Apache

10. HAPPY CHRISTMAS

The weather turned in mid-December when the Helmand winter kicked in. The rains arrived and the temperature started to plummet at night; before long it fell below freezing.

The Taliban in the Green Zone were largely on foot, so they hated fighting in bad weather. A diehard few continued to put up a token resistance, but when it got cold most of them retreated to their northern mountain refuges.

We welcomed the brief change in tempo. It allowed us to think about Christmas. Wherever I had been deployed, it was always a big deal, a special occasion that helped lighten the monotony of operational life – even if you did have to work all the way through it. It was also the time we particularly missed our families, so we all did our best to make it a really special occasion.

The Groundies got into the festive mood early. A few of them decided to introduce a bit of extra cheer by writing a letter to the GMTV presenter and Daily Mirror columnist Fiona Phillips, signed with a nom de plume. The letter was forgotten about almost as soon as it was posted. Nobody expected to see it published – but it was, immediately. Fiona even penned her own reply.

A week or so later, the first bag of mail arrived. The next day there were two bags. And two more the day after. Soon, hundreds and hundreds of letters were pouring into the JHF; so many that nobody knew what to do with them all.

People from all walks of life had replied, from Royal British Legion members and nice old ladies to mums and dads with serving sons and daughters. Most of them just wanted to wish us a Happy Christmas; some fancied a flirt, and one or two took the trouble to explain precisely what they’d like to do to a nice man in a uniform while their husbands were out at work.

One young refueller peeled open a crimson envelope containing a photograph of a gorgeous brunette posing in nothing more than a bra, knickers and suspender belt, attached to a handwritten note: Al – if you want to see more, write more…

The boy couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘Whoa! Look at this, lads!’ He sprinted down to the flight line, photo in hand.

That was it. The dam broke. The Groundies invaded the JHF en masse. They even brought up the missile truck, determined to pinch as many of the mailbags as they could get their hands on. Billy and I watched them cluster around the bird table like sniffer dogs, in search of the most promising offer.

It didn’t take them long to discover that the kind of invitations they were looking for were in pretty short supply – but they were swiftly consoled by the extraordinary number of thoroughly decent people who cared enough about the sacrifices they were making to have taken the trouble to wish them a Happy Christmas. And before long, with a little encouragement from the vets, a stream of thank you letters was making its way back home.

For some of the youngsters of the squadron, it was their first Christmas away from home; a daunting experience for anyone. Charlotte had told us it was the only part of the deployment she was dreading – but her friends and family back home were clearly doing their best to cheer her up. I popped into 3 Flight’s tent to see if anyone fancied a brew and was confronted by the biggest pile of presents I’d ever seen, beautifully wrapped and carefully piled on a spare camp cot: six feet long, three feet wide and four feet high.

There were a few for Nick, one or two for FOG, none for Darwin; at least 80 per cent of them belonged to Charlotte.

‘Hang on lads,’ one of the guys said. ‘I’ve got a great idea…’

Charlotte burst into the JHF a few hours later, her face white with shock. ‘I can’t believe it! Somebody’s stolen our presents.’

‘What?’ We did our best to sound suitably horrified.

‘They were all laid out on a bed, ready for Christmas, and someone has stolen them. I can’t believe it. Who would be so mean?’

Always the perfect gentleman, Nick sprang to her support. ‘I can’t believe someone would actually steal Christmas presents. What a low down, rotten thing to do.’

FOG was more philosophical. ‘No guys, we should have known better.’

‘Quick,’ I suggested helpfully. ‘Go and report it to the police. They’ll seal the main gate and then search the camp –’ Charlotte charged across to the RMP office before I’d even finished speaking.

The coppers didn’t let us down. The two SIB sergeants escorted her straight back to her tent, but as she was about to lead them in, one of them blocked her path.

‘Sorry ma’am, you can’t go in there,’ he said gravely. ‘It’s a crime scene.’ And his partner slapped two strips of blue and white police tape across the entrance.

‘But all my stuff is in there! When can I go back in?’

‘Well, we’ll need to dust the place down for prints. That’ll mean getting someone down from Kabul, which will take a few days, I’m afraid. And at this time of year… ooh, you’re looking at after Christmas now. Sorry.’

Not only had 3 Flight lost their presents, they’d also lost their tent. All they had to live with was a wash bag and the few meagre possessions they’d taken down to the IRT tent. We were finding it increasingly difficult to wipe the smiles off our faces.

