On July 3rd 2007, a teenage Iraqi insurgent plunged a nine-inch knife into Sgt. Dan Powersâ?? skull. Since his injury, Powers has worked tirelessly to return to his paratrooping brigade.
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Since his injury, Powers has worked tirelessly to rejoin his fellow paratroopers of the 118th MP Company out of Fort Bragg. It took some convincing, but he was finally granted a green light from his doctors -- and his wife.
"It bothered me at first," Trudy Powers said. "I really thought he had kind of lost it, wanting to do it again. But then, this is, that was why he made it through all this, because he wanted to jump again."
"I love what I do, and I really love parachuting," Powers said simply.
Forty-three times before, Powers had exited an aircraft in flight. But this training jump would mean more than any other.
"It means my life has come full circle, and I am in the same place I was before I got hurt," he said.
Powers and fellow members of the 16th MP Brigade were briefed last week right before their training mission near Key West, Fla.
"You want to make sure when you hit the water, the chute falls to the back," said the brigade's commanding officer, Col. John Garity.
As the plane approached the drop zone, Powers was beaming.
Powers said he felt butterflies, as he always did before a jump.
"They said, 'stand by.' I said, "This is it. Here we go."
Garity was the first to jump. Two seconds later, Powers was aloft and feeling on top of the world. "My chute opened and there I was, hanging up at about 1000 feet. It was great."
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