FRIDAY FOTO (November 21, 2014)

Night Moves.

U.S. Army photo by Sergeant Steven Young.
(Click on the photo to enlarge image)

An Army Green Beret has his parachute harness inspected by a jumpmaster before conducting a night jump on Eglin Air Base, Florida on November 4, 2014.

As we’ve said in recent weeks, it isn’t often we get to see Special Operations Forces training up close and personal. And you can click here to see all the photos of this training scenario. There are other, more informative photos on the Defense Department website, but we’ve decided to focus this week on the photo above. It’s subject matter isn’t all that unusual: men in work clothes performing a task in the dying light of sunset. But it captures the light between sunset and dusk. It reminds us of paintings by the Dutch masters or Frederic Remington that sought to convey what the light was like at that time.

But these men are going to jump out of a large helicopter at night, in Alaska, in winter.  Tough stuff.

The Green Berets are assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group, Airborne, and jumped from a CH-47 Chinook helicopter with combat equipment to maintain proficiency in airborne operations.