FORT BRAGG, N.C. — If President Trump really wanted to do a proper military parade showcasing the might, speed and derring-do of America’s finest, the Sicily Drop Zone on this sprawling Army base would have been a good place to begin.

For a handful of spine-tingling minutes on Thursday, 770 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division hurled themselves out of five C-17 cargo planes at 1,000 feet, like a swarm of birds, toward a cheering crowd of 10,000 people. Just when it looked like the planes could surely not disgorge any more paratroopers, more peeled out.

They hovered in the air, attached to their individual chutes, one seemingly atop another. It was a stunning culmination of the Army division’s annual All American Week, an in-your-face performance that was topped by two Chinook helicopters that roared through the sky and dropped, with pinpoint precision, two M-119 howitzer artillery pieces onto the field — demonstrating that when American paratroopers advance from the sky, they can bring their own heavy equipment with them.

Luis J. Gutierrez, a former Green Beret who came to see the show, watched, grinning, from the stands. “This is where President Trump should come, if he wants a real parade,” he said.