I went through Jump school at Ft. Benning in MAY66. I was in 42nd Company, 23rd class. Like Danny has already said, it was 3wks. long, consisting of Ground Week, Tower Week, and Jump Week.
Ground Week is alot of PT, getting yelled at, dropped for push ups for every little infraction [real or imagined] running EVERYWHERE, and in between they're teaching you stuff. One of the first things they start teaching you is how to do a PLF [Parachute Landing Fall]. In the next 3 weeks, it'll seem like you've done thousands of these. Do PT. You'll learn about the T-10 parachutes, run, how to get into the harness properly, do pushups, be suspended by the harness and taught how to work the risers to control the chute, get yelled at and do push ups. Did I say we ran EVERYWHERE
? Alot of people drop out the first week for various reasons. Some decide this isn't for them after all; some can't hang with the PT; some can't take the harrassment.
Tower Week is still alot of PT, running, more PLFs, and getting yelled at, but the training starts taking on a more serious and dangerous face. You're introduced to the 34' tower. This is a room that sits on the top of a tower. You get to it by climbing about 4 flights of stairs and enter it through the floor. It has a door on each side. It's supposed to be a facsimile of a plane fusilage. The purpose here is to teach you how to exit the door of a plane, with body posture being the important thing. When you exit the door, you're in a harness that slides down a cable on a pulley. You're stopped at the bottom, where you're taken out of the harness and your exit is graded. You keep doing it until you get it right. The 34' tower is where there's going to be somemore dropouts. When you stand in the door, instead of 34' it looks like 200'. An instructor on the ground asks you your number. You yell it out to him. If you didn't look down at him when you answered, he'll ask you again until you do. I saw 3 guys walk back down.
The 250' tower has 4 arms at the top. Basically, you're hauled to the top in an open parachute and dropped from the end of one of the arms. Usually, they only use 3, or sometimes 2, of the arms at a time. That depends on which direction the wind is blowing. They don't want you being blown into the tower. This is to give you the feeling of actually floating down in a parachute, doing a PLF, and collapsing and gathering your chute.
Danny's already described Jump Week. The PT has slacked up abit. I think I remember getting in another hour of sleep. On my jumps, I jumped 3 C-130s and 2 C-119s. Completeing Jump School has always been one of the proudest accomplishments of my life.