Rumors in military organizations are rampant at all times. They spread rapidly. - Edson Raff

When people ask me what it feels like to jump out of a plane with a parachute, I say in all seriousness, "It's just like getting out of bed in the morning. You know how it is. Some mornings you hate to get up. Other times, when you have something important to do, you bound out with no thought of the hardships involved. Well, that's the way it is with parachuting. It all depends on what's on your mind."

Let members of your staff know what's going on. Otherwise give them rifles. They would rather fight.

To begin with, being a parachutist comes as naturally to some people as being a sailor does to others. Modern young men look to the sky for adventure, whether it be riding the air in a plane, in a glider or on a parachute. Only a fraction of the last generation looked skyward; yet all of the next generation will. They won't all be parachutists, of course. It's the idea of descent that makes parachuting a wartime activity only, or a limited peacetime sport at best. People, as a general rule, want to feel something under them besides air. The instinct of self-preservation and "Safety First" makes parachuting a slight mental hazard to the uninitiated. By the greatest stretch of the imagination, I can't visualize the air-age John Citizen stepping out of a plane to jump into his front yard rather than ride five miles further to the home-town airport. Heliocopters will land in the front yard without the ever-present jumping risk of breaking a leg. But that's only one side of being a paratrooper.