Parabellum:
When I was on II Sqn. we had cooks, suppliers, radio techs, MT mechs and pencil pushers that wore wings... Every one of them that wore their wings went through Pre-Para and then did their 8 at Brize... Every one of them I served with earned them and I'd be happy to fight alongside them any day...
We also had other tradesmen, (often in the same trades as those mentioned above), that were posted to II despite their protest that they didn't want to jump. Some of them earned their respect amongst the lads, others didn't.... They all remained wingless....
There was also a Rock that was posted to II when I was there... He stood in front of the entire squadron and said, bluntly, he wasn't para qualified and he wasn't f
g interested. I'd still follow Warrant Officer Alec King to the end of the world and am quite confident that, had we ever had to have jumped in anger, Alec would have jumped with us without ever having been trained... There are just some men that you implicitly know will do what it takes to get their men where they need to be... with the absolute intent of bringing them out alive. Alec is that kind of man.
But yes, everything that came before No. 1 PTS made you Airborne... No. 1 PTS simply confirmed or denied it...
I've been very proud of many achievements in my life but becoming Airborne is hard to beat. Truly, hard to beat.