We’d found three Father Christmas hats and beards and filmed ourselves tiptoeing to the cot, looking furtively left and right, stuffing all the presents into big black bin bags and giving a ‘Ho ho ho’ to the camcorder as we made off with them. We’d locked the presents in a couple of big green weapons cases in our tents at first, then had the bright idea of driving them down to the RMP office and roping them into the plot.

We planned to show our film to Charlotte and the others before triumphantly reuniting them with their gifts on Christmas Day. We were quite proud of it; we even managed to secure a cameo appearance by the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who’d flown out for a few days to cook Christmas lunch for the troops. We approached him in the hangar during a tour of the flight line. He was well up for it.

Looking as mean as he could, he rasped: ‘Hello 3 Flight, and Happy Christmas. Do you know where your fucking presents are yet?’

I also asked him rather sheepishly to sign a recipe for Emily’s mother’s Clootie dumplings, a heavy Scottish cake she made by the truck load.

‘I can tell she’s a Jock,’ he said, handing it back to me. ‘She’s making it with fucking margarine!’

Charlotte grew progressively quieter as Christmas Eve approached. Homelessness, presentlessness and family separation were getting to her. We began to feel guilty enough to bring Darwin in on the plot. He’d told his family not send out any presents; he wanted to celebrate with them on his return – so he had no axe to grind. He’d know whether we should call it off.

‘Don’t worry about Charlotte,’ he assured us. ‘She’s pretty tough; she’ll be good with it.’

So we kept on going – never dreaming that, after a few hours, Darwin would buckle under the pressure of living with our secret. By that night, the weasel blabbed to Charlotte, Nick and FOG. We discovered his treachery after she let it slip to the Boss, and someone overheard.

The drama of the missing presents now gripped the squadron. Trigger finally stepped in on Christmas Eve. He told 3 Flight their presents were safe and sound with the RMPs. 3 Flight tried to pretend they’d never cared about them in the first place. Honours were just about even – though we still had a score to settle with Darwin-the-Rat.

HQ Flight were up early on Christmas Day for a deliberate tasking. We had to escort a Chinook on a series of resupplies to the three most northern district centres. It was tedious stuff and went on for hours. We were in the cockpit – air or ground – for most of the day. It was bitterly cold and the weather was dire: low cloud and drizzling rain. Camp Bastion turned into a quagmire, and we squelched all the way to the flight line.

‘Like Christmas in the World War One trenches,’ Carl moaned. ‘But without the footie.’

Kajaki was furthest away, so it was our first destination. We went the long way round – low through the eastern mountains at 1,000 feet – to avoid SAM traps. We hadn’t seen the mountains in the rain before, and it was an eerie experience. Great slabs of glistening silver-grey rock towered either side of us, punctuated by puffs of marshmallow cloud. It felt like we were on our way to Middle Earth. Everything was deathly quiet; we were on silent drills because of the Chinook’s insecure radios.

Carl could see well enough to fly, but there was no harm in having a backup in shit like this. So for the only time on the tour I flicked to the radar page on my left-hand MPD and switched on the Longbow’s Terrain Profile Mode.

The US Apaches flew without their Longbow Radars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Initially designed to help destroy armoured columns, the Americans said they were no use for counterinsurgency. They swapped them for more weapons weight. Our Rolls Royce engines were strong enough to carry the Longbow and all the weapons we’d need.

The Longbow’s Ground Target Mode was extremely handy for spotting vehicles at a distance, or well out of the TADS line of sight. It pinged anything moving or static up to eight kilometres away, in any direction. But Terrain Profile Mode was even more useful on a sortie like this. The Longbow mapped out the lie of the land up to two and a half kilometres in front of us. On the MPD, it showed terrain below us as black, terrain within 100 feet of us as grey and terrain above us – terrain that we’d hit – as white. It projected an electronic zigzag graph across our monocle so we could identify the hills and valleys ahead of us. TPM meant we could fly in all weather, day and night, at ultra-low level, at great speed and totally blind. Carl got us through the spooky mountains off his own bat, but it was always nice to know TPM was there if we needed it.

After Kajaki, we hit Now Zad, then back to Camp Bastion, south down to Lashkar Gah where the Chinook had passengers to pick up, Bastion again, and finally back up to Forward Operating Base Robinson near Sangin.

The clouds finally began to clear on our last leg over the desert, treating us to a perfect blood orange sunset.

‘I can see clearly now the rain has gone…’ I started to sing.

There was never going to be a better moment.

