Paratrooper Injuries: Their Visibility, Prevalence and Life Impact

[PMMurray]

In putting together a book on Leapfest, an annual international military parachuting competition in Rhode Island, a few paratroopers asked me if I was interested in writing about those who had been injured, the prevalence of injuries, and how those injuries have impacted their lives. After a few chats and some consideration, I decided that I wanted to pursue the topic. The paratroopers suggested that I set up a thread, and here I am.

I would like to understand more about the awareness that you may have had about the possibility and prevalence of injury, how your injuries occurred, your transition back to jump status, and the impacts that these injuries may have had on you. As the thread progresses, there may be more facets of this discussion that might be encountered.

I would like to foster an open discussion, and will try to keep it on course. If there are aspects to your experience that you would like to discuss privately, you can send me a private message.

I am serious about understanding your situations. I hope that you will participate and encourage others to join us. I am open to any feedback that you feel would help this effort.

Please join us!

[yrualeg]

As a Paratrooper the risk of injury is constant, it can happen on every jump, you just have to rely on your training and a little luck. Keep your feet and knees together and you can get by. Sometimes not so much.

[Mortarman11c]

As a 17 year old, my dad, an old 508th ARCT paratrooper of the 50's tried to discourage me from jumping. He said, "Son look at me, I am 45 years old with the knees of a 70 year old". I never listened to him in that aspect. He is now 73 with BOTH knees replaced by artificial ones. Attributed to jumping. His spine has been fused in two places, attributed to jumping.

Now I am 44 years old with the knees of a 60 year old....lol. My back hurts everyday, and I have a bum right shoulder. I can't turn my neck like I used to. I can probably attribute all of it to jumping, but ya know what?? I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

There are guys waaaaay worse off than I.........

[cmbt_vet]

After a jump once into NTC we had somthing like 18 injuries and there was a story wrote up about it and Comanding Officers are prpared for a 10% injury status for there troops after an Airborne operation dont know how tru this is somthing i read.

[PMMurray]

yrualeg,

Thanks for taking time to respond.

While I understand that your training and a bit of luck are what you rely on daily, how would you describe the possibility of serious injury to a fellow paratrooper? How do you think that the paratrooper community views those who have sustained one or more serious injuries?

[yrualeg]

You prepare your troopers on every jump for the possibility that something "could" happen not that it will, It is inherent in what we do, You don't think about the what if's. Because honestly you could get yourself killed on a jump pretty easy, there's no talking about it you just do it. And depending on the severity of the injury you never look down on a trooper that is genuinely hurt on a jump...it's the ones that feint injury that are looked down on.

I cracked a shoulder blade, and got several concussions ( there are no soft spots on the ground) and the older you get the harder the ground seems to be. My lower back is wrecked, I have compressed vertebrae and my knees and back hurt everyday...and I'd do it all again. I can bet anyone here would too.

[PMMurray]

Thanks to all for your responses.

Before your first injury as a paratrooper, do you think that you understood what your risk of injury was, and how it might impact you? Given where you are in your career as a paratrooper, do you think that serious injury is almost inevitable?

Many of you have expressed the sentiment that, despite the injuries and all their implications, you have no regrets and would do it all again. What makes the paratrooper experience and community special?

Finally, if you could not be a paratrooper, what would you do?

[bgermain]

I was on jump status for only 2.5 years so that limited the potential for damage. Although I saw a few guys who managed to get hurt in their first six months, including one who put the static line the wrong way around his arm. We didn't see him for quite a while after that.

[mphellon]

While I was on Jump status injuries were pretty uncommon. The two in my career that stood out were a static line injury that happened to a buddy of mine which dislocated his shoulder, separated the bicep and left some nasty rug burns, and when then LTG Lindsey the 18th ABN Corps commander broke his leg on one of our jumps.

[Ops NCO]

Generally, I think the injury potential of jumping comes in two flavors:

1. The potential for a significant injury on a particular jump. As cmbt_vet mentioned, I've also heard that there is an "expected" injury rate of 10-15% (but can't validate that with a written reference, unfortunately) on a combat jump. I don't think the actual injury rate in training was that high (otherwise, you'd have 12-15 guys out of commission after every jump), but it wasn't unusual in my day to have a guy or two hurt enough to be out of the exercise.

2. The cumulative effect of repeated jumps. Other than tweaking a few ligaments in a knee a time or two, and getting my bell rung like everyone else, I never had a serious injury (that I knew of) from a single jump. However, 21 years after making 68th or 69th jump (I never can remember the exact number), I've had one one cervical disc repaired, and have two others that are herniated. I was also diagnosed with arthritis in my thoracic spine. Like Mortarman, I have a stiff neck (although my osteo-biflex has helped quite a bit). Since I've never had any other traumas (other than physically taking down patients in a psych hospital for a few years, which was far harder on them than me), I attribute it either to the jumping, or carrying a ruck. The insidious thing is that the cumulative damage is much more insidious, and harder to pinpoint. Without establishing a statistical correlation, I imagine it's much harder to prove the relationship, although I'm sure it exists.

Didn't somebody mention something last year about the VA considering jump status presumptive for back/joint problems? Or was I taking too much Ultram back then?

[LOOON]

I was injured on one of my jumps. I couldn't walk for several days, but got back up and did it again.

I only had around 20 jumps and my knees are shot and Im paying a heavy price 20 years later. It goes with the territory.

There is a constant risk of severe injury or death with each and every jump.

