Arnhem80 — The Colonel Commandant Goes Tree-Jumping…
- Posted on 05 Oct 2024
- 29 min read
By Technical Editor Mark Briggs CMIOSH
[Some names and images are redacted in line with MOD Disclosures policy — Editor]
It took the Dutch emergency services a couple of hours to get Lieutenant General Andrew Harrison DSO MBE out of the tree by the Renkum drop zone, known as DZ-X during Operation Market Garden in September 1944.
General Andy, as the outgoing Colonel Commandant of The Parachute Regiment is popularly known, was N° 1 in the first of the three Pegasus Display Team sticks jumping from a wartime Dakota over DZ-X on the afternoon of Friday, September 20th 2024 and I was N° 2 right behind him.
This was also going to be former Airborne Forces WOII Ian ‘Robbo’ Robinson’s last drop. Ian, with whom I completed over 350 jumps, would be going through the door of the Dakota over the Renkum DZ in good company but he had died suddenly.
The jumps were initially to take place over the larger part of the remaining wartime DZ but when a local farmer complained that his crops would be damaged, the plan switched to the smaller part which, as our planning diagram shows, is not large.
In the words of Team member Nick Manley, a former Airborne Forces WOII: “Mark Briggs, as the Team Manager and Chalk Commander, was conducting the pre-jump briefing. The intention was to drop eight-man sticks.
“Mark explained that the Parachute Landing Area was a little restrictive along the intended drop line — about 400 metres. Mark paused, looked at the Team, and said: ‘You have five seconds, maximum, to get off my aircraft!’. By the look on his face as he stared at us, he definitely meant it.”.
The winds around Arnhem during the preceding few days had been well above safe limits and a number of drops had been cancelled. Some of the jumps that did go ahead had resulted in high injury rates.
Luckily, our part of the Arnhem80 programme was over the weekend and the weather systems moving in where more conducive to parachuting. The meteorological forecast remained near the upper range of safe limits but the wind speeds were dropping.
When I briefed the Pegasus Display Team at the Teuge airfield at 13:00 hours, we had seven to fourteen knot gusts on DZ-K at Renkum. However, there was a wind shear about 1000 feet over the DZ with winds varying from twenty-four to thirty knots.
Hermes History Editor Geoff Butler discusses wind shear in his articles on the Kiel Canal disaster in 1974. We knew that some of the sticks from a civilian club had been blown about over the DZ that morning when dropping from 1200 feet so we would tell the pilots to drop us under 1000 feet.
After the success of our Normandy80 drops — when several Army PJIs from the Parachute Training Support Unit at Brize Norton and their OC, Major Nick Perlaki, joined the Team — we had offered places on the Arnhem80 lift to RHQ PARA and Army HQ.
I had invited the Colonel Commandant to jump with the Team when we were chatting in the 8th (Parachute) Battalion cemetery near Sannerville. Not hearing back, I presumed that the General would be parachuting with 16th Air Assault Brigade as Arnhem80 would be his last jump as a serving soldier.
Colonel Duncan Mann and his colleague Lieutenant Colonel Justin Tancrel — who are in charge of Project Hermes, established to find solutions to persistent parachute training problems that threaten the future of British Airborne and Special Forces — had taken up the Team’s invitation.
PTSU OC Major Palaki and two lads from 3 PARA would also be jumping with us. Places were severely limited but Ian Marshall and I had managed to get everyone on the manifest, including The Right Honourable Bayo Alaba MP, a former Parachute Regiment soldier.
We had no spare slots. As it was, the Pegasus lift was over-subscribed and several of the Team would be jumping with the Pathfinder UK club, founded and run by former 1 and 10 PARA veteran Roy Mobsby. Everything was prepared and in-place — or so I thought.
A couple weeks before Arnhem80, I received a phone call: “Hello Mark, it’s Adam Jowett.”. Major Jowett is the Regimental Secretary of The Parachute Regiment. Oh God, I thought, what have I done now? I don’t remember upsetting the RAF recently.
Adam continued: “Have you got a place for General Andy?”. “Yes Adam, how fantastic! Of course that can be arranged,”, I lied. “Leave it with me for an hour or so whilst I make a few phone calls . I will get back to you as soon as possible.”.
I was going to have to bump another team member onto one of Mobsby’s aircraft. Roy was emphatic: “The aircraft are all full and I have shut the manifest.”. This was going to be fun. “Are you sure, Roy? Do you want to tell Andy he can’t jump or do you want me to?”.
“You’re very adept at telling people to go and get…”, replied Roy, before pausing. “Who is Andy?”, he asked. “Oh, you remember! We were chatting with him in the cemetery at Sannerville.”. “I remember talking to the General.”, replied Roy. “Oh! That Andy! Um, OK, I’m on it! Take it as done.”.
Now I had to change the sticks around. General Andy would be N° 1 in the door with Stick 1. I’d be N° 2, with six of the Team’s Airborne Forces veterans behind us. Lt Col Tancrel and Major Palaki would be N° 1 and N° 2, Stick 2, which included the APJIs and the MP. Colonel Mann would be N° 1, Stick 3.
Jump Master Ian Marshall was silent on the phone for a moment before responding: “So, you’ve got the General leading a stick of lunatics…”. “Some of the Team’s SAS lads, yes.”, I interjected calmly. Ian continued: “You’ve got Robbo’s ashes, a flag, smoke and you’re also looking after the General.”.
“Yep.”, I said, as nonchalantly as I could. It was nine minutes flying time in the Dakota from Teuge to Renkum. We were approaching the DZ at around 1200 feet. When I pointed this out to Ian who was Senior Jump Master, he said that the pilots were ignoring his orders to reduce altitude.
