Joseph Marihart
Era: Korea
Military Branch: Army
Joseph P. Marihart of Hibbing, Minnesota enlisted in the Army on Aug. 23, 1948.
He was a corporal and a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. He served in the Continental United States during the Korean War until his discharge on Aug. 22, 1952.
He recalls an incident during his paratrooper training at Fort Bragg, N.C: "It was a nice, sunny morning and the members of the battery had eaten breakfast, run their six miles and got ready to be hauled to the holding area where we would be loaded onto the planes. We also picked up our chutes out of a 2 1/2-ton truck. The planes were C-82 and 139 aircraft, and the battery staff lined us up in the ''sticks'' we would jump in according to the jump manifest.
"Everyone is quiet and nervous stomachs bother everyone. The noise from the planes' engines is loud. We would jump at 15,000 feet -- nothing to it. So why am I praying? We loaded on the plane. I was about in the middle of the stick. The plane took off and got in formation to cross the jump zone. The jump master yells: ''Stand up! Hook up! Stand in the door!...''The light by the door turned green. The stick moved fast. I felt the propeller blast on my face. The wind took my body like it was a leaf on a tree. I started to count: ''One-thousand, two-thousand, three thousand.''I felt the opening shock as my chute opened. I was right over the top of another chute.
"My chute collapsed, but I got my brains together enough to walk off the lower chute. As I passed him in his chute, he grabbed the shroud lines of my chute. That left me lower than him. I was so scared I climbed up over him. I should have stayed even with him and nobody would have got hurt. This way I broke quite a few of his ribs. And I found out I was a coward and could not think straight when scared. I thank God he grabbed my shroud lines. The guy in the lower chute was Shields from A battery. He lives in Minneapolis. He hasn't forgotten this, and I haven't either."
