Apache

20. IN COMMAND: THE VERDICT

Carl signed in the aircraft while I went to wash Mathew’s blood off my hands.

I sat on the lid of a missile box in the bright sun and poured water from a jerrycan. I couldn’t bring myself to use the Portaloo handscrub.

I tried to fathom what the hell was going on. It couldn’t have been about our fuel levels – Trigger would have understood, given the circumstances. I had never seen him that bothered before. And we weren’t expecting the CO in Bastion today…

I joined Carl inside the Groundies’ hangar. We’d been delayed on the flight line while a technician examined my broken FLIR camera, so the others had gone ahead. We were both locked in thought. Okay, we’d broken a few rules that day. But anything we’d done wrong had been whilst trying to do something right. Our problem was that the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

The downside of the rescue didn’t bear thinking about. If both Apaches had gone down on the way out of the fort, we’d have been close to double figures dead. The very thought of that would have seriously scared a lot of important people, and the four of us had pushed hardest for the mission throughout. After twenty-two years in the army I knew only too well that a little hindsight could be a very dangerous thing. The more I thought about it, the more I understood what Trigger must have meant. Our actions were now going to be judged in the cold light of day, and it could go either way.

I swung open the door of my locker. The word ‘angel’ was still scrawled across the inside of it in black marker as a reminder not to leave home without her. Carl was absorbed in his own little ritual: he pulled a letter from his wife out of a drawer and gave it a kiss. My angel deserved one too, after this morning. I tore open the Velcro seal of my right breast pocket and dug in my hand. I could only feel my war ID card.

‘Mate, take a look in here and see if you can find my angel, will you?’

He peered in and shook his head. We scanned the smooth concrete floor beneath our feet, but there was no sign of her there either. My throat went dry. How would I tell Emily? She’d think it was an omen; that I’d die on my very next flight.

‘This is no joking matter,’ Carl said. ‘We might need her when the CO gets hold of us…’

He put a hand on my shoulder. His expression told me that he knew this was no time to piss about. ‘Shoot a basket for the brews?’

I hesitated for a moment, re-checking my pocket. Still nothing.

‘Let’s do it,’ I replied.

It was another of our sacred post-mission rituals, and nobody was going to stop us doing it. Carl won.

He drove us up to the JHF Ops tent in the Land Rover he had parked by the hangar five hours earlier. Billy and Geordie were already there, and neither could bring themselves to meet my eye. So they’d picked up the vibe too. Nobody in the room was saying much.

Trigger walked in. The look on his face was completely impenetrable. I had a bad feeling about this. ‘Can you four go through to the back, please? I’ll be in with the CO shortly.’

We made our way out of the tent and into the secure Tactical Planning Facility.

‘Make us that brew, Piss Boy,’ Carl said, in a bid to break the tension.

‘Yeah, make that a double, Piss Boy,’ Geordie chipped in. ‘You were also last back from the fort.’

But that was the end of the banter. I made four coffees in silence. Trigger reappeared as I handed them round, followed by the Commanding Officer. Trigger closed the door behind them. It was the first time I’d seen Colonel Sexton since his arrival in Afghanistan two weeks earlier.

‘Welcome to Bastion, sir.’

The temperature in the room dropped by ten degrees.

‘It’s the second time I’ve been here.’

The four of us sat in a row on the comfy seats. Trigger pulled up a couple of hard plastic chairs and he and Colonel Sexton took their places opposite us. As always, the Colonel looked freshly scrubbed. His dark, perfectly parted hair gleamed under the neon lights.

‘Right, gentlemen…’

He paused to eyeball each of us individually. I suddenly knew how those poor bloody apprentices must feel when Sir Alan Sugar was about to tell them: ‘You’re fired…’

‘What the FUCK were you doing?’

We stared at him in stunned silence.

‘You have advertised to the wider army a capability we do not have. People are now going to expect that this is a service we offer…’

He slowed right down, making every word sound like a threat.

‘I’m not sure that you are aware of the gravity of your actions. People are going to come down on us from a great height. The JHC and the Directorate are going to want some answers.’

Hindsight was kicking in. Shit. It was going to go against us.

‘You decided that you would break the RTS, which clearly states what you can and can’t do. Tell me, where in the RTS does it say that untrained troops can use this procedure? It is an emergency procedure, for aircrew only.’

This went against every principle I have ever stood for. How could we have one rule for us, and one for everyone else?

