That Others May Live: Inside the World's Most Daring Rescue Force

Imagine jumping out of an aeroplane at 40, 000 feet, accelerating through the air until you reach terminal velocity at 127 mph, then deploying your 'chute at a mere 1000 feet in order to minimise your vulnerability to ground fire. . . Imagine jumping from 800 feet, having an instant to pull the release and even then bouncing along the ground like tumbleweed because you're carrying so much of the plane's forward momentum. Or performing the against-all-odds rescue operation described in the best-selling THE PERFECT STORM. Or climbing down a mountain in a blizzard with someone strapped to your back. The PJs, America's most elite military unit are Pararescue Jumpers, originally formed after WWII by the US Air Force/Air National Guard to rescue troops from behind enemy lines (and, in peacetime, civilians in danger around the world). They can recover victims from deserts or at the poles, far out to sea, or just offshore in 150mph winds. They swim in 100 foot seas. They are highly skilled paramedics. They also know how to operate a machine gun from a hellicopter door. In THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE we follow Brehm and his fellow PJs from PJ school in 1978 to the present day. The daring missions are relived in full detail.

That Others May Live is the story of one of America's most elite military units. The PJs--pararescue jumpers--are to the air force what the Green Berets are to the army and the SEALs are to the navy, even though they are less well known. There are only about 300 of them, and their main function is to rescue downed pilots, often behind enemy lines. They also perform civilian rescues. "There are no more capable rescuers than the PJs," writes Jack Brehm, a 20-year PJ veteran who penned this book with journalist Pete Nelson. "No one else knows how to fall five miles from the sky to rescue somebody. No one else trains to make rescues in such a wide variety of circumstances and conditions on a mountaintop, in the middle of the Sahara, or 1,000 miles out from shore in hurricane-tossed seas." Some readers will recall the PJs' minor role in Sebastian Junger's harrowing bookThe Perfect Storm; Brehm actually coordinated that PJ operation, and he tells his side of the story on these pages.

Most of That Others May Live (the title is a PJ motto) is told in the third person--an odd choice for a book that labels itself "autobiography" on the jacket. But it works well as Brehm describes everything from PJ training school (about 90 percent of enrollees quit) to family life (divorce rates are very high, even though Brehm is blessed with a supportive wife and five kids). The best parts of the book focus on daring PJ missions and include vivid accounts of, for instance, what free fall is like after jumping from a plane at 26,000 feet ("It's nothing like holding your arm out the window of a car moving at 125 mph. It's more like lying on a pillow of air, so restful you could almost fall asleep"). Brehm also reveals the startling low pay PJs receive: after a few promotions and a dozen years experience, he writes, they make "about what a high school graduate temping in an office can earn if she's really good at alphabetizing." Yet the job has plenty of other rewards for a certain type of person: "The stereotypical pararescueman gets a testosterone high from being physically fit, and an endorphin high from exercising, and then he gets an adrenaline high from parachuting out of an airplane to a victim in need of medical assistance, and then he gets a spiritual, godlike feeling of omnipotence from saving somebody's life, and then he goes to a bar after the mission and has a few shots of tequila to celebrate." Brehm assures readers that every PJ "will deviate" from this description, but the whole of his book reveals it to be a pretty good one-sentence sketch of PJ life. --John J. Miller