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Broadwick - 4

Q: How many people were there in the act when you joined it?

Broadwick: There was a boy who had taken the name of Broadwick, as we all did. There was just three, Mr. Broadwick had been married before, and his wife had retired, the one in the book that you saw, called Beth.

Q: Can you remember the first time that you actually parachuted, and can you remember your feelings?

Broadwick: I should say I can! Well, I knew everything that I was supposed to do, but the funny thing about it -- nobody told me that thrill that I was going to get when I cut away from the balloon. I came down about 75 feet I guess, and it just seemed like my heart, my tongue and everything was coming out of my mouth. For a few minutes I was frightened, but I looked down below and there was a great big ploughed field down there. There was only one big bush in there, about the size of this bed -- those were all blackberry bushes. I fell in that, and I couldn't get up. All I got was a couple of scratches on the back of my neck, because I fell in those blackberry bushes and I couldn't move until they got there to take me out. All this big ploughed field, and I would have to hit in just this one spot that had the brambles in it!

After that, it wasn't bad. I got scared a couple of times. I had been working for about a year, and I landed up on two great big buildings, and the wind was in such a direction that I didn't see how I could get to the roofs of either one of those buildings. I started to work to get on top of this building, and I was frightened, because I knew if I ever went down between those two buildings, there would be nothing to hold me up. It would be a dead drop from the top down. I was so scared that I just barely made it over on the other roof, and if there hadn't been one of those cement walls up there to hold me up from falling, I would have. My parachute went in and my body went over that. Well, I just sat. I didn't stand up, because I was scared.