‘You decided that you would ignore the RTS. Who here has done this for real? Who here has trained for this? Those marines were not trained for this. They were just hanging off the side.’

Billy was the first to tiptoe across this minefield. ‘They were strapped on sir. Well, they were o–’

‘HOW were they strapped on?’

I kept my voice as even as possible. ‘I showed each one of them the correct method, sir.’

He ignored me.

‘So, without any training and with a total disregard for the RTS, you decided to strap men to an aircraft. What would have happened if one of them had fallen off?’

His dark, slightly hooded eyes flashed dangerously. No one answered. We were starting to realise that there would be no ‘well done’.

‘You flew into an enemy stronghold! What would have happened if one of your aircraft had been shot down? Do you realise the implications of the Taliban parading round with an Apache?’

You could have cut the silence that followed with a knife. But the Colonel still hadn’t finished.

‘I simply cannot believe you put two £40-million helicopters in harm’s way, in a vain attempt to save someone that was already dead.’

I felt as though I’d been poleaxed. We all did.

‘We didn’t know, Colonel,’ Billy said quietly. ‘We didn’t know he was dead.’

My mouth fell open. So, it had all been for nothing. A wave of sadness washed over me. The expression on the Colonel’s face changed from steely determination to surprise. He obviously had no idea that we hadn’t already been told.

‘Excuse me, sir.’ Billy got to his feet and walked out of the room.

Good on you Billy. You’re not going to sit here and take this.

There was another silence as the CO waited for Billy to return.

If only… If only we’d got to him faster, we might have saved him. If only we’d been quicker getting out of the fort. If only, if only, if only…

Hope had made me believe in the impossible. Now the book was closed. We had failed, and were getting a good kicking for daring not to. What a shit day.

But it wasn’t anger that had propelled Billy from the room. After a few seconds, the silence was interrupted by the sound of him throwing up outside. He came back in, white but expressionless, and dropped a tissue into the bin. We all knew how he felt. The CO gave us a few more seconds for the news to sink in. Our reaction had clearly thrown him.

‘Why didn’t you wait for the Chinook IRT plan?’

My eyes narrowed. Carl looked as dumbstruck as I was. Geordie shrugged his shoulders. Billy was staring at the CO throughout, trying to make head or tail of what he was saying.

‘The IRT plan was to take effect twenty minutes later with a Chinook.’

‘As far as we knew sir, there was no Chinook IRT plan,’ Billy said.

The Colonel fell silent again. We didn’t know about his plan. He rested his hands on his thighs as if he was about to stand up, then changed his mind and turned to Trigger.

‘We are going to need to decide how we report this.’ He paused. ‘We must ensure that we were in the decision process and knew what was happening at all times. At the moment it looks as though four NCOs have gone and done whatever they pleased, without our authority.’

So that was it. Stay calm, Macy; stay very calm.

‘Sir…’

He looked at me.

Stay calm, Macy.

‘I’m not an NCO,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘I am a fucking Warrant Officer.’

Well done, Macy… really calm…

He glared at me.

Which was preferable: the Taliban videoing a downed Apache or a British soldier skinned alive on Al Jazeera? Who was going to be more upset, the Chancellor losing forty million quid or a family not being able to sleep at night? His mother wouldn’t even have been able to bury him.

A long time ago the red mist would have arrived good and proper at that point; the red mist that got me into fights as a kid and in the Paras. It wasn’t there now, but I was deep down fucking angry. I knew I should probably just sit on my hands, but I couldn’t help myself.

‘I haven’t said anything yet, sir.’ I leaned forward. ‘But I’d like to make three points.’

I looked him straight in the eye.

‘First, I don’t care how much a helicopter costs; it was a calculated decision.’

‘It’s not just the helicopters, Mr Macy,’ the Colonel replied. ‘It’s the four marines with you. The risk to them–’

‘We asked for volunteers, sir,’ I said. ‘We asked for volunteers, and I described the plan in detail to Colonel Magowan.’

The CO just looked at me.

‘Second, I don’t, can’t and won’t ever see the difference between any British soldier, aircrew or otherwise. And finally…’ I paused, because I really wanted him to hear this loud and clear, ‘…do you really believe for one moment, sir, that we thought you were not in the decision-making loop?’

He looked completely blank.

‘I expected both you and Major James to be in the loop, and to have followed the whole thing on a Nimrod feed. You could have turned this off any time. Sir…’

‘I tried to, Mr Macy. And the brigadier went against me.’