We held a rapid dynamic risk assessment. Everybody on the aircraft was a highly experienced, government-trained paratrooper. I had briefed them to get off the aircraft in fast time. We were also dealing with an aviation firm with a reputation not just for overcharging clients — including self-funding veterans’ groups — but refusing full and even partial refunds.
The Pegasus Display Team is primarily a self-funding airborne veterans’ group although we now count serving airborne soldiers amongst the members. The heritage aspect — jumping in WW2-era uniforms — was essentially a consequence of an official ban on jumping in the DPM that we wore when serving. We decided that the jump would go ahead despite the pilots’ refusal to respect our instructions as jump masters. “Stand Up! Hook Up!”. We had checked equipment and sounded-off when the order came from ground control to hold. Military aircraft were circling within the NOTAM exclusion area.
We remained stood up for twenty minutes or more before rechecking equipment and sounding-off. “Action Stations!”. General Andy stood in the door in front of me with a stick of Airborne Forces veterans crammed up each other’s arses behind us. They were taking my five-second order seriously.
On a Dakota drop, the red and green lights are for the Jump Masters or dispatchers — presuming that the lights even work. Ian was holding General Andy in the door and as I closed up tight on him, I could feel the whole stick shuffling up and pressing on us. This was going to be close!
Ian Marshall said afterwards: “I may as well have said, ‘With a magazine of eight paratroopers, load!’. I yelled ‘Go!’ and they were gone. In more than thirty years of dispatching from Dakotas, it was the best I have ever seen. Everyone was out in just over four seconds.
“It was not just the speed at which they exited, it was the way that they did it. Eight perfectly executed exits! They were almost standing on each other’s shoulders. I watched from the door as the Dakota banked away and circled. Mark had popped the smoke and deployed the flag. I could see him doing all-round vision, looking for General Andy, who was disappearing downwind.”.
[Name redacted] told Hermes: “As the last man in the stick, I could look along the drop line. We were moving quickly across the ground. Everyone turned into the wind as we descended through a wind shear between eight and nine hundred feet then the stick tightened up into position and held tight.”.
[Name redacted]said: “I have done nearly two hundred jumps with the guys but this one was certainly very tight in the air. We were so close that you could have had a normal conversation.”. Ian Marshall continued: “The guys had closed in and were holding a good landing pattern, a bit close, but they held it. Number Five [Name redacted] landed on the NATO + and everyone else within a thirty to forty metre radius. There was minimal spread through the stick. Quite impressive under the conditions.”.
In a letter to the Pegasus Display Team, Colonel Duncan Mann wrote: “Since leaving 2 PARA in 2018, I thought my days of jumping were over. Having never jumped from a Dakota, I could not believe my luck when you offered me the opportunity to jump into Arnhem from the fabled aircraft. From meeting at the hangar to walking safely off the drop zone as the happiest man in NATO, and not just because I avoided the trees, the experience was one of camaraderie and professionalism.”.
Lt Col Justin Tancrel told Hermes: “When looking back on the Arnhem80 events, two moments will always be etched into my memory.
“Firstly, the oily aroma and distinctive deep drone of the Dakota’s twin Pratt & Whitney engines as we thundered down the Teuge runway and looking at the WW2 smocks and para helmets worn by some of the most quietly distinguished operators I am likely to have jumped with gave me a vivid sense of what it must have looked and sounded like to the original paratroopers of the First Airborne Division.
“Secondly, landing on the DZ and hearing my twelve year-old son Harri asking: ‘Dad?’. I had landed right in front of him! He caught my less-then-impressive but nonetheless safe landing on video, I am hugely grateful to Mark Briggs and the Pegasus Display Team for giving me those memories.”.
Although his tree-jumping test was unscheduled. The Pegasus Display Team has retroactively issued Lieutenant General Andrew Harrison DSO MBE with a certificate proving his new skill. The General commented the following day in his farewell speech:
“Yesterday, under this autumn sky, I watched my Dakota’s red light turn to green and took a determined step into the tumbling slipstream, placing my life at the mercy of fate and a thin parachute canopy. I’ve done better jumps, but nothing compares to what those boys went through eighty years ago.”.
Bayo Alaba MP said: “The opportunity to jump with the Pegasus Display Team, back into Arnhem after 27years was truly memorable and humbling in equal measures.”.
The Team had a more solemn duty to perform. After a short ceremony on Renkum Heath, we spread Robbo’s ashes to the wind and the skirl of the bagpipes. We all came to attention and bowed out heads as we wished our friend and comrade farewell.
A month before as I sat at my computer writing the Parachute Management Plan and Drop Zone Assessments for the Renkum drop, I couldn’t help but ponder Market Garden eighty years ago and why it remains so important to the Airborne Family and the ever-grateful Dutch people of Arnhem and the surrounding area.
Perhaps it was because I recognised that commemorative events like Normandy and Arnhem are nearing a closure, as the vast majority of veterans like my uncle Arthur (Recce Corps) who fought in these great battles and are no longer with us.
The words of Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery seemed somehow more poignant: What manner of men are these that wear the maroon beret? Men apart. every man an emperor.
Perhaps it was because my comrades and I are getting older and it appears that we are now the veterans albeit a generation or two removed from the Second World War originals.
Or perhaps it was the cynic in me, realising that many people have lost sight of why we attend these events and have permitted these solemn commemorations to be turned into a money-making-circus, a realisation rammed home by the sometimes questionable costs associated with participating.
[Editorial note — As for the pilots who refused to obey the Jump Masters’ instructions — which certainly endangered other, less-experienced parachutists whom they dropped that day — a formal complaint through official channels is in progress]