Yelling Geronimo

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey guys, this is Andy calling from Surprise, Arizona.

Well, what’s the surprise for us? What do you have for us? Something nicely wrapped?

So I was playing in the pool with the kids, and we were all jumping in and doing cannonballs and stuff.

And normally when I jump in, I shout something like, cannonball! Or cowabunga!

And this time I jumped in and I went, Geronimo!

And it was just something that came out of me.

And I remember it was something that I would say a lot when I was younger, doing things like that.

But I was like, gosh, I don’t even know if it’s appropriate to say that anymore.

What was the story behind jumping into the fray or something and screaming Geronimo?

And I looked on Wikipedia briefly just to try, and I saw something about, like, I think it was World War II, like, paratroopers would shout it when they were jumping out of the airplanes.

But I didn’t say why, and I was like, what is the story behind this?

Well, there’s more than one story, and I’m going to tell you the one that I think has the most credibility.

So in 1941, there was a story printed in the New York Herald Tribune, which talks about soldiers shouting Geronimo as they parachuted out of planes.

And they credit the 501st Parachute Battalion in October of 1940 doing this.

So it was really interesting.

So 1940 is the earliest use that we have at all.

And this news story is from 1941, May of 1941.

And the reason they might have shouted Geronimo is it was, I believe it was a 1939 film about the Apache warrior Geronimo that was widely seen and widely shown at military bases.

And he’s a little bit of a folk hero.

Even at that point, he had this legend about him, about his ability to withstand the travails of war and still come up on top.

So a lot of people respected him and his story as a warrior.

And the two different versions of the story don’t really matter very much, but a lot of people credit this guy by the name of Eberhard, Aubrey Eberhard, apparently at Fort Benning, Georgia in 1940, was challenged by his peers to jump out of this airplane and demonstrate to them that they have, he had a presence of mind.

That is that he wasn’t completely overtaken by fear and unable to, like you can, you can blindly jump out of a plane, but that’s not a courageous act unless you can demonstrate that you did it like with full body control and full mental awareness and that it wasn’t really a big deal.

And so apparently, as the story goes, he shouted Geronimo, the name of this warrior and the name of this film, to show his peers that he could think about something else other than the fear of dying from falling and smacking into the earth.

So one guy.

One guy, supposedly.

And it’s a really concrete story.

Actually, Aubrey Eberhardt was interviewed many years later, and he confirmed the basic bones of that story and kind of pinned down the dates with his term of military service and so forth.

And do you think it’s still politically correct to shout it out?

Because I was like, gosh, I’m not sure if it’s not okay anymore.

Yeah, that’s a fair question.

It is a good question.

In my personal opinion, based on what I’ve seen from the Indian American community, they have no thoughts one way or the other about it.

Because it does look like it started out as a term of respect for the warrior, for this Apache warrior who could fight.

And like I said, even when he lost, he looked like he won.

The movie, of course, aggrandized the character quite a bit and built up the legend quite a bit.

So it started pretty much, as far as I understand it, as a term of respect.

Yeah, I’d like to see that movie and see how he was portrayed.

The movie is pretty terrible, actually, but it’s 1930s.

But what’s really interesting is although Geronimo, shouting Geronimo, when you jump out of planes is no longer really a thing in the U.S. Military, not supposed to be a thing officially, it does still appear on a variety of logos and patches and veterans groups that are former parachutists or airborne.

They still use it in a variety of different ways.

So Geronimo is still out there in the military community and still associated with jumping from airplanes.

Very cool.

Cool.

Well, that is just absolutely fascinating.

I appreciate you taking the time to fill me in on it.

Andy, thanks so much for calling.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thanks, guys.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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