That explained the shenanigans over the radio when we arrived at Magowan’s command post.

‘I didn’t know that, sir.’

He now understood that we hadn’t a clue about the Chinook IRT; that we had not disobeyed any direct orders, and believed that he knew of – and endorsed – the rescue.

But he also knew that we had thrown the rulebook out the window. The crucial question was: did he think the result was worth the risk?

It was decision time. A decision that would affect the careers of everyone in the room – not least his. Was he going to take a punt and institute a disciplinary investigation against us, or play it safe and wait for someone else to? Would he back us, or throw us to the dogs?

The CO turned to Trigger and took a deep breath.

‘Chris, if you were in the flight down there, what would you have done?’

It was a hospital pass if ever I’d seen one. As one of his squadron commanders, the Boss answered to Colonel Sexton; he was duty bound to back him up. Trigger had been given the casting vote. He didn’t hesitate for a second.

‘Given the same circumstances, Colonel, I would have done exactly the same as my men.’

Fucking good man.

The Colonel’s mouth opened and closed, and he looked around the room, as if for inspiration.

Finally, he said, ‘We need to talk, Chris.’ And with that they got up and walked swiftly to the door.

Billy, Geordie, Carl and I looked at each other.

‘Fuck me,’ Geordie said. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

‘Me neither,’ Carl said. ‘You okay, Billy?’

‘Yeah.’ Billy was still reeling.

I fished my notebook out of my trouser pocket.

‘Okay, boys, I’m getting all of that down verbatim. We’ll need it for the board of inquiry. Right, can you remember who said what?’

Geordie stood up.

‘Great idea, Ed, but can we do it outside? I’m in serious need of some fresh air.’

We spent the next hour grouped around a bench in the sun. I jotted down every word while Geordie and Carl bitched like hell. For once, Carl had a genuine reason to do so, and we weren’t going to deny him.

Writing it down helped us revisit our actions and the thought processes behind them. It also took the lid off the pressure cooker after the incredible tension of the morning.

Billy rubbed the palm of his hand slowly over his stubble as we finished. Of all of us, Billy had taken it the worst. He was the mission commander. It wasn’t just the shock of Mathew’s death that had made him puke. Flying meant everything to him; it was his life. He was going for an officer’s commission. The least he could expect if we got done was to lose his wings. As the Sky Police, Billy knew that better than anyone. He was looking over the abyss.

Billy wasn’t alone. Geordie was the Rescue Police, Carl the Electronic Warfare Police, and I was the Weapons Police. We kept the rulebook: the same book that was about to be thrown at us – and probably all the harder because it was ours. Billy looked at each of us in turn.

‘We did the right thing.’

We all agreed with him. And then the four of us shook hands. All for one, and one for all. It was lunchtime, but only Carl and Geordie were hungry. Billy and I wandered back into the Ops Room to get on with the day’s work.

FOG wandered over and told us about the Colonel’s IRT plan. It was to re-role a Chinook at Bastion and carry twenty-odd marines into the fort to pick up Mathew. Trigger had asked FOG to pass it on to us when we’d hit our radio black spot at Magowan’s HQ. He’d forgotten.

It changed nothing. The Chinook was twenty minutes behind us, minimum, and Mathew didn’t have twenty minutes. And anyway, it was total lunacy. A big old bird like a Chinook would have been shot to shit at Jugroom. If it had gone down in the air there would have been twenty-five-plus dead. The brigadier clearly had no interest in it either; he’d only mentioned two options during his orders broadcast on the net.

FOG also forgot to tell us that Trigger was sending a second Chinook down to the gun line with extra gas. Now that would have been nice to know. Ironically, the fuel drama was the one thing the CO still didn’t know about yet.

HQ Flight was taken off the IRT / HRF task with immediate effect. As with all fatalities, there was a mountain of admin to climb over. A couple of MPs from the Red Caps’ Special Investigations Branch turned up to take lengthy statements from all the pilots – Nick, Charlotte, FOG and Darwin included. Under the law, we were all witnesses to a death, and until it was solved, it was treated as suspicious.

Trigger came back after lunch to lead the routine mission debrief. Standing up for us in the face of the CO was a brave thing to do, but he didn’t see it like that. As far as he was concerned, he’d just told the truth as he always did. If an officer lied, he had no integrity. Without integrity, how could he lead his men?

He admitted that this was a defining moment in his career, though – because he most probably wouldn’t have one now. I told him I’d never forget what he’d done, and I never will. We didn’t bother discussing our situation any further. It was out of all our hands now – Trigger’s included.

