Douglas Leonard with the unit's parent outfit, the 20th Engineer Brigade at Fort Bragg. Assigned on short notice, the mission was an emergency deployment readiness exercise for Bravo Company, part of the Army's large, rapid-response 18th Airborne Corps at Bragg. While the airborne engineers are at Fort A.P. Hill, they will clear about 5 acres, which the post will use to build an urban-operations training site, thus getting double value from the training exercise. With their parachutes, troopers carry about 100 pounds of suit and gear when they jump through the plane's door, their parachutes slowing their fall through the atmosphere. Paratroopers wear a padded Kevlar jumpsuit and a special helmet with a lacrosselike facemask to protect them from tree branches and rocks.
Landings can be feather light or concrete hard.
The 20th Engineer Brigade's commander is Col. Robert R. Derrick, a 1977 Virginia Tech graduate and a licensed professional engineer.