By David Josar
Stuttgart bureau
David Josar / Stars and Stripes
Retired Col. Walter McMahon shows the lapel pin and membership card he received in 1957. |
STUTTGART, Germany — Ask almost any
Caterpillar Club member and they’ll say they would rather never have been qualified
for membership.
"I know I’d rather have not been in
that situation," said retired Army Col. Walter McMahon, now a full-time Red Cross
worker in Stuttgart.
McMahon, Army deputy commander in Munich when he
retired in 1981, is one of an estimated 4,000 living members of the Caterpillar Club.
Your life must have been saved by a parachute in
order to become a member.
McMahon earned his "golden
caterpillar," a tiny lapel pin with ruby eyes given to club members, after he bailed
out of a C-199 "flying boxcar" in 1955, minutes after taking off from Sewart Air
Base in Smyrna, Tenn.
"I really can’t think of any other
club like it," said Kate Grant, spokeswoman for Irvin Aerospace Canada Ltd., whose
founder, Leslie L. Irvin, created the Caterpillar Club in 1922.
About 100,000 people saved by Irvin parachutes
have become members of the club, more than a third of them during World War II. The exact
number of living members is unknown, Grant said, but she estimates it at around 4,000.
"We don’t get the inquiries we used to
do, but I think we have a place in history," Grant said.
"We saved the lives of thousands of servicemembers all over the world. Without us
there would have been more casualties," she said.
The club was founded by Irvin, credited with
inventing the first free-fall parachute in 1919. He selected the name "Caterpillar
Club" in homage to the silk threads that made the original parachutes and the fact
that the caterpillar lets itself down to earth by a silken thread.
"Life depends on a silken thread," is
the club’s motto.
There are no annual fees or meetings. Members
only get a pin and a membership card. Prospective members must send documentation of the
incident to Irvin Aerospace, which then conducts its own research.
"I don’t think most members really
talk about the club," Grant said. "I think to them it’s a way of silently
remembering what happened to them."
She estimated that about 5,000 members of the
American military were members at one time or another.
Other parachute manufacturers also had honors for those saved by their products. The
Pioneer Parachute Co. in Skokie, Ill., donated plaques to people who packed parachutes
that saved their lives, and The Switlik Parachute Company of Trenton, N.J. issued both
gold and silver pins.
Charles Lindbergh was a Caterpillar Club member.
Irvin parachutes saved his life four times in a span to two years. Two of those bailouts
occurred while he was flying the St. Louis-Chicago mail route.
And members still keep coming. Two years ago,
Grant said, a man made membership when he parachuted to safety after his hang glider
malfunctioned in the mountains of Mexico.
"Not everyone falls out of a plane,"
she said.
The Irvin company, which has operations in
Canada, the United States and England, still makes parachutes but also manufactures
survival equipment, aircraft recovery systems and aircraft spin and stall recovery
systems.
McMahon’s story is typical of a Caterpillar
Club member.
In the winter of 1955, McMahon, then a first
lieutenant, was leading a crew of 33 paratroopers in a C-119 "flying boxcar" en
route to Alaska for maneuvers. McMahon said minutes after taking off from Seward Air Base,
the plane developed engine trouble. He and the crew decided to bail.
"Everyone was pretty scared," said
McMahon, who organized the men as they hooked their chutes to the static line and jumped.
McMahon said he was so nervous he almost forgot
to hook his chute to the line.
Eventually, the plane and its 7,000 pounds of
equipment crashed. The pilot and co-pilot, who went down with the plane, perished, but all
the other men survived after jumping with their parachutes. Just two had any injuries and
those were minor. One suffered from shock and the other had a severely twisted ankle.
"Everyone did great," McMahon said.
