Past Lives | WWII

I was a US paratrooper in WWII.

I know, I wouldn't believe it either if I hadn't experienced it. But, during a past life regression session, I found myself in the belly of plane flying over rural France in WWII.

Before we go on, I want to get you up to speed about my knowledge of war. 

​​We all come from different backgrounds. We all hold different ideas in our minds of what a solider looks like. I feel it's important to explain mine so you understand how truly bizarre this past life regression was. 

I'm not a war person.

I don't watch war movies or documentaries, never have. I'm very much into art, design, and weirdo fringe stuff. I've had these interests all my life. I LOVE history, but not the war side of it. I can listen to a 5 part podcast series on Genghis Khan but, I can't sit through a 30 minute show on any war. Whenever war shows would come on tv, I'd either switch the station or leave the room. Does the M.A.S.H. theme music annoy anyone else? Anyway, anything war related really was not remotely interesting to me. 

I'm also an 80s baby. So, I grew up in the time of Vietnam vets. The imagery in my mind when I picture a solider is the green camo uniform with black boots, the jungle fatigues of the Vietnam war that was often spoke of and referenced in pop culture during those times. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, I did see some desert fatigues and I remember thinking how strange they looked. Why weren't they in the green camo? My parents explained that the uniform color change was to blend into the desert environment. Then, my mind registered that as all battle uniforms are camo but can be different colors to blend in better to any specific location. That was my frame of reference when it came to war and solider uniforms. And, honestly, I didn't put any more thought into it. I had a lot of other things on my mind.

In history class, we learned about various wars, WWII obviously being one of them. But, most of this learning was from dry text books or lectures from teachers. For most of my life, I had no clue how soldiers during those wars dressed.

I didn't think anything would come up during the regression.

I'm the kind of person, when put on the spot, my mind goes blank. It's a really great personality quirk that often makes people think I'm braindead and makes it difficult to do any task if I'm being timed. 👍🏻 So, when asked by a woman I was working for if she could regress me, I nervously agreed. I thought, if anything, I would probably have to make some stuff up to appease her.

​I was wrong. 

She had me sit on the couch in her dark living room and relax my body and mind. She instructed me to picture a set of stairs in my mind's eye and to walk down the steps to the bottom where a door would await me. As I approached the bottom of the stairs, to my surprise, I could hear a loud roaring engine on the other side of the door. It was so loud and humming through the closed door that I was nervous. I wasn't sure what I was going to find on the other side when she instructed me to open it. 

The red 'X' is where we were standing, the blue line is the open door.

I opened the door and stepped into a large plane flying over a rural countryside at dawn.

It was beautiful to look out of the open door of the plane. 

​There were only 3 of us in this giant plane. The pilot, a fellow solider, and myself. And, I was a guy.

I could see the pilot through the open door to the cockpit. The fellow solider was a close friend and he was standing with me. We were in the main part of the plane that felt like a hollowed out tin can, all open and echo-y. The back of the plane looked like it had a large door that dropped down when it opened. The location we were standing in was at the front of the plane. If you were facing the cock pit and looked directly to the right that is where we were, next to an open door. I was comfortable standing there watching the ground pass by below but my consciousness in my current life thought that seemed extremely unsafe. I DO NOT like heights.

I could feel my heavy uniform, "So bizarre" I thought. I expected uniforms to be made from a lightweight fabric, this was like wearing a weighted blanket on my shoulders. I looked down and was met with another shock, my uniform was all brown. No camouflage pattern at all. It didn't make sense to me. "This must be my imagination." Then, I saw my boots. They were a medium tone, warm brown. They almost had a deep mauve hint to them. They were tall enough to hit my lower calf muscles. And, laced up all the way to the top. I could feel how tight they were gripping my ankles and legs.

I began verbally listing out everything, the things I was seeing but also, the things I just knew.

• ​I'm flying over France.
• I'm a paratrooper.
• It's WWII.
• I'm fighting for the US, I'm American.
• ​I'm in my uniform, it's heavy.
• I'm not wearing a parachute on this flight.
• I'm male.
• I'm young, like 19-21.
• My hair is cut short and it's dark brown.
• My friend is roughly my height. He has brown eyes and blond hair. His hair is short and combed neatly like mine as well with a side part. 
• My friend is familiar, I feel like I'll meet him again in my current life.
• I'm not armed. 
• I'm not jumping today. None of us are jumping.
• It's calm.
• I feel safe.

