THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 27, 1996 TAG: 9609260143
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: 181 lines
THEY STOOD IN a circle near the runway at Chesapeake Municipal Airport.
All were in matching orange jumpsuits, except for their commander, Capt. J.E. Saunders, who wore a khaki battle-dress uniform distinctively marked by the silver eagles on the collar.
They are members of the 43rd Virginia Volunteer Search and Rescue Company, one of the local volunteer groups that specializes in search and rescue.
Now, members of the 43rd, which has been around for a decade, jump out of planes, too.
Capt. Brad Foster did the talking.
Foster is the jumpmaster, the man who has trained the five-man team who would soon leap out of an airplane to prove a point to gathered onlookers, including Chesapeake General Hospital officials.
The hospital gives the 43rd about $15,000 a year to fund its training and relief efforts. The hospital provided another $17,000 to start the jump program.
Sunday afternoon was warm and sunny, a fine day for a jump.
Of course, the 43rd could jump at night. Or in the rain. Even into wooded areas, what they call ``tree jumping.'' But this was a demonstration of the latest evolution in the 43rd's 10-year history.
``Everybody should have an altimeter,'' advised Foster, wearing a ball cap bearing the 43rd's name. ``You can have goggles on or off - personal preference.''
Foster recommended they wear the goggles anyway and continued, ``Remember, it's just another sky dive.''
He looked to Saunders.
``Anything else, Colonel?''
Saunders shook his head - no. He said, ``Sounds good.''
The team put their hands together and cheered like a football team before a big down. They headed for their gear and started to put on their packs. Although they have never had a real life rescue jump, they train so that they will be ready if the need arises.
Foster is a former Navy SEAL who now runs a recreational jump business at the airport. Saunders, the company commander and a captain with the Chesapeake Police Department, met Foster when Foster provided training to the Chesapeake SWAT team. When Saunders came up with the idea for a jump component - an idea inspired by ``smoke-jumping,'' when firefighters jump into remote areas to battle forest fires - he called Foster.
Saunders jumped for the first time as a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division in 1963. He started jumping again in 1988, then came up with the smoke-jumping idea.
``He asked me to assist,'' said Foster. ``I said, `Sure!' ''
The former naval officer designed and implemented a training program for the 43rd, an organization whose rank and training is patterned after the Army Rangers.
The irony isn't lost on Foster.
``They needed a Navy guy to get them through the woods,'' he said.
Not that they weren't getting the job done without parachutes.
The unit was a Reagan-era idea.
The National Guard units in California, Texas and Virginia were made rapid deployment units in the years of growing terrorist threats and international tension. If a crisis had struck and Virginia's guard deployed, there would have been a hole in the state's defenses. Then-Gov. Charles Robb called for backup, the Virginia Defense Force.
The unit started as a light infantry ranger company in the Virginia Defense Force. They held this mission from January 1986 until 1989, when the unit was granted a charter with the Civil Air Patrol.
With the Civil Air Patrol, the unit mission changed to rapid response search and rescue. They were good. Virginia Beach's Carlos Hathcock, a legendary Marine marksman with more than 90 confirmed kills in Vietnam, gave his name to the unit.
They became Hathcock's Rangers.
In 1993, the Chesapeake Sheriff's Office made the unit a support element, and the Virginia Department of Emergency Services adopted them as a search and rescue element. They decided to call themselves the 43rd.
Whatever the incarnation of the unit, all members are volunteers. They learned Army Ranger skills. They practiced tactical training. The idea was to take military tactics and apply them to civilian situations. Instead of vanquishing an enemy, the idea was to save civilians.
The mission changed, but one thing remained the same. People continued to turn up missing. That's the most common call for the 43rd. The first call they responded to was a missing person.
Maj. Ben Bobb, who recently moved from Virginia Beach to Chesapeake, is the unit's second-in-command, or executive officer. Bobb, 47, is an ex-Army man who served in Vietnam. In 1985, Bobb was one of thousands of Virginians who signed up for the State Guard. He was there for the first mission.
An elderly Alzheimer's patient had wandered away from home. Bobb remembers the call. That was in 1989. The man had wandered into the woods along Interstate 664 near Pughsville. Three days into the search effort, the team was called in.
They used a basic search pattern, dividing the area into grids, searching each grid. They eliminated a grid. They moved to the next sector; the major compared it to a combat patrol.
Within a few hours, they had found the man's body.
``The subject was deceased,'' acknowledged Lt. Gary T. Amos, the 43rd's historian. ``It wasn't a save. But it was a find.''
Amos, 43, is not ex-military. He is an attorney who teaches law at Regent University in Virginia Beach. With blue eyes, and light hair cut short, Amos seems at home in the khaki battle-dress uniform worn by members of the 43rd. He wears jump wings over a service medal. They are worn on the right side, above the heart. Both of Amos' decorations were earned in the 43rd.
He joined three months after the Pughsville mission, and he has seen them in action many times. After Hurricane Andrew demolished much of Dade County, Fla., Amos was one of the people who traveled with the team to provide aid. He gave food and water to migrant workers living in tent villages.
When Hurricane Fran struck earlier this month, the 43rd went to Wilmington, N.C., to aid the relief effort.
They did ``grunt work,'' according to Bobb, mostly clearing trees from roadways. He said, ``We made little trees out of big ones.'' Amos said he believes that the 43rd's value is in its disaster relief capabilities as much as its search and rescue capability.
``The Commonwealth has a great deal of well-trained SAR teams,'' said Amos. ``But as we've been learning from these natural disasters, there's a shortage of disaster relief.''
But search and rescue is still a need, and with parachutes, the 43rd can get in quicker than search and rescue teams without jumpers.
Col. Saunders is convinced.
``I've been on missions where the location was so remote it would take six, 12, even 15 hours to get (rescuers) in,'' said Saunders. ``The sooner you can get people in, the better.''
Swamps, mountains and forests present geographical challenges that could be overcome by rescuers jumping in, Saunders said. ``All you need is a small clearing, and you can get a parachute team in.''
This program has a three-year lease on life. If it works, the hospital will keep funding it. If not, Saunders said it will shut down.
Laden with packs, gear and carrying white helmets, Saunders' men waddled to the plane, and the commander followed them.
One of them was 1st Sgt. Eric E. Summers, 26, of Chesapeake.
He has been with the unit for about two years. He has been a shipyard worker for two months since leaving the Marine Corps, where he was a marksman and a member of a close-quarters battle team.
``I did a lot of fun stuff,'' said Summers of his days in the Corps.
His mission as a volunteer is to help people, not to hurt them.
``It's 180 degrees from what I was doing before,'' he said. ``But it's a better cause.''
Cpl. Jim Wilson, 28, is another jumper. As he boarded the 14-seat propeller-driven plane that they would jump from, he practiced his exit procedure while the jumpmaster watched. Each member did this, but Wilson hammed it up a little.
``Good?'' he asked Foster.
``Good to go, Hollywood,'' said Foster.
Foster boarded last.
He shook hands with Saunders.
``See you when you get down,'' Saunders told him.
With his khaki hat covering his light hair, Saunders walked back to the observation area and waited as the plane launched, en route to releasing its human cargo.
It was a short wait.
One by one, they jumped and fell and immediately released their chutes.
They call it a ``hop 'n' pop.''
``As soon as you get out, you pull,'' explained Saunders.
He looked up at the team.
``That's Brad,'' he said, counting bodies. ``That's Lee. That's Jim. Jesse and Eric. That's all of 'em. They're out.''
The jumpers snapped back as the chutes opened and filled. Then the five fell, following Foster. He landed first, then the others, almost in a straight line. On the ground, they dropped their gear and rolled their chutes back up.
The exercise wasn't over yet.
Foster lit a smoke marker, sending red puffs into the air. The plane circled and dropped a large pack of supplies about 100 yards away. In minutes, the demonstration was over.
The men were on target, as was the gear.
Bradford M. Casas, a hospital official who watched the demonstration with Saunders, asked the colonel if the gear was supposed to fall that far away.
``You don't want to put it right on top of them,'' said Saunders. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover courtesy of the 43rd Virginia
Volunteer Search and Rescue Unit
Members of the unit gat a breather during their efforts to help the
residents of Wilmington, N.C., in the aftermath of Hurricane Fran.
Staff photos by D. KEVIN ELLIOTT
As each member of the 43rd Virginia Volunteer Search and Rescue
Company boarded the plane, they practiced how they would jump out
later.
Capt. Brad Foster, the jumpmaster, briefs the jumpers before a
demonstration. ``Remember, it's just another sky dive,'' he said.
KEYWORDS: SEARCH AND RESCUE DISASTER RELIEF by CNB