The eight pilots, the guy from Intelligence, the Ops Officer and the Boss filed back into the Tactical Planning Facility and watched the gun tapes on the five-foot-square screen. It taught us some pretty interesting things about the morning.

There were RPGs everywhere. We’d missed most of them because our screens were small and we were obsessed with Mathew. More than 100 were fired at or past HQ Flight while we were on station; the majority in volley-fire from the south-east – the bottom of the treeline and the village.

We checked out Billy’s FLIR tape and saw just how hot Mathew had been throughout the mission. He was glowing, and his temperature never dissipated, despite the cold. It meant he had circulation. His heart was beating throughout. I didn’t know whether that made things better or worse.

Billy’s tape made it clear that Mathew had never moved. We replayed it three times at the point Billy thought he had – then realised his shadow had moved as the sun rose.

Alarmingly, 3 Flight’s tapes revealed just how many Taliban had been piling down the eastern side of the fort in their attempt to encircle us: literally dozens of them, using a kilometre-long drainage ditch as cover. Almost everything Charlotte and Tony fired had been to suppress that lot. No wonder they went Winchester.

Overall, we estimated that there had been between around 100 of them to the north and east of the fort. It was impossible to tell how many more lay in wait in the village, the fort’s buildings and the tunnel systems, but we reckoned on at least twice as many again. They must have been coming in from miles away; they’d had enough warning.

As the tapes played themselves out, it became ever more obvious how small Zulu Company’s chances were of crossing the river again. Once the Taliban had reinforced, even a battalion of 600 infantry couldn’t have taken the place.

Last, we watched 3 Flight’s coverage of their orgy of fire as we flew out of the fort. The extraction took a total of fifty-five seconds – during which they’d put down a total of £324,000 of rockets and missiles – £5,890 every second. Nobody in the forty-nine-year history of the Army Air Corps had ever fired half as much ordnance so quickly from one aircraft, and we doubted anyone would again.

At the end of the brief, there was a knock on the TPF door and the Chief Technician popped his head round.

‘Boss, got your aircraft damage report here.’

Trigger groaned.

‘Go on. How bad is it then?’

‘Not a bullet hole anywhere.’

‘Really? You sure?’

‘Not one. I couldn’t believe it myself. I got the lads to look at them twice. It’s gen. Not a single round hit any of the four of them down there.’

That spooked us. Tony the bullet magnet had been hit on three separate occasions in Afghanistan. No hits seemed impossible.

The Ops Officer concluded the brief. ‘There were no Rules of Engagement issues, the weight of fire was proportionate to the task and we have no damages to report this time. Do we, Darwin?’

Tony grinned. ‘No, sir.’

‘Well, Geordie, how do you think you did on your six-monthly handling check?’ Billy delivered his assessment without waiting for an answer to his question. ‘You failed. You broke every rule in the book – and you can refly in the morning at o-six hundred.’

‘I’m never getting in an Apache with you again,’ Geordie muttered. ‘Not ever.’

It was getting dark by the time we left the facility. Billy told me he was going up to the hospital to have a quiet word with the doctors. If Mathew’s death was going to prey on our minds, we needed to understand it better. We needed to know what else we could have done for him.

The Royal Navy Surgeon Commander in charge of the hospital told him that Mathew had been hit by a round in the upper right temple. The injury was fatal; he would have died from his injuries even if he had been shot on the hospital’s front doorstep. His body may have lived on for a few more hours, but the damage to his brain was unsurvivable, no matter what anyone did. Mathew was effectively dead the moment the bullet hit him.

Billy and I were silent as we walked to cookhouse for dinner. It was a desperate end to an appalling day.

An older Royal Marine wearing a WO1’s rank slide stepped out in front of us. ‘Excuse me gents, did you two fly at Jugroom Fort today, by any chance?’

We nodded.

‘I’m the RSM of 42 Commando.’ He grabbed both our hands and gave them a bone-crunching shake. ‘What you boys did there was outstanding. Thank you for bringing him back. We always tell them this, but you showed all my young lads for real that we never leave anyone behind.’

We were gobsmacked by the strength of his emotion.

‘If there is anything I can ever do for you, or any of the other Apache guys, just tell me.’

As we queued for our food, we could hear the chefs talking about the rescue as they ladled out lasagne to the blokes ahead of us. We got a few more words of praise or gratitude from other marines when we sat down. Word was obviously spreading fast.

