Page 68 - RADC Bulletin 2019

CHARITY
Charity Skydive
Sgt Gemma Johnson RADC
Is there something you’ve always wanted to do or somewhere in the world you’ve always wanted to go explore but not
quite got around to doing it? Well mine
is, or should I say was, skydiving. Even though I have a slight fear of heights, and
I normally have a great ‘game face’ to hide it, I plucked up the courage and booked it. A one-way bucket list ticket for the highest tandem skydive in the UK, a mere 15000ft or 3 miles straight up.
WO2 Humphreys, Inca and Twiggy (Col Johnston’s dogs), and I arrived at ‘Go SkyDive’ in Salisbury at 0800hrs all bright eyed and bushy tailed. I was nervous and excited at the same time, as I got fitted into a suit and harness, proudly wearing my t-shirt for the charity ‘Veterans With Dogs’ aiming to raise as much money as possible for such an amazing cause. The Charity trains and provides assistance dogs for current and former members of the British Armed Forces with service-related mental health conditions in order to help them lead independent lives.
As my name got called out for the next group to go up in the plane I felt my heart rate increase and I was becoming quite nervous. Shortly after meeting my tandem skydive instructor we were climbing into the side of a Cessna Super Cargomaster aircraft - a very small plane! It only took about 10 minutes for us to reach 15000ft and on the scenic flight up I could see we’d gone way above the clouds. Seeing other people jump out before us wasn’t as scary as when we shuffled towards the edge of the plane, that’s when my adrenaline started going.
We leaned forward jumping out of the plane. I was initially in shock and couldn’t believe it, but weirdly after a few seconds
of falling at 125mph I almost felt euphoric taking in the experience of what I was seeing and doing. We were freefalling for about 60 seconds before the parachute was deployed and I felt myself being pulled backwards and up. We began floating around in the air. I was ecstatic, thrilled and proud of myself for jumping. My first thought was that I wanted to do it again and it wasn’t even over yet.
The instructor let me fly the parachute for
a very short while, I got to taste the clouds and then he carried out some fast spiralling manoeuvres. All great fun of course. We landed smoothly and were presented with a certificate as evidence and which will be proudly framed.
A massive thank you goes to everyone who donated. £205 was raised which will help Veterans With Dogs in a huge way. If you would like to know more about them or even donate please go to their website: www.veteranswithdogs.org.uk.
66 RADC BULLETIN 2019