‘Five Zero, Five One; there’s something rattling by my door. Check the nearside of my aircraft with your TADS, will you?’

Billy pulled level with us and Trigger swung his Day TV camera onto our cockpit.

‘Ho, ho, ho!’

I’d taken off my helmet for a few seconds and pulled on a red and white Father Christmas hat to give them a wave. For the first time since we’d got up it began to feel like Christmas Day.

We were back too late for turkey and stuffing in the cookhouse, so we scrubbed up and joined the squadron party. It was being held in our newly acquired recreation tent. A stage and makeshift bar were set up, the place was rigged out with tinsel and a sparkly silver tree, and we all piled in to enjoy a rare drink.

Alcohol was banned for all British troops across Helmand. On Christmas night a special exception was made and everyone was allowed two cans of beer. Only the four IRT / HRF pilots had to stay dry. They went to the party in full flying rig ready for the call-out if it came. Luckily, it didn’t.

Every section performed a sketch, taking the mickey out of all the squadron characters. These could go on for hours, but the good ones were comic genius. Instead of a sketch, 2 Flight played us a film they’d spent countless hours crafting, a pastiche of Top Gun with footage from the movie edited in.

The highlight of the evening was Darwin’s Kangaroo Court; all the better because he had no idea it was coming. As soon as the entertainment finished, he was held firmly by both arms and tried then and there. The charge: ‘Wilful betrayal of the Warrant Officers and Sergeants’ Mess by forming a secret alliance with the officers – namely, by telling them who had their Christmas presents.’ The jury agreed it was a most heinous offence. There was a prosecution, a defence and the Boss was the judge.

‘Right, bring in the guilty bastard.’ Trigger opened the proceedings. The evidence was presented with all the venom of a Stalin show trial. Darwin was left with little choice but to plead guilty.

‘Guilty is the correct plea,’ Trigger decreed. ‘You have been convicted and I hereby sentence you to wearing your flying suit and helmet throughout the whole of your next evening meal in the cookhouse.’

We sat on our cots at the end of the evening and opened our presents. The Boss joined us, and set up his camcorder so he could send the video home to his kids. We took it in turns. I opened my kids’ presents first and then Emily’s. She’d written Open Last on one; by the time I got round to it, everyone else had finished.

‘Right, Mr Macy, only one left.’ Trigger grabbed his camera. ‘I’m going to film you opening it.’

I undid the bow and unwrapped a beautiful little red box. I thought it would contain cufflinks or something, but there was a tiny Christmas stocking inside it. In the stocking was a tiny card. I couldn’t speak.

‘Come on Mr Macy, what is it? Hey guys look, is that a tear on Macy’s face? Macy’s crying!’

I rediscovered my voice. ‘I’m not crying; my eyes are sweating. And take that camera out my face.’

‘So what’s she written then?’

She’d written four words. Congratulations. We are pregnant.

I raced to the telephones. Emily was four months gone. Going back to Afghanistan wasn’t planned, and we never dreamed we’d be this lucky. She kept the whole thing a secret for as long as she could so as not to worry me.

‘Don’t worry about me, I’m just relieved I can tell my family now. Don’t do anything stupid; I don’t want to be forced to name him Ed Macy. Especially if he turns out to be a girl.’

‘Ed Macy?’

‘Yes, that’s what he’ll be called if you do something stupid. Are you carrying the angel?’

When I got back to the tent, all the others had gone to sleep. I poured myself a whisky from the emergency-only bottle I kept hidden in the bottom of my bag. I was going to be a father for the third time and I was the happiest man in Camp Bastion. That was worth a dram in the dark.

The only downside about Christmas on operations was that it finished. Afterwards, the squadron hit the usual post-big occasion blues. We were halfway through the tour, with another two months to go and no more cans of Christmas beer to look forward to. And fatigue was setting in.

The longer we were out here, the more knackered people looked. Since everything we did was devoted to saving life or taking it, the mental pressure was intense – and not only in the air. One sloppy drill by a young refueller or one of the boys loading weapons on the flight line could be catastrophic. Keeping 100 per cent focused for 100 days without a break was tough, especially if you were eighteen years old.

Everyone’s workload was horrendous because we were still brand new – we were developing and learning lessons on the Apache and changing procedures every single day. Everything had to be evaluated and reported, be it weapons functions for me, aircraft threats for Carl or the flight envelope for Billy.

