"To begin with, being a parachutist comes as naturally to some people as being a sailor does to others. Modern young men look to the sky for adventure, whether it be riding the air in a plane, in a glider or on a parachute. Only a fraction of the last generation looked skyward; yet all of the next generation will. They won't all be parachutists, of course. It's the idea of descent that makes parachuting a wartime activity only, or a limited peacetime sport at best. People, as a general rule, want to feel something under them besides air. The instinct of self-preservation and "Safety First" makes parachuting a slight mental hazard to the uninitiated. By the greatest stretch of the imagination, I can't visualize the air-age John Citizen stepping out of a plane to jump into his front yard rather than ride five miles further to the home-town airport. Heliocopters will land in the front yard without the ever-present jumping risk of breaking a leg. But that's only one side of being a paratrooper."
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Edson Raff
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