site was an open grassy field on a tobacco farm near Lake MacIlwaine. (Now “Chivero”). The Dak flew at 1000ft and the dispatch procedure went without a hitch. My own jump has left distinctly engraved memory cells! It seemed that in rapid sequence I jumped, looked up to see the parachute canopy billowing above, I hit the ground, -hard! I likened it to a brutal high speed tackle from a burly front-row prop! The second jump seemed to go more slowly. I distinctly felt and recognised the strop breaking free, and as I felt myself floating down I was able to admire the scene below over the “vee” of my boots. With regular timing the strings holding the shrouds in the pack behind me made a plucking noise and the parachute opened with a “woosh” and was a perfect rounded shape above me! I could get quite fanatic about this sort of flying! This, my second landing, gave me time to assess my drift direction and I executed what I thought was a perfect leg, thigh and shoulder roll! Nobody else even noticed it!

The morning for the third jump broke as clear as the first two. We were all as eager as beavers to jump again, and chattered among ourselves like a bunch of schoolgirls! Shoulders drooped and the chatter stopped when we were told that the wind was too strong and the jump was cancelled! We probably pouted like thwarted schoolgirls too! However, we had no time to grumble for we were back in the mock Dakota to practice our shuffle-step the exit and leap into well co-ordinated leg-thigh and shoulder landings, before running round and joining the shuffle queue again! I had previously sustained a torn cartilage from a nasty rugby tackle, and although this only ached from time to time, it had not fully recovered and was just waiting for the right twist and pull to break away! On my second landing from our hangar Dakota my right knee inverted and with indescribable pain my right leg bent up and my instep hung there looking at me! I avoided the plummeting boots behind me and looked at the RAF instructor. (Flight sergeant Sizeland) I may have been expecting a look of concern and sympathy, - some hope! I believe that it is part of the training credo to show complete disdain to a fallen trainee, - after all to offer help on a battlefield would be suicidal, a disabled soldier must be prepared to help himself!

The injury proved to be far more serious than it appeared. I was able to hobble onto the real Dakota to watch the course on their final jump, but my disappointment was real and, I’m sure the tears were visible too! I was scheduled for a major repair job to my knee for an hour or two under surgeons’ knives and spent the next 8 or 9 months on crutches! Being so fit at the time of the surgery I recovered quickly, but my whole leg had to be immobilised in a plaster cast for the rest of the year! My girls at that time were four and five, and my physiotherapy was to give them rocking-horse rides on my stiff plaster-of-paris lower limb! Our giggles and screams added to the cure! The mal-alignment of the limb led to a hip replacement and a walking stick 50 years later, but this inconvenience is small price to pay for that permanent memory of bird-like freedom! It beats any erotic experience!

Thank you Rex Taylor for your contribution to the Story Of The Parachute Training School you guys proved that Military Parachuting could be done in our Hot and High Country. We at a later time greatly improved on the initial training provided by the RAF PJI's and subsequently we became the World leaders in Military Parachuting.