[Garda11B1P]

When I was stationed at Ft. Lewis with the 25th Inf in 1996 we went to Panama for JOTC. I broke my femur falling from the ladder climb on the obstacle course "Green Hell". Snapped it right in two, I wasn’t on status then. The doc's at Gorgas military hospital in Panama city but a titanium rode through my femur, I had to have an open reduction. It took about 6 months for me to fully recover. When I reenlisted for Germany and went to Eco 51st LRS I told the 1st Sgt that I wanted the rod removed so I could go back on status I didn’t want to jump with the rod in me for fear that the rod would bend. I didn’t care if my leg broke again just didn’t want metal protruding from my leg just wanted to jump again. Had it removed and was jumping 3 months later.

[PMMurray]

Thanks to all for your responses,

Ops NCO made a distinction between two flavors of injury potential. Let me add a bit to that, and see what others have to say.

1 - What are the odds? From paratroopers, I keep hearing mostly about 10% injury rate. I'm assuming that is a per jump rate which means that in one out of ten jumps you would expect an injury. In doing some research, the observed rates generally seem to be more in the 1-3% range. A 2007 article, http://medind.nic.in/maa/t07/i4/maat07i4p353.pdf, provides some review of prior studies. While it notes the lower rates in prior reports, the study itself reports a 9% rate for serious injuries. As you read many of the reports, it seems that estimating more in the 2-4% range for serious injury might be closer to the real number, but minor injuries that still required a trip to the hospital look like they might be 2 to 3 times the serious injury rate. Considering all the injuries (severe and minor) that will take you to the hospital, the average injury rate might be about 7.5% per jump.

So, how many jumps does an “average” paratrooper make in a year? And, how many years does an “average” paratrooper remain as a “jump ready” paratrooper? I am assuming that to retain jump status you need to not only to have the training certification and medical documents, but that you need to be able to show some recurrent training and/or a certain number and type of jumps.

2 - How much repeated injury or impact stress can a body take? From lots of sources and settings, we know that repeated injury or impact will weaken joints and ligaments. In just a “business as usual” jump, ankles, knees, hips and shoulders are all in the path of even a good landing, and the spine gets to be stressed at least twice. If you combine that with a 7.5% possibility of an injury per jump, the math would say then the chances of being injury-free after 40 jumps is less than 5%. If you prefer a 5% injury rate, it takes 60 jumps to have less than 5% chance of being injury-free.

I haven’t been able to find anything that speaks much to the patterns of successive injuries that occur.

Do you think that trainees or active paratroopers understand the risk, its life impacts and how many have been paratroopers dealing with long-term injuries?

[bgermain]

For a person to remain on jump status he must jump once every six months (at least when I was in). However, there can be a half-dozen training ops throughout the year where you will jump into the exercise, jump at least once or twice while you're there, and then often have another jump on the return. So 3-4 jumps per op, times a half-dozen, you're looking at 15-25 jumps per year (give or take). Add to this the fact that daily PT includes running (not the ideal exercise for ankles, knees, and vertebrae) and running sometimes with added weight (rucksack, helmet, web gear, NBC suit and mask, etc.) and you've definitely got your cumulative effect.

[Ops NCO]

What are the odds? From paratroopers, I keep hearing mostly about 10% injury rate. I'm assuming that is a per jump rate which means that in one out of ten jumps you would expect an injury. In doing some research, the observed rates generally seem to be more in the 1-3% range. A 2007 article, http://medind.nic.in/maa/t07/i4/maat07i4p353.pdf, provides some review of prior studies. While it notes the lower rates in prior reports, the study itself reports a 9% rate for serious injuries. As you read many of the reports, it seems that estimating more in the 2-4% range for serious injury might be closer to the real number, but minor injuries that still required a trip to the hospital look like they might be 2 to 3 times the serious injury rate. Considering all the injuries (severe and minor) that will take you to the hospital, the average injury rate might be about 7.5% per jump.

Some interesting material in that study. I'd say, generally speaking, the 2-4% range seems plausable. However, it can vary widely. If the winds are up, or it's a crappy dropzone, the injury rate can skyrocket.

So, how many jumps does an “average” paratrooper make in a year?

It can vary widely, especially given the pace of deployments. In my day (mid-late 80's), 12-15 a year wasn't uncommon. However, these studs today are spending so much time downrange, I think they're jumping much less than we did. It can vary widely by unit as well.

And, how many years does an “average” paratrooper remain as a “jump ready” paratrooper?

It can vary widely. Many folks do a single tour (2 or 4 years), while others may stay on status for a decade or more.

I am assuming that to retain jump status you need to not only to have the training certification and medical documents, but that you need to be able to show some recurrent training and/or a certain number and type of jumps.

The minimum requirement to stay on "jump status" (for pay purposes) is one jump every three months. I'm not sure it it's still the same now, but you could actually go almost six months between two jumps and remain on status. That may have changed. But generally speaking, you'd have to jump at least four times a year to stay on status.

Do you think that trainees or active paratroopers understand the risk, its life impacts and how many have been paratroopers dealing with long-term injuries?

For new enlistees, I doubt it. At that age, you know academically there's a risk, but you pretty much believe you're invincible. Of course, if you sign the dotted line today, you know you've got a good shot at going somewhere where someone is going to try to shoot you (or blow you up).

I imagine as you get older, you become more aware of the possibility. However, by then, you've probably decided this is your career...and you'll just take the good with the bad.


Personally (and I can't speak for everyone) I think there's a certain fatalism in the combat arms. Pretty much, there's a common belief that...if you're number's up, it's going to happen whether you're in a dangerous place, or asleep in your bed at home. That kind of mindset (faith?) helps a lot when you're doing dangerous things.