An Indiana fire department got a call from a local National Guard base with an unusual — though not unheard of — request.
A paratrooper on a training jump at the Guard’s Muscatatuck Training Center had not quite completed a key part of a mandatory task on a training jump — namely, reaching the ground.
Instead, the Indiana National Guard soldier had gotten hung up in a tree just off the Bowden Drop Zone, about 30 feet up.
A rope rescue team from a nearby department was called to the scene to bring the paratrooper down, while the Edinburgh Fire Department sent its ladder truck to see if it could assist.
As it happened, the ladder truck was all that was needed, Edinburgh Chief Justin Lollar told Task & Purpose. The department posted photos on its Facebook page of the soldier climbing down the truck’s ladder, apparently unhurt.
“It was right there at edge of the road,” he said. “We’ve been called on some of them before and usually they’re back on the range.”
That part about being called before was not an exaggeration. Local firefighters have been called to the Muscatatuck range at least three other times since 2018 for paratroopers caught in trees. The website for the Muscatatuck training range, which is at the Indiana Guard’s Camp Atterbury, 30 miles south of Indianapolis, notes that the Bowden dropzone is one of the longest personnel drop zones east of the Mississippi River. The base is also home to a major urban training center, with 300 buildings and close to 2 miles of underground tunnels for urban warfare training.
An Indiana guard official confirmed that the soldier was assigned to the guard’s 2nd Battalion, 134th Airborne Infantry Regiment. He had jumped from a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter from the guard’s 38th Combat Aviation Brigade.
“Our soldiers train regularly to maintain their proficiency in all operations so that they can maintain a high level of readiness and be ready at a moment’s notice,” Master Sgt. Jeff Lowry said in an email to Task & Purpose.
“It’s not something you do every day,” said Loller. “But it was a neat opportunity for us.”
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