There are a lot of ways of getting around in the natural world, from hiking to canoeing to biking to swimming. Parachuting is one that few of us have experience with, but is an important historical and current mode of travel. Fortunately, we have interviewed someone for the On the Dogwatch podcast someone who has firsthand experience and is the author of two books that relate to paratroopers in WWII.

In our conversation, we talk with James Fenelon about his background in the military and in using parachutes, the idea of using a parachute as a tool for travel in military combat and how that has changed, as well as the historical stories of paratroopers that James has written about in both Angels Against the Sun and Four Hours of Fury. Ultimately, James uses the stories of real people and their experiences to contextualize some very important moments in our history. And don’t worry, we even reserve some time to talk about paratrooper boots and where they fit in the culture of these soldiers.