Posted on 02/17/2018 5:06:13 AM PST by harpygoddess
February 17th is the anniversary of the death in 1909 of that legendary Chiricahua Apache chieftain, Geronimo (born ca. 1829), whose actual Indian name was Goyathlay ("One Who Yawns"). The name by which Geronimo is remembered was supposedly bestowed on him by a detachment of Mexican soldiers so stunned by the ferocity of his resistance that they repeatedly invoked the name of St. Jerome against him.
The reason that U.S. airborne troops yell "Geronimo!" when they jump out of airplanes has to do with a 1939 movie entitled Geronimo which was viewed by a group of early paratroopers (the Parachute Test Platoon in Fort Benning, Georgia) in 1940. The concept of jumping from planes with parachutes was nerve-racking, and in order to demonstrate his bravery one of them planned to yell:
The other soldiers gave him a hard time. They were all scared. Of course he was scared, too. He should just admit it.
"All right, dammit!” Eberhardt finally shouted. “I’ll tell you jokers what I'm gonna do! To prove to you that I'm not scared out of my wits when I jump, I'm gonna yell ‘Geronimo’ loud as hell when I go out that door tomorrow!"
The next day, he made good on his promise. Out the plane he went and everyone heard “Geronimooooooo!” The rest of the platoon wasn’t about to let Eberhardt show them up, so on subsequent jumps the rest of the soldiers took up his battle cry and a tradition was born. The next year, the Army’s first official parachute unit, the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion, made “Geronimo” the motto on their unit insignia after their commander tracked down descendants of the real Geronimo to ask for their permission to use his name.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaviper.blogspot.com ...
"I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds, are all listening to what we have to say."
What would Geronimo say if he jumped out of an airplane?
.
Oh,
S
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Maybe he’d do an obama imitation? You know, “me, me, me, I, I, I” ...
I’m thinking Geronimo would have the sense the Good Lord gave him and NOT jump out of a perfectly good airplane.
Geronimo...
He would hollar
CHUCK NORRIS!
“Meeeeee!!!”
What is this "we"??? Most of us have the sense not to jump out of perfectly good airplanes!
When I was a kid, one of our favorite games was to jump off trees or houses or whatever from increasing heights, until somebody chickened out. We would always yell “GERONIMO!”, but I never knew why.
Why we were jumping off the chimney... well that’s easy. We were idiots!
I recall in 67 after I just graduated from Infantry OCS and I reported in to the company CO of the airborne course. We had some Navy UDT types from Little Creek. VA, who needed airborne to be SEALs. These guys damn sure led the long run the second week. Ground week, tower week, and then jump week. The NCO cadre pushed the tradition of yelling Geronimo. After jump school I never used it again.
As I recall Jump School, you couldn’t hear the guy sitting next to you if he was screaming. Somehow I doubt anyone cold hear someone just out the door.
Agree but it was a lot of fun!
I was a paratrooper and I never yelled “Geronimo” when I jumped. We were taught to count - “one one thousand, two two thousand...and so on) as away of determining when the chute was to open and if it didn’t begin to deploy the emergency chute (keep in mind we were jumping from a thousand feet and you did not have much time if the main did not open).
I think the first guy to yell it was misquoted, what he was actually yelling was “Oh NO!”
His name is infamous in Chihuahua Mexico.
There were several joint campaigns between the Mexican Army and US Cavalry to get him and his posse in the 1880’s.
45 degree angle and anchored to barrel of cement.
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