The session ended without incident.

I remember being blown away that anything came through and how vivid it was but, at the same time very disappointed that it was about being a solider. Why couldn't I have been an archeologist? A painter? A shaman? 

At home, while cooking dinner, I found myself unable to stop thinking about the regression. Did I really make all of that up? Is any of it true? 

I sat down at my tiny dinner table with my plate full of food and my clunky laptop. And, in between shoveling in bites, I searched for the things I thought were most easy to find, my uniform and boots. 

The fabric looked just like this.

Sure enough, the first hit was in fact my brown uniform. "Ok", I thought, "maybe I saw a clip of WWII soldiers somewhere and it was buried deep in my subconscious?" Then I read about the uniforms and learned why they are so heavy, they're made of WOOL. My mouth dropped. ​​

Even if I had seen a photo at some point, how would I know that the uniforms were crazy heavy from the type of material used to construct them? ​

​Then, I spotted the paratrooper uniforms which are lighter in color and made from a lighter wool fabric. But, I wasn't jumping that day. Did they only wear the lighter uniform when they were jumping? 🤷🏻‍♀️ I don't know.

Even more curious now, I moved on to the boots.

I didn't know what to expect. What would soldiers boots from WWII even look like? I scrolled through an old blog and came across a picture of light colored boots that looked nothing like my dark leather boots. I read the caption "WWII Boots". Convinced that was the nail in the coffin right there that my mind had played a big trick on me, I scrolled down out of lazy curiosity. And, in the next photo...

My Jump boots.

There were my boots.

Dumbfounded, I sat and stared at them like I was in a trance, absorbing every familiar detail. Those boots were labeled with the caption "WWII Paratrooper Boots". Not only were they the exact boots that were on my feet during my regression as a paratrooper but they were ONLY worn by paratroopers. This now seemed to be beyond a coincidence. 

This may sound dumb to some of you, but, before all of this, I didn't even know paratroopers existed in WWII. I don't know why. I guess I just thought the soliders flew bomber planes. I never thought about people parachuting back then.

​Anyway, I became extremely curious about paratroopers in WWII. So, I searched for information on them next. 

Did you know WWII paratroopers were only lightly armed if armed at all? I didn't. I assumed they would drop down from the sky with giant guns but, nope, not the case. They were mainly used to hold an area until ground troops could arrive. This was all news to me. Was this why I wasn't armed?

So far, everything seemed to check out.

That is, until I tried to find the plane. 

Every paratrooper plane seems to have the same set up where the door to jump out of is located on the driver's side rear of the plane (Sorry for the car terms, it just seems easiest to describe it that way). My plane did not. It had a door near the front and on the passenger side. And another door that was a wide drop-down style door in the back/bottom. 

This had stumped me for YEARS. I've searched for my plane for years. And, only just now as I'm writing this blog post do I have an idea as to why the plane I was in is so different. I WASN'T on a paratrooper plane. Duh. I'm slow sometimes lol. 

In the regression, we were in our thick uniforms and we weren't wearing parachutes. We weren't jumping. The plane was hollowed out. It didn't have seats for jumpers like I've seen in dozens of photos online. Maybe that plane was used for something else entirely and we were just along for the ride that day?

Sure enough, when I searched, I found that there were cargo planes that had the door located where I saw it AND the back hatch door that drops open. I still haven't found the exact plane but, now, I'm fairly convinced I was flying in an empty cargo plane that day. 

I have 3 birthmarks.

I'm telling you this because they're all the size and shape of bullet holes. 

When I was a kid I used to joke that I was shot to death in my last life because of these birthmarks. One is on my upper right thigh, it has one large "entry wound" shape with bits of "shrapnel" trailing below it. The 2nd one is on the right side of my torso just under my armpit. It has an almost identical shape as the first. The third, is on the right side of my face, an almost perfect circle that looks like a shot fired at point blank range just above my upper lip. 

And, I could be wrong, I'm no expert in bullet wounds but these are what they have ALWAYS reminded me of. 

I thought a lot about those birthmarks when I found out that the paratroopers were flown in barely armed. How did they manage to hold their ground while waiting for the ground troops to arrive? Was I killed during one of those attempts, shot to death in a war that took place decades before I was born in this life? Did my body remember the wounds that my consciousness had long forgotten? I hope one day I find the answer to those questions.