SECURE YOUR CHUTES 89perform a proper PLF, but I landed hard, planting one thick-soled French
paratrooper’s boot about four inches into the hard, dry ground. I tried to
pull myself up but had hurt one foot and was unable to gather my para-
chute and walk unassisted. I noticed that others from my stick (group of
jumpers) had been similarly injured on this windless jump, including R. J.
and a likeable classmate known as “Army Jim,” whose leg bone was now
visible to the rest of us.
Despite our injuries, Charlie assumed we were faking it and ordered us
to remain standing to pack chutes. (He reluctantly believed Army Jim.) I
was examined briefly by a young CIA medic but received no real medical
care until returning to DC a few days later. My foot and ankle continued to
swell. It turned out I had fractured my foot and would be in a cast for the
next several weeks. Twenty years later, the CIA awarded me my paratroop
jump wings.
After jump school at the Farm, I attended a course for US government
employees at the State Department in Foggy Bottom. On crutches. There
we learned esoteric government terms like “conal rectification,” whereby a
foreign service officer could request a transfer from, say, the Consular Cone
(specialty) to the Political Cone. Naturally, I immediately took to “inadver-
tently” calling it “rectal conification,” in secret tribute to our solemn CIA
traditions involving sodomy jokes. Although the snooze-inducing course
was tough to sit through after months of adrenaline-filled paramilitary
training at the Farm, the experience at the State Department did serve to
remind me that I made the right choice by joining the CIA.