The next time we saw the CO was at the JHF evening brief in the Ops Room. By then, we were resigned to whatever was coming our way. If the gallows were under construction, so be it. The Colonel said nothing to us as individuals. Trigger invited him to address the room at the beginning of the brief as the new commanding officer.

‘Thank you, Chris. What a day. Some extremely unconventional events occurred out there today. These were audacious in the extreme – but not something that I would want repeated.’

He paused for the message to sink in.

‘I will do my best, but the Joint Helicopter Command may need convincing…’

Billy and I shared a knowing glance. Carl shook his head in disgust. The Ops Officer then read out the full list of stats collated by the brigade from Op Glacier 2 so far. The Apaches weren’t the only ones to dish it out on Jugroom Fort’s defenders that day.

The three 105-mm artillery pieces fired a total of 430 high explosive shells, and twenty salvoes of Illume. The B1B bombers dropped six 500-lb bombs and eight 2,000-pounders. The A10s fired 1,500 rounds of 30-mm DU, seven CRV rockets, three 540-lb airburst bombs and two precision-guided 500-pounders. As for the Apaches: 1,543 rounds of 30-mm HEDP, fifteen HEISAP rockets, forty-seven Flechettes and eighteen Hellfires. Nobody had bothered to count the small arms rounds yet, but they were believed to be in the tens of thousands.

There was one friendly forces KIA, and four wounded. The enemy had forty confirmed KIA. The final tally was very likely to have been double that, possibly even more. It had been a hell of a ding dong. But I’d be a liar if I said we weren’t all very pleased to hear we’d given far better than we’d taken.

‘Also be aware,’ the Ops Officer added, ‘that an SA80 Mark 2 rifle fitted with a SUSAT sight is now missing.’

It was Dave Rigg’s. He’d left it at the fort because he couldn’t carry Mathew and the rifle at the same time.

Despite our complaints, the Boss put Billy, Geordie, Carl and me on enforced rest and gave the same order to 3 Flight. They’d sat in their Kevlar bathtubs for over eleven hours and had been on the go for twenty so far. He knew a break from combat would do us no harm at all.

It also meant the four of us were back in our usual tents that night. Geordie came in for a chat, wearing just his skiddies and a T-shirt, and we played out the whole rescue over again for hours, piecing together the bits that some of us had missed or hadn’t understood. Geordie recounted his escapade at the fort in full.

We crashed out just before 3am. I was totally ball-bagged but I couldn’t really sleep. From the amount of turning and creaking coming from Billy and Carl’s cots, I guessed they couldn’t either. There was still too much to think about, to churn through.

For some reason we all felt a lot better the next morning.

Billy and I played the air temperature game on our walk to the morning brief as usual. Billy won. Despite the bright sunshine, it was plus-one degree celsius and he’d got it bang on. I made the coffees, hot and strong. Carl and Geordie joined us from breakfast as we kicked our feet outside, enjoying the fresh air.

Carl, Billy and I were all going to Kandahar that day to air test the aircraft in maintenance. Two of us could go in the Apache with the broken FLIR camera because that needed to be fixed, too, leaving one to be consigned to the Hercules shuttle. None of us ever wanted to go on the Hercules. Why get flown when you can fly yourself?

Billy and I tried pulling rank on Carl, but he wasn’t having any of it. So we agreed to spoof for who got the Apache seats. Billy lost and was furious. I enjoyed that and told him so. ‘We’ll be in Timmy Horton’s on our second round of doughnuts by the time you arrive, Face.’

‘Go do the coffees, Piss Boy.’

‘Morning gents.’ Trigger swept past us on his way into the tent. ‘And what a lovely morning it is.’

The Boss obviously also felt better for a night’s sleep. We followed him in. He took his usual spot in front of the map table, facing the room. Billy and I perched on ours, behind his right shoulder.

Trigger turned to us just as he was about to begin. I could see mischief in his eyes. ‘Just got a message from the brigadier,’ he whispered. ‘Thought you might like to hear it. The brigadier wants your citations for Jugroom Fort on his desk first thing tomorrow morning.’

He turned back to face the rest of the room.

‘Right, good morning everyone…’

Billy and I weren’t listening. A giant grin crept across our faces and a very warm feeling spread from our stomachs. By hook or by crook, the system had spoken. The official verdict had been passed. The noose had been cut down in front of our very eyes. We were in the clear.