Afghanistan took its toll physically too. The climate – wind, sand, heat and cold – was relentless. Young guys came back looking like men. Undisturbed sleep, as our Crew Rest Period rules required, was the last thing we got in a sleeping bag on a camp cot with perpetual aircraft noise and people coming and going all night.

Cumulative fatigue was the official name for it – burnout for short. It was hard to spot because we were all weathering at the same rate. As the tour went on, the Boss made a point of policing Crew Rest Period ever more religiously. He had to give direct orders.

‘Geordie, bed, now!’

It would be left to his 2i/c to police the Boss, who was the most reluctant of all to leave the JHF. One or two started to get a little fractious, but most were too professional for that. People became quieter, preserving their energy for the job. The senior guys had to make a real effort to keep up the banter and morale.

Little accidents could happen easily. For pilots that might mean overtorquing an engine; for Groundies, putting rockets in the wrong tubes. Billy dragged all the pilots in for a brief the day after Boxing Day, and warned them to be careful about getting bitten by the aircraft.

‘My advice is, take a little bit longer doing everything you do. You may all think you’re absolutely okay. I promise you, you’re not.’

The constant stream of VIP visits was yet another addition to our workload. It wasn’t just the political party leaders – a constant stream of defence ministers, foreign ministers, shadow defence ministers, shadow foreign ministers, military chiefs and foreign military chiefs passed through Bastion. They thought they were doing us a favour, showing their solidarity with the chaps. We could never tell them they were a pain in the arse. VIPs tied up valuable airtime and resources; they all needed to be choppered about, and of course they all wanted to crawl all over the Apaches. Even Billy started to get bored with his bigwigs speech.

The one VIP we always had time for though was General Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff. After years of faceless chiefs burying their heads in the sand and toeing the government’s line, General Dannatt infuriated the Prime Minister by speaking out – questioning policy in Iraq and calling for better soldiers’ pay and housing. A true soldiers’ friend, his honesty made him the most popular chief we’d had in a generation, and perhaps since Monty. He was also Colonel Commandant of the Army Air Corps, so we liked him even more.

General Dannatt’s latest visit coincided with this period. Trigger showed him around the flight line, Billy did his spiel in the aircraft and I went last with a weapons brief. ‘Right sir, this is our Ops Room and this is Mr Macy,’ Trigger said. ‘He’s going to show you some gun footage.’

‘Terrific, I’m looking forward to this. Where do you want me?’

I escorted him to a chair. I’d prepared shots of a missile attack, a rocket attack and a gun attack from a big contact south of Now Zad a few nights previously. Before I ran the tape, I gave him a quick description of the contact’s location with the help of a large-scale map of Helmand province stuck to the white partition wall upon which we projected the gun tapes.

Everyone takes down posters differently. I always remove the bottom blobs of Blu-tack first. And I thanked God that I did that morning.

As my hands moved to peel off the top blobs, my right palm brushed over a laminated surface. Something had been stuck on the partition wall behind the map.

I froze.

‘Something wrong, Mr Macy?’

I flashed Trigger a look, and knew he’d guessed what – or more precisely, who – was lurking behind the map.

‘No sir. Blu-tack’s a bit stiff, that’s all. One second.’

In one fluid movement, I managed to slide my right hand underneath the map and Rocco, unpeeled them both and dumped them under a table.

There was a muffled groan from the JHF’s back room.

‘Well done, Mr Macy,’ Trigger said with enormous relief.

General Dannatt looked puzzled. With Rocco subdued I played the tape and the general left looking very pleased with our shooting.

As usual, the culprit never came clean. He denied everything, but I blamed Geordie. Only he would have had the balls, panache and sheer stupidity to have attempted a 24-carat Rocco blinder.

The Boss took longer to get over it.

And from that moment onwards, Rocco mysteriously disappeared.

Just before New Year, we had another bitter reminder of the dangers lurking in the south of the province. A lance bombardier from 29 Commando Regiment, Royal Artillery, was killed when his vehicle drove over a landmine in the Garmsir area. A young lad with him lost his right leg.

Billy stuck a Hellfire and a shed load of 30-mm into it to stop the Taliban getting their hands on it. They later named a forward operating base in the desert after the killed soldier; FOB Dwyer became the permanent 105-mm gun emplacement to support the Garmsir DC.

There were strong suspicions the landmine had been planted by the Taliban – another tactic we were seeing more often. The Mujahideen wrought havoc for the Soviet Army by burying antitank mines in their path.

The New Year did give us something to look forward too, though. By the beginning of January Operation Glacier was ready to go.