It was during a training jump, his last one, and he just had to do something self-important.
NTDWA – An American paratrooper who celebrated his upcoming departure from the Army by jumping with his pet Siamese fighting fish will serve 12 days of extra duty before closing out his time in uniform.
Not seeing a problem here, Boss. Kid was being exuberant over getting out of the Army, a few weeks from ETS. Wanted to make his last jump memorable, yet light hearted. Not seeing self important either. Just a kid being a kid. No one being harmed, he had everything under control except he should’ve posted the pic after he ETS’d.
And taking a Fighting Fish on a military exercise has been done before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYaA_7Zxye4
You never know, sometimes the smartass, cheeky rulebreakers are just the ones you want beside you in combat…
“Snuffy was left alone in the inferno. A man considered a total screw-up was now left in charge to handle the emergency. In the next 90 minutes, his handling of an unprecedented crisis above the English Channel was nothing short of remarkable. “The smoke and gas were really thick. I wrapped a sweater around my face so I could breathe, grabbed a fire extinguisher and attacked the fire in the radio room. Glancing over my shoulder, at the tail fire, I thought I saw something coming and ran back. It was Gibson, the tail gunner, painfully crawling forward, wounded. He had blood all over him.” Snuffy dragged him away from the flames and found he was shot in the back with his left lung pierced. Snuffy rolled him onto his left side to keep the blood from filling his right lung and gave him a shot of morphine. Then he returned to fight the fire.”
http://honorflightaz.org/ssgt-maynard-snuffy-smith-medal-of-honor-recipient/
And you know if he’d have jumped in red pumps they’d have given him a medal.
Bonus points for original thinking! He can hang out in my foxhole anytime he wants, cuz that’s damn funny!
@Twin – great story.
This kind of thing is a longstanding tradition in the military. The kids do things like this, and the military punishes them for it. The punishment is as critical to the tradition as the act itself.
A salute to the man, and his fish!