Minus a leg, sky’s still the limit

Lying in a hospital bed almost six years ago Sergeant Stuart Pearson had just survived a day of unimaginable horror. Caught in a minefield in Helmand, Afghanistan, he and his fellow soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, had valiantly fought to save each other. One by one, they were hit by exploding mines. Three of them lost legs while Corporal Mark Wright died trying to help his friends, an act of such bravery that the 27-year-old was posthumously awarded the George Cross.
Days later, a bloody mess in hospital in Birmingham, Sgt Pearson knew his life was changed for ever but he refused to relinquish it all. “One of the things I said to myself in Selly Oak was, I am definitely going to get back to skydiving ,” says the 37-year-old .
Sitting at the Army Parachute Association drop zone at Netheravon , he explains he knew the perils of throwing himself out of a perfectly good plane, having broken a leg more than 10 years ago, but jokes it is no longer an issue as the leg has gone.
Surrounding him, his fellow amputees span the history of modern British conflict, from the Falklands and Bosnia to Iraq and Afghanistan. Between the seven of them, they proclaim with a smile, they have just seven legs and 13 eyes.
Yet only weeks after beginning training, most with no experience of freefall, they have been transformed from a group of wounded soldiers and Royal Marines to Britain’s first ever disabled skydiving team. Undaunted by the fact that they lack the very limbs that most skydivers use to stabilise their body position in the air, they intend to bring home the medals.
The genesis behind the idea came from army commando Sergeant Dave Pacey, 30, a member of the military’s freeflying team Euphoria, and his wife Alana. “We wanted to give something back and we thought we could get a load of soldiers into the wind tunnel (which replicates the sense of freefall) and see how they fly. Then we thought we could turn them into a skydiving formation team,” he says.
Sgt Pacey and his team approached the British Limbless Ex-Service Men’s Association (Blesma ) and they agreed to sponsor the project and find seven members willing — or some might say mad enough — to give it a go. But, as they explain, fear is not a new emotion to them.
The first test for the new team was to put them out strapped to tandem instructors at Netheravon, Wiltshire, Sgt Pacey explains: “It was to make sure they were happy jumping out of a plane and get them used to landing a canopy. That was the bit we were worried about without legs. But they did an awesome job. Just to see the look on their faces, it felt like they had got a part of their lives back.”
The group then moved to the Airkix wind tunnel, a facility that replicates the feeling of dropping through the air at 120mph.
Earlier this year they headed out to Elsinore, California, where the Americans welcomed them with baffled admiration as they progressed through their AFF (accelerated freefall) training. Despite the bravado among the group, each one had his moment of trepidation in the jumps towards achieving the coveted qualification.
“There is that fear that you are going to do yourself even more of an injury, damage what you have got left. You could see when somebody got a bit quiet. Everyone went through it. We would just start joking like typical squaddies,” explains former L/Sgt Roberts.
Now back in the UK they have a long battle ahead, not only in hours of training but in finding more sponsorship. But the team, the Blesma Trans4mers, are adamant they will compete at the Armed Forces Parachute Championships in July, four as a formation skydiving team and three others performing accuracy jumps. Then they will be ready for the national championships in August and, they hope, the podium . It is simply another hurdle for men who have had to teach themselves to dress again and learn to walk once more.
--THE INDEPENDENT