by Regis Rossa
In January 1957, I was 18 years old and had just completed Airborne Jump School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The Army informed me I’d be heading to Germany for 18 months. But before I shipped off, I could have a weekend of liberty off base. There was only one catch: we couldn’t travel more than 100 miles away.
My home in Pittsburgh was over 500 miles from Bragg. That’s where my girlfriend Marilyn lived. I’d met Marilyn three years earlier at our neighborhood swimming pool. I was dying to show her my shiny new Parachutist Badge, my jump wings.
Those wings meant little at Bragg, where most paratroopers out-ribboned me by a mile. But back home, I’d show it off and amaze Marilyn with stories of how I jumped out of perfectly good airplanes.
MPs were posted at the bus station and airport to make sure soldiers didn’t venture beyond the 100-mile limit. It looked like I was out of luck.
As I waited in line for the telephone to call Marilyn with the bad news, I overheard some fellow paratroopers talking about their planned drive home to West Virginia. They were leaving in 20 minutes.
“West Virginia isn’t far from Pittsburgh,” I reasoned. “I could almost walk home from there.”
I approached the West Virginians and offered to pay for some gas if I could ride with them.
They saw my bare sleeves and lonely jump wings and agreed to take me along. The guys even said there was a big new highway being built “just over the hill” from their town. I could walk to the road and hitch a ride to Pittsburgh.
My travel companions were three experienced Airborne soldiers. Riding along with these guys, I realized I’d never socialized with fellow soldiers. Over the past 12 weeks of Advanced lnfantry Training and Jump School, we didn’t have time for talking. I don’t recall having a conversation with anyone. All I heard was yelling. “Drop and give me 20!”
I traveled as I was, no bag, just my U.S. Army Class A Winter Uniform, (with Parachutist Badge) and beautiful high-gloss Corcoran Jump Boots.
The paratroopers regaled me with stories all the way from Bragg to the West Virginia line. Some were horror stories of mid-air collisions and accidents—all the bad things that can happen when you jump out of a plane.
As we neared the Mountain State, the weather turned sour. By the time we arrived at our destination, light rain had become a torrential downpour.
We parked the car outside of a local beer hall owned by the mother of one of the paratroopers. Before my friends disappeared to the apartment upstairs, they pointed me in the direction of the new highway, which lay right across an open field.
I was so excited to get home, the rain didn’t even bother me. I bounded toward the field. Once I crossed it, I’d be on my way home.
I clambered over a short fence and started crossing. It was muddy, but I didn’t care.
That is, until I stepped into a large puddle, and the ground gave way. Soon, I was mired to my knees. It was like quicksand. The more I struggled, the more stuck I got. In a desperate attempt to escape, I raised one leg and leaned forward. The next thing I knrew I was sprawling face down in mud.
It was all I could do to roll over and sit up. Like any good soldier, I lit a cigarette and assessed my situation. Taking a drag, I asked no one in particular, “Why the hell would a farmer plow a field in West Virginia in January?”
I soon tossed the soggy smoke in the mud and tried to stand up. Righting myself, I about-faced and waded back toward the short fence I’d hopped.
It was the right move. Retracing my steps to the field’s edge was a lot easier than fighting forward.
I trudged back to the beer hall and pulled open the door. My paratrooper friends turned in astonishment, then burst into laughter.
The mother who owned the beer hall immediately came to my aid and helped me get cleaned up. My new buddies stopped laughing and scrounged for clean clothes and a shot a brandy to warm up.
I never did make it back to Pittsburgh that weekend, and I never got to show off my jump wings to Marilyn before heading to Germany.
But there’s one big thing I did get from that lost weekend. I can still feel to this day the warm swell of belonging–brotherhood–I experienced with my fellow paratroopers. For the first time, I felt myself to be one of them. That sense of camaraderie, being part of a team, is something I’ve always cherished.
On Sunday afternoon, when we were getting ready to leave for Fort Bragg, I was surprised to find that the paratroopers had cleaned my uniform. AII the mud was gone, and the Class As were dry and pressed. My jump boots were sparkling once again.
After I became established with my new company in Germany, I wrote a note of thanks to the mother who helped me in West Virginia. I intended to keep in touch with those paratroopers, but their names slipped away over time, and I never saw them again.
I returned from Germany in June 1958, got out of the Army, and headed, finally, to Pittsburgh.
Marilyn and I got married and enjoyed 31 beautiful years together before she passed away.
I hold her memory close, as I do that first feeling of Airborne camaraderie on my lost weekend in West Virginia.
