Ron Gordon – Training for SPAG

Simon And how many of those missions did you go out on?

I did 20 from … the first one, it’s hard to believe this but when I was going to do the first one, I said, “What training am I going to get?” and they said, “Well, what training do you expect? You’ll get a parachute, and they’ll tell you what to do when you get there.”

I thought, well I expected there’s be some training, so they sent me down to Poole, Royal Marines SBS place, and they’ve got a rig there, the parachute harness and then as your feet hit the water, you’re meant to release the parachute so that it doesn’t drag you through the water, and so I went down there with this Doctor from the Tank and when we got there the harness wasn’t working.

So, my training and this Doctor’s training consisted of, going into this presentation room, a Theatre where there was a platform, and he says, “Right, pretend you’re on the back end of a Hercules. You’ve got a red light and a green light there, you’re all fully booted, you’ve got your parachute on and you’ve got your reserve parachute on.”

I call it emergency parachute but reserve parachute. He says, “Just walk forward, you’re in a stick of six of you, the back end of the Hercules is down, and then when you see the light go red, you move forward and if there is a guy in front of you, wait until there’s nothing there, and then you step forward, and then you count to four and you check your parachute has opened and if it is open, then you steer in the direction of the package that you’re chasing.”

That was my training.

Simon You had no other parachute experience. My goodness!

The next time I did it was for real.