“They dropped us from around seven or eight hundred feet. My reserve chute was worthless; my main would have failed.”
Their plane had left O’Hare late. They were flying down to Arkansas and had arrived somewhere around 12:30 a.m. in the middle of the night.
“Unfortunately, they close the drop zone at midnight.”
They didn’t have any lights, a starting point or drop point; yet they jumped anyway.
What happened next is what Elk Grove alumni, class of ’82, Brian Oehlerking describes as a scene in a movie where there were guys just “littered in trees.”
Some had to be cut down while others just released their harness and climbed down.
As Veterans Day approaches, Oehlerking reminisces over memorable times he experienced during his five-year service in the army.
“The problem was,” he explains, “is that the air force dropped us so low that by the time you got out of the turbulence, you looked around and said ‘There’s the tree line’ and you went to pull your pack and said ‘Crap’ and then you hit the ground.”
He then goes on to describe how different this jump was from what he and the other men that he served with during 1984 and 1989 called as “Hollywood jumps.”
“We called them Hollywood jumps because you get to float around, stare and have a good time,” Oehlerking said.
It was later that night they decided that they wanted to experience one of these jumps on their way back home. They bribed the air force with a case of beer to make it happen, for every beer case they give them an additional thousand feet would be added to their jump.
“We came back and we were going to jump into Joliet. We gave the air force three cases of beer to drop us from 4,000 in air,” he said laughing. “But once again they dropped us from 900 feet.”
And sticking the landing, he said, was not easy.
“It’s a fun ride down until you hit the ground because military chutes are different from the ones on TV,” Oehlerking said. “You don’t come in and dance on two fake feet and go ‘Wee look at me land!’ It doesn’t work like that.”
Military chutes are not designed with passenger comfort in mind, he reiterates; they’re designed to hit the ground hard.
Carrying around 75 to 100 pounds of gear also makes this more difficult.
“We always jumped with rifles, heavy packs and if you were camping out you’d jump with your tent, sleeping bag and everything that you needed to survive,” he said.
And in one case, he had to jump out with a jeep.
“We got to make what they call a tailgate jump,” Oehlerking said. “Very seldom we go to do that but it was like what you see on TV where they lower the ramp and you literally jump out of the airplane.”
The jeep was strapped down on skid with two parachutes, a pilot chute and a main chute, and the back of the platform had nothing but rollers. Suddenly, the air force men started to count down and the pilot chute deployed, and for a brief second it fluttered before the chute opened.“And faster than you can snap your fingers it just yanked that jeep right out of the plane,” Oehlerking said. “After the jeep, we all just jumped off of the back of the plane. It was incredible.”
It was such an incredible experience that he even likens it to “one of the neatest things”he’s ever done in his life. That, or the one time he was in Idaho where the drop zone had big gopher holes in it.
“It was really scary to land because once you got low enough to realize there was one [gopher hole] there, you couldn’t turn in time,” he said.
And at one point his escapades with the gopher hole included C4 bombs, but that’s something he probably shouldn’t mention, he said laughing.
His time in the army brought him to nine different states but most importantly, he said that the discipline that the army taught him was life-changing.
But, “That goes without saying,” he said.
Would he recommend the army experience to anyone? He would, he said, “just do it during peace time.”
Military experience now
However, with the outbreak of the War on Terror in 2001, the reality of serving in the military is now inherently different for thousands of men and women and their families involved
Take sophomore Anna Szymanski, for example, whose older brother Mike, an Elk Grove graduate, who has been serving in the army for the past three years.
“Ever since he’s gone to Iraq he acts normal on the outside,” she said. “But the war really messed up his train of thought, and it’s changed him completely.”
This, however, has not changed their relationship with one another. In fact, it’s brought them closer together.
“We’re closer now since he left,” Szymanski said. “We haven’t been around each other 24/7, but he still treats me like his little sister that I’ve always been. He gives me advice, talks about how protective he is over me and dating, and somehow it’s brought us closer.”
What she’s learned from all of this is simple: To never take anyone you love for granted.
“Every second when they’re gone, it’s praying and missing them and hoping that they’re OK,” she said. “It just hits me that it’s real life. War is real.”
Gaining perspective through service
For senior Lauren Kelly’s cousin David Jasinksi, now an engineer in the U.S. army, his reality was being shot, mortared and being put at the risk of being hit by an indirect explosive device during his tour in Iraq during 2008.
“Being there we had very limited freedoms unlike being at home,” he said. “So I have learned to cherish every situation, whether it is waking up in your own bed, being able to wear regular clothes, the freedoms of just getting in your car and going somewhere and, most importantly, being able to see my family.”
With this, comes an ability to see the silver lining in even the most ominous clouds.
“But with every bad there is always good,” Jasinski said. “There, I saw how these people live their everyday life, learned all about a new culture and met some of the best friends anyone can ever ask for.”
Like Jasinski, senior Claire Tallarovic’s dad, a LT. Colonel in the Air Force, says that the companionship he experienced during his active duty is what he remembers the most.
“The best memory was the time I got to take an F-16 ride,” John Tallarovic said. “Most of all, I remember the camaraderie and the sense of purpose.”
This was the same type of purpose that led Mike Szymanski to be separated from his little sister for months, the purpose that brought David Jasinski to near-death experiences on an everyday basis and the same purpose that had Brian Oehlerking jumping out of airplanes willingly in the dead of night.
“I always wanted to be in the army,” Oehlerking said. “I just always wanted in. I wanted to serve.”
By Julianne Micoleta
Additional reporting by: Yumi Miyazaki, Kaylinn Esparza and Codi Oehlerking