Not many months had passed since the introduction of the reserve parachute for troops in the UK when an incident occurred.

Now this was back in 1957 when M.O.D. decided that a spare chute would be handy in case the main one failed, after all, the Americans had them.

At that time I had been in the RAF nearly 10 years and had done the many courses necessary to become a PJI [parachute jumping instructor] On this occasion I was dispatching red berets in sticks of nine from a Beverly aircraft.

The Beverly is capable of taking off and landing on about 200 yards of meadow, it has three exits, port, starboard and boom, which are used simultaniously.

After circling the dropping zone four times to dispatch over 100 parachutists, the PJI's jumped. We learned that this was the quickest way to get down for the mug of tea that was offered after these sessions [about 45 seconds from 1000 feet]

On the ground, a few yards from where I landed, were two parachutes, weighted down with stones so that they wouldn't blow away.

I knew immediately that something had gone wrong and that an investigation team would by now be on the way. Another sergeant PJI was safeguarding the chutes and the red beret who had dangled on the end, had gone for a cuppa.

I found out who he was and asked him what had happened.

"Well" he said, "I noticed that I was going down a bit faster than the others so I thought I better pull my reserve"

I later discovered from the investigation, that he must have made a poor exit, causing him to somersault through the chute's rigging lines which seared the canopy and made it come down like a bundle of washing.

That was the first time that a reserve parachute had saved